


Founding Fathers

by JamesJohnEye



Series: Founding Fathers [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Child Abuse, Prompt Fill, Racism, Young Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-25 17:26:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 96
Words: 506,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7541509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamesJohnEye/pseuds/JamesJohnEye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl is twelve years old when the dead start walking. Instead of Merle, his dad tries to lead him to Atlanta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twelve years old

**Author's Note:**

> Hi,
> 
> this is a fill for a prompt I found on one of the kink meme's. If it was yours; thanks for the inspiration.  
> English is not my first language and I don't have a beta. Please help me out if you spot a mistake and leave it in the comments so I can fix it, thanks! 
> 
>  
> 
> Warning; references to, and explicit, child abuse and foul language in almost all chapters.

 

* * *

 

 

'Youth is made for bruises.'

Shannon Celebi in _Small Town Demons_

 

* * *

 

 

 

Daryl is twelve years old when the dead start walking.

He’s at home, sitting in front of the television which displays the same emergency broadcast message over and over when his father storms into the small trailer. Daryl watches how his old man throws a couple of cabinets open and starts shoving canned food into a plastic bag. There’s not much there really. A couple of cans of corn, some peaches and beans. Most cans are dented and have missing labels. God knows what’s in them. They clang together when Will Dixon moves over to the other side of the kitchen and wrenches the fridge open.

‘What’re ya doin’?’ Daryl asks when his curiosity gets the better of him.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Will drops the bag and whirls around to face his youngest son. ‘What the fuck are ya doin’ here, boy?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘School’s been closed because of the sickness. No-one was out, so I came back here.’ He fishes another strip of their home-made jerky out of a bag and bites down on it. Small blue eyes peer up at his father through a dirty-blond fringe.

The older man stalks over to the couch and grabs the jerky, stuffing it in the bag with the cans. ‘So ya just came here, eating my food, driving up the damn bills by watchin’ stupid television shows in the middle of the goddamn day? Jesus. Get off your ass ‘nd grab your stuff. We’re leavin’ this place.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I were just down at Lindsay’s and some asshole came at us! Walked right down main, snarling ‘nd biting at whoever got close, like some fuckin’ rabid dog, so Toby shot him, right? Crazy fucker just kept on walkin’. Didn’t even notice the fuckin’ hole in his chest. We ain’t staying here if hell’s flowing over, a’right? Now shut up and get your stuff.’

Daryl glances at the news report that’s starting over again, warning everyone to stay away from the infected people. It lists quarantine zones which have been broken. Whole states have been written off. He sees the name of their state and country, still in the green zone. It probably hasn’t been updated in some time now.

Sharp nails dig into his shoulder as his father pulls him to his feet. The strong smell of alcohol wafts into his face when Will leans close to snarl at him. ‘Don’t make me tell you twice now.’

Daryl squirms away from him and slips into the small bedroom at the very back of the trailer. He grabs his hunting gear, which consists of a large backpack. It doesn’t take him very long to gather all his stuff. He makes sure to grab his watertight jacket, all of the socks and underwear he owns, a couple of shirts and most of his jeans. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he lifts his mattrass and grabs what’s been hiding beneath it for years now.

A picture frame with his mother’s photograph. She’s smiling up at him, the same color of blue he sees in the mirror every morning, the same dirty-blonde hair.

She’s been dead for a long time now. He barely remembers her.

‘ _Dare_.’ Will Dixon’s voice booms through the trailer.

‘Yeah, pop?’ He answers as he quickly stuffs the photograph on the bottom of his backpack.

‘Make sure you pack your bow and got your knife on you. I paid good money for them. We ain’t leaving those behind for some damn looters to steal, ya hear me?’

Daryl jumps onto his bed and grabs the bow from the top of the closet. It’s heavy. He drops it onto his pillow before reaching for the sheathed knife. He clips that onto his belt, jumps down from the bed, shoulders his bow and grabs his bag before stepping out of this bedroom again.

Blue eyes narrow when he spots his father throwing bottles of strong booze into a backpack. He recognizes some of their own moonshine but there’s also a bottle of scotch and another one that looks impossibly green. He knows it smells like mint when opened. He _hates_ that smell.

‘I’m ready,’ Daryl announces as he hitches his bow higher onto his shoulder. It keeps slipping because it’s so heavy. The strap cuts into his skin.

‘What, ya waitin’ for a medal or something?’ Will snipes. ‘Get your ass in the truck and stop piddlin’ around.’

With a sigh, Daryl slips out of the trailer.

 

 

Their beat-up old truck is parked right in front of the house, one of the big wheels on the grass and the bumper almost touching the white picket fence of their neighbors. Will must have either been rushing or too buzzed to notice. Daryl glances warily at their neighbor’s trailer, expecting to see that old lady sitting on a folding chair near the door but for once, she isn’t there.

‘Dixon!’

Daryl turns to see Jake running up the road towards him. It’s a scrawny kid with a mean right hook and one crooked front tooth.

‘You leaving too?’ the boy asks, slightly out of breath from his sprint.

‘Guess so. You?’

‘Yeah, of course. They say there’s dead people walking around, did ya hear? Like, _dead_ people.’

‘Bull,’ Daryl scoffs as he spits on the ground.

‘No, for real,’ Jake insists, ‘you know Dirty Teddy, right? He saw it.’

‘Dirty Teddy is a dirty liar, ‘s why he’s called Dirty Teddy.’

Jake narrows his eyes, ‘why’s y’all leavin’ then, if there ain’t no dead people walkin’ around?’

Daryl wipes his nose with the back of his hand and glances at their front door. He shrugs. ‘My dad said Toby shot a guy when they were down at Lindsay’s. Guess we can’t stay.’

‘They _killed_ a guy?’ Jake’s eyes grow big and he takes a step back.

‘No,’ Daryl says hastily, ‘he said he kept on walkin’.’

‘ _See_? They shot him and he just kept on walkin’? That’s what Dirty Teddy said; dead people walkin’!’

‘Just because Toby shot him, don’t mean he’s dead!’

‘You really are a dumb sack of shit, Dixon,’ Jake sneers. He looks over his shoulder to see his mother waving him over. ‘Gotta go. Hey, y’all goin’ to Atlanta?’

‘Guess,’ Daryl shrugs as he sucks on his teeth. ‘Dad didn’t say.’

‘Hell, everyone’s goin’ to Atlanta. I’ll see you there, Dixon,’ Jake grins before he takes off running again.

Daryl watches how his mother engulfs the boy in a hasty hug, his face pressed against her chest. She wipes the dark hair from his forehead and kisses it lovingly before gently pushing him toward the waiting car. Doors slam. Seconds later there’s a trail of dust and the sound of a roaring engine as that family leaves the trailer park behind.

Daryl spits on the ground again before moving to their own pick-up. He puts his crossbow on the floor near his feet and throws the backpack into the back. He climbs on the wheel and hops into the bed, sitting down on the ridge as he waits for his father to come out.

 

 

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Will Dixon throws a tent next to Daryl’s bag and then puts his own backpack down carefully. Bottles clink against each other.

Daryl rubs at his nose. ‘What about Merle?’

‘What about him?’

‘What if he comes looking for us here?’

Will looks at his youngest son. He leans against the car, his broad hands curling around the metal ridge. ‘Merle’s locked up good. He ain’t goin’ to come lookin’ for us. Hell, he’s in the safest place he can be right now, behind a damn good set of bars. He’ll come find us when this is all over.’

‘But we won’t be here.’

‘What’re ya talkin’ about?’ Will asks with a frown. ‘’course we will. We ain’t no city-slickers, just gonna wait it out over in Atlanta, watch this whole thing blow over and then head straight back here. This is just.. it’s like a vacation, a’right? Weren’t you always bitchin’ about wantin’ to go on a vacation? Where did that kid from your class go? That douchebag from down Sixth?’

‘Canada,’ Daryl mutters.

‘ _Canada_ ,’ Will scoffs. ‘Probably froze his balls off.’

‘He went swimming in a lake.’

‘He went to Canada to swim in a lake?’ the man asks as he walks over to the driver’s side of the truck. ‘What, Georgia’s lake’s weren’t good enough for his faggoty ass to swim in?’

Daryl knows better than to answer. He slides off the car and wrenches the door open, slipping into the passenger’s seat.

The father drums his fingers against the wheel before turning to his son. ‘It’s you ‘nd me now.’

Daryl frowns and puts his muddy boots on the dashboard, biting down on the nail of his thumb. ‘Always were.’

‘For real now,’ Will says. ‘Hell overflowin’, but it’s gonna be you ‘nd me at the end of this, okay? Dixon’s are tough as nails. Ain’t nothing is goin’ to kill us, but us. You got that, boy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Say it.’

‘You and me,’ Daryl echoes with a nod. ‘Ain’t nothing’s gonna kill us, but us.’

‘Damn straight.’ Will starts the car and wraps an arm around the headrest of the passenger seat to turn and back out of the yard.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Atlanta,’ the elder Dixon mutters as he swings the car around and shifts gears. ‘But we’re going to make a pit-stop at the cabin first. Stashed some stuff away there, some ammo, we got the rest of our gear out there too. Think this fuckin’ tent ain’t waterproof or something, ain’t no reason for it to be out here, huh?’

‘One of them poles broke last time we went out,’ Daryl mutters.

‘See? We need better gear.’

‘What the hell do we need a tent for if we’re going to Atlanta?’ the boy asks as he leans forward to catch a glimpse of the last trailers. They’re all deserted. It seems like they’re the last ones to leave.

‘Hey,’ Will hits the breaks hard and grabs Daryl’s shoulder, pushing him up against his car window. ‘Now you listen to me, boy. You think this is the fuckin’ flu? That guy down at Lindsay’s was dead, son. He was guts-hanging-out, rotting-eyes, bleeding-from-his-ass _dead_. If you think the government is going to save our asses, you got another think comin’, fast. It’s up to us now. It’s gonna turn ugly, like in them movies, a’right?’

Daryl nods. He’s seen a lot of those movies when Merle was still around. The ones in which the heroes survived and got the girl after burning a vampire at the stake. But this isn’t a movie, he thinks. And there’s no chance in hell they are the heroes.

‘We’re going to get to that damn cabin and get our gear, then we’re haulin’ ass for Atlanta. Maybe the army is still up ‘nd kickin’ ass. If they ain’t, we’re gonna go into the woods, a’right? Hide out until this all blows over. Jesus, thought pussy-footing ‘round would make ya feel better, okay? Like a damn vacation, just hopping down to Atlanta for a bit, - ugh. Fuck that shit. It’s gonna be nasty, boy. Real nasty. ’

Daryl nods again and sags back into his seat when Will lets go of him. They drive down the familiar roads. A couple of cars flash by, heading into the opposite direction, towards Atlanta.

‘We’re gonna be fine,’ Will mutters. Nervous eyes glance around, checking the rear-view mirror every couple of seconds. ‘We’re gonna be just fine.’

He doesn’t sound too sure.

Daryl puts his feet on the dashboard again and plucks at his jeans. There’s a hole starting to form over his knee. That bums him out. It’s his favorite pair.

‘You and me, boy,’ Will comments distractedly as he reaches for the radio to try and find something other than the repeated emergency broadcast message.

Daryl sighs and looks out of the windows.

‘Dixons stick together.’

Daryl nods. ‘Sure, dad.’ He bites on his thumb, a nervous habit. He watches how the woods streak past and wonders how true that statement really is. Merle is gone for now, but he’s like a bad penny and he’ll turn up sooner or later. He’s never let Daryl down in the past, even though he sometimes took his sweet time before coming to the younger Dixon’s rescue.

He’s not worried about Merle. Instead, he worries about something else.

What would his dad have done if he hadn’t been home just now? It was just a coincidence that Daryl saw him pack up, what if he’d been out with his friends, what if school had been in session, would Will have waited for him? Would he have looked for him, at all?

Or would he have simply packed up his shit and lit out first chance he got?

Daryl pretends he doesn’t know the answers.

 

 


	2. Jerry

 

* * *

 

 

The cabin feels more desolate than ever before, though nothing much has changed. It still smells of stale beer and cigarettes and the front door still jams. Red plastic cups litter every flat surface, some filled with left-over booze and others with cigarettes. The couch creaks when Daryl lets himself fall onto it with a heavy sigh.

His gaze sweeps over the rest of the furniture. All of it is worn and scratched, burned in some places. The rug is a complete mess, but the television is shiny and almost new. There are bottle of liquor on the shelves, jammed between books about hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. They must have been presents from birthdays or anniversaries, Daryl doesn’t think his dad would ever buy a book no matter the subject. He hasn’t seen anyone read them in years.

Maybe their mom thought it would brighter up the place, or hide it’s true purpose; just another shit-hole for the Dixon men to bury their problems with booze and sharp objects.

There’s a painting on the wall. Besides the television, it’s the only thing in the whole cabin that hasn’t been damaged in any way. It hangs next to the couch, perfectly level and free of any dust or grime. It displays sprawling green fields, a striking sunset or sunrise, the orange light spilling over the horizon.

Daryl likes the painting. The colors, blending but so vivid even in the gloomy light inside the cabin. He’s spend many hours with his back against the armrest, feet on the cushions and eyes glued to the painting. He’s not sure whether it’s just a pretty painting with a generic sunset, or rise, or whether it portrays a specific place. It could be anywhere.

He likes to think that it’s anywhere but here.

Heavy boots on rotting floorboards announce the return of Will. The door is kicked open and he walks straight towards the cabinet next to the couch. He checks the first drawer, the second and Daryl closes his eyes with a soft sigh because he knows what his dad is looking for is stashed away in the fourth drawer.

The rattling of a metal case tells him his dad finally caught on to that too.

It’s their gun. A small handgun, silver and bulky. The number has been scraped off and they don’t have a license for it, but nobody ever came looking for it anyway. Despite what everyone at his school thinks they know about the Dixon's, the cops never had it out for them.

Of course Merle had been locked up a couple of times, but he was always released the next morning after a stern talk from the sheriff and Dixon lies about how he would behave from now on.

It was never for any serious offence. A bar fight, some drunken swagger down main. Once, he got locked up for possession and had to go to juvie for a while but he came back bragging that he got released early due to good behavior.

Daryl’s never been in trouble with the cops. He doesn’t like them much of course, because no one likes cops much unless they’re involved with them in some way. Husbands and wives of those serving in blue, those damn goody-two-shoes kids of pigs. He grew up hating them on sight because his dad would always bitch about them and Merle called them all sorts of names, but they did alright by Daryl. They turned a blind-eye when he rode his bike where he shouldn’t and never asked him about the bruises on his cheekbones. To be honest, they probably didn’t give a damn how he got them and that’s fine by him.

Daryl opens his eyes again just when Will stuffs a spare clip into his back pocket.

‘You got them batteries?’

The boy nods, ‘they’re in my pack.’

‘Any food left in this place?’

‘Nah.’

‘Damn.’ Will glances around the cabin. ‘Got all the other stuff?’

‘Your bow and bolts, the tools, batteries, first aid kit, the knives. The power’s gone out some time ago, the stuff in the freezer went bad. The camping gear, couple of bottles of water,’ Daryl lists. ‘You got the gun.’

‘Yeah. All right,’ Will slips the gun into the pocket of his hoodie. ‘Well, let’s get out of here then. Road trip to Atlanta.’ He tries to smile but it just looks like a painful grimace. His face really isn’t used to the motion anymore. ‘Let’s go.’

Daryl hoists himself up from the couch and walks back to the truck.

When he reaches the back of it, his attention is attracted by a weird noise. He looks down the path of their cabin and watches how Jerry Dawns stagers towards him.

The man owns one of the cabins closer to town. He was caught making moonshine when he was younger and now just hassles others for the clear liquid. Until a year ago, he was one of Will’s best friends. Whenever there was a party going on at their place, Jerry would be there, half-drunk and high with his bony hands wrapped around a bottle of moonshine.

His visits ended when Daryl woke up in the middle of the night because of Merle’s screaming. He’d looked up from his pillow to see his older brother right next to his bed, arms around Jerry’s waist and flinging him towards the door. Screams, shouts, the sound of fists hitting flesh.

Daryl had slipped out of bed and rolled under it, hiding until Merle’s screams of rage died down and someone took Jerry to the hospital with screeching tires.

Daryl still isn’t sure what really happened, but he knows that Jerry had a broken eye socket, several cracked ribs and that he’d pissed blood for days. He never came back. He never pressed charges either and Merle would laugh whenever Daryl mentioned it and tell him that the old man was just saving his own hide.

But now Jerry is staggering up their driveway. He looks drunk, but instead of his usual ramblings, he’s just moaning. Daryl frowns and glances back at the cabin, unsure of what to do. Will is still inside, grabbing some clothes.

Daryl climbs on the back of the truck and grabs the strap of his bow, pulling it closer to him so it’s within easy reach. Then he looks back at Jerry.

He’s walking with some difficulty. It looks like he’s dragging his body forwards, shoulders jerking with every step.

‘The fuck are you doing here?’ Daryl asks. Maybe he needs a ride to Atlanta. A feeling of dread starts to pool in Daryl’s stomach. He doesn’t want to share the ride with that guy, doesn’t want to be anywhere near him since the incident. And with Merle away and his dad barely paying attention, who knows what Jerry will think of trying next.

The man is closer now, halfway up the driveway. The dull brown eyes are fixed on Daryl. He hasn’t said anything yet, which is nothing like him. Jerry is known for his loud mouth, but now there are just moans spilling from his lips.

‘I asked you a fucking question, man,’ Daryl says. ‘This is private property!’

Jerry’s head jerks. He seems to be working his jaw, chewing on his own tongue, maybe. He moans and nearly falls over a branch but recovers and drags himself towards the truck.

Daryl climbs into the bed of the truck, ‘I’m warnin’ ya.’ He takes a step back and almost slips over the poles of the tent. With a curse, he stumbles back until he hits the cabin of the truck.

Now that Jerry is so close that he can almost touch the truck, Daryl can see that he’s no longer human. The brown eyes are rotting in the skull. The skin is far too pale and the lips are almost blue.

‘What the hell, man,’ Daryl mutters as he tries to back up more. ‘What the fuck – dad! Dad!’ He hates how his voice breaks on the words. ‘ _Dad_!

The door bursts open and Will comes running out. Pale blue eyes scan their surroundings for a second, landing on his youngest son on top of his truck, trying to get away from Jerry who is now reaching from him and growling.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Will cusses as he grabs his gun, ‘ _Daryl_!’

The booming voice attracts Jerry’s attention. The man turns around slowly and starts to drag himself towards Will, who seems unsure of what to do. ‘Jerry, what the hell are you doin’, man? ‘s my boy! Stay back. I’m warnin’ ya, stay back! _Back_!’

It’s no use and Will seems to realize it too. He grabs his gun. ‘One more step, man. Just give me a reason.’

The reason is another step. The bullet slams into Jerry’s chest. It causes his whole body to rock, but doesn’t stop him from moving forwards.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Will breathes as he shoots again and again and again.

Daryl watches how Jerry comes closer and closer to his dad. With trembling hands, he loads his crossbow. The string cuts into his fingers but he doesn’t even feel it. The bolt slides into place, he swings the bow up and stares down the sight. Breathes in, holds his breath and waits for the space between heartbeats.

‘Wow!’ Will jumps back as blood splashes onto him. The bolt buried itself in Jerry’s skull and came out of his eye. The man finally falls onto the ground and stays there, motionless. Will looks up at his son, who is looking back with wide, frightened eyes and trembling hands. ‘What did you do?’

‘Shot him in the head,’ Daryl answers. He blinks. The bow clatters onto the bed of the truck.

‘Yeah, no shit.’ Will nudges Jerry’s shoulder with his foot. ‘He's dead.’

‘You shot him four times!’

‘Yeah. _Shit_. Look at him. Rotting eyes, his skin, he was dead before you and me shot him. Guess he got sick somehow.’ Will reaches down and pulls at Jerry’s shirt to look at his skin but there’s nothing there. Then he walks a half-circle and inspect his legs. ‘Bite mark,’ Will notes. He kicks Jerry’s left ankle. ‘Weren’t that what they said on the news? You gotta get infected for it to mess you up?’

‘Spread like rabies, they said,’ Daryl nods. ‘Bites.’

‘So I shot him four times in the chest and nothing. You got him in the head, he stopped movin’.’ Will thinks about that for a second and then looks up at his son. ‘Guess we gotta get them in the head then.’

Daryl nods. ‘You think there’s more of them?’

Will walks back to the cabin to grab his stuff and throws it onto the back of the truck. ‘You saw them news reports, they’re everywhere. Whole cities have been written off. I thought that’d be it, ya know? Just a city, close-quarters thing, but…’ His gaze sweeps over the forest surrounding them. ‘Looks like I was wrong, huh? If Jerry got bit, means there are more of ‘em out there. Come on,’ he holds out his arm and Daryl puts his hands on it in order to hop down from the truck safely. 

‘What are we going to do about him?’ He looks at the body.

‘Nothing,’ Will opens the door. It creaks. ‘There’s going to be loads more. Fuck them. Fuck him.’ He slides into the driver’s seat.

Daryl takes his bow out of the back and vows to never have it leave his side again. He looks at the body, makes a move to kick Jerry’s hand but lets the nose of his boot bury in the dirt right next to it instead. The body smells. There’s less blood than Daryl was expecting, but that might be because the guy was already dead to begin with. He reaches down and grabs the end of his bolt. He yanks it out. It makes a horrible sucking noise and he gags, pressing his face into the crook of his elbow.

Will honks the horn which makes his son jump out of his skin. ‘Hurry the fuck up, boy! Dead people walking, remember?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daryl shushes. He reaches down to wipe his bolt on Jerry’s shirt. His hands shake but he ignores it. When the bolt is clean, he clicks it back into the quiver. ‘Fuck you,’ Daryl says softly to the back of the man’s head and then turns on his heels, runs to the passenger’s side and hops into the truck.

It takes off with screeching tires.

It leaves the body in the dust.

 

 

‘Your mom was real pretty. Did you know that?’

Daryl picks at his fingernails and shrugs.

‘She looked just like you.’

The boy glances up at his father. The old man is on the couch, feet kicked up and head resting on one of the filthy pillows. Rugged jeans, muddied boots, that plaid shirt, just any other southern douchebag. There’s a bottle of moonshine on the floor. The fingertips of one hand lazily trace the rim. It’s almost empty now.

It wasn’t two hours ago.

‘When you were knee-high to a grasshopper? Hmm, people called ya pretty all the damn time too. You got her brown hair, blue eyes, hmm, just pretty lookin’, ya know?’

Daryl does know because his dad’s friends wouldn’t shut up about it. Every time they came around, they would leer at him, ruffle his hair, slap his cheek while saying that he looked just like a girl. He knows what he looked like, a couple years, hell, a couple of months ago. Androgynous. Most couldn’t say the word or didn’t know that it existed at all. He’d read about it in some sort of magazine at the gas station while his dad had been filling up the truck.

He’d always hated the comments. Not just because they seemed to give people permission to touch him, to point out exactly what is what that made him pretty. The beauty mark on his cheek, his hair that tended to curl up when it got too long, the piercing blue eyes. He hated it because it made him look different, so unlike Merle and Will that people always did a double-take when he mentioned his last name.

Of course, they would see the bond of blood in them soon enough in the way he spoke and carried himself. In the way he skipped school and went hunting on the weekends, how he wouldn’t ever fit in with the rest of the kids, except those who came from their trailer park.

He’d liked his mom’s friends better. They used to come around all the time. They used to have pictures with Daryl in their arms, sitting in a circle with their tea and cigarettes, with smiles on their faces and a loving hand on his brown hair. Later, when his mom had died, they still came around. They brought their sympathy and their comfort food and their best efforts. Most gave up after a while. There’s no point in trying to be a friend to someone who’s dead. And none of them gave a damn about Will.

Still, two of them had tried to keep it up for Daryl’s sake. They would stop him in the street and invite him in for tea. Sometimes he would accept the offer. He wouldn’t say much, just sit on their couch for a minute to sink into the domesticity of it all. They would tell him stories about his mother. The same ones, over and over, because those were the funniest and it would make them laugh. Stories from before Daryl had been born, or Merle even. Stories from before Will.

When he would leave, he would throw his hoodie back over his brown hair and glance over his shoulder, muttering something that sounded like a thank you, and they would tell him that he looked just like her. The happiness would be gone from their smiles and he knew that they were talking about his mom after Will, but that was fine.

Sometimes he’d let them kiss his forehead, or the crown of his hair, but mostly he’d duck out of the house before they could come any closer.

‘’least you don’t look like no girl anymore,’ Will murmurs as he stares at the ceiling. ‘Thank Christ for puberty, got sick and tired of explainin’ that I had two boys and no daughter.’

Daryl rubs at his nose and wraps his arms around his knees. His hair is short now and there’s hair starting to grow on his chest, in the pits of his arms and around his junk, but his jaw is still smooth and devoid of any stubble. Sometimes his voice cracks for no reason.

‘Why’re we goin’ to Atlanta?’ the boy asks just so they’ll talk about something else. ‘If it transfers through bites, there must be loads of these things in the city. Lot of people there, right?’

‘Lot of people means a lot of people to protect. The army will be there,’ Will answers. ‘Government might be a bunch of lazy slackers, but they’re not. _This we’ll defend_. Booyah.’

As much as Dixon's hate cops, they love the army. Daryl never really understood that difference but he still spits at cop cars when they roll by and always thanks veterans for their service, even if they don’t want to hear it. He reckons that Merle should be glad that he’s still safely locked away in prison for disrespecting an officer and not handed over to the wrath of Will Dixon as punishment. Six months in prison has got nothing on those fists or that belt.

‘They said most of the big cities had fallen. Like, on the news, they said New York was gone,’ Daryl mumbles as he bites down on his thumb, tugs at the nail to ease his nerves.’Gotta be more people in New York than Atlanta, right? And if they couldn’t keep that safe then…’

Will slowly sits up. His boots hit the wooden floor hard. With his blue eyes on his son, he reaches down to grab the moonshine. He drinks it like water. ‘What do you want me to do, then? Huh? If you’re so smart, and you know it all, huh? What the fuck are we supposed to do?’

Daryl shakes his head.

‘No? No what?’

‘I don’t know, I was just askin’.’

‘That’s right,’ Will nods, his voice soft and calm. ‘You don’t know shit.’

Daryl looks away. He scrapes his nail over his gums, bites down on the flesh before gnawing on the side of his fingernail. Nerves make his spine tingle.

Will is right, of course. He doesn’t know shit about what’s going on, but two weeks ago doctors were still on the news with their preaches of personal hygiene and sensational stories of how other viruses had blown over before. They hadn’t known shit either, as it turns out. It hadn’t blown over. And now there are dead people walking and Daryl shot one in the head until it stopped moving. He knows that works, at least.

They’re currently squatting in Jerry’s cabin. It’s closer to the town, which makes it closer to the city. They had stopped because Will knew that Jerry had a rifle stuffed in one of his gun cabinets. The door of the cabin had been open when they’d pulled up. Daryl had wondered whether the guy had been bitten inside and just wandered out afterwards. Probably.

After checking the cabin thoroughly, they had closed the door and barricaded it with a sturdy armchair.

The rifle is leaning against the coffee table. It’s loaded.

Daryl is sitting on the ground because his dad took the couch and he doesn’t want to sleep in a dead man’s bed. His butt is starting to hurt though. He pulls a face and shifts to get more comfortable.

‘What’s that?’ Will asks. ‘You getting smart with me now, pulling faces like that, thinkin’ I won’t see?’

‘What?’ Daryl frowns, ‘no, my butt hurts from sitting on the – ‘

‘Yeah? Well, my butt hurts too, ‘cause you’re bein’ such a pain in my ass!’

Daryl resists the urge to roll his eyes. He tugs at his fingernail. ‘Shot Jerry in the head for ya. Saved both our asses today.’

‘And who the fuck taught you how to shoot that damn thing in the first place?’ Will growls before he thinks of a better way to pick this fight. ‘Want a medal for shooting my buddy’s brain outs now?’

It wasn’t Jerry Daryl shot and they both know it but Will’s just waiting for Daryl to take the bait and blow up. He doesn’t. He knows better by now. Daryl just glowers and wipes the spit from his thumb on his jeans.

‘Goddamn.’ Will laughs softly but there’s not a trace of humor there. Daryl freezes. He knows that laugh. And he knows that it doesn’t matter anymore whether he takes the bait or cowers down, none of that matters anymore. ‘You don’t only look like your momma, you’re actin’ just like her. Always lordin’ shit over old Will. Hey. Hey, boy, let me tell you something about your momma, a’right?’

Daryl doesn’t want to hear it.

‘Your momma loved you. The moment he knew she carried you inside her belly? Hmm, she loved ya. Slapped me in the damn face when I told her to take a hanger or one of those knitting needles, wouldn’t hear none about it.’ Will knocks back another swallow of moonshine. The blue eyes are hazy. ‘I never wanted you.’

The words don’t hurt anymore. He’s heard that message, phrased one way or another, a million times since he was born.

‘Just another leech, suckin’ me dry,’ Will nods and points at his youngest son. ‘But you’re a Dixon, through and through, all right? You’re mine, so I kept ya. Kept ya good, too.’

Daryl bites on his tongue to keep silent. After a couple of seconds, blood trickles down his throat. It almost makes him gag.

‘Turns out you’re not entirely useless after all.’ He pretends to toast to his boy. ‘That was a pretty good shot. I mean,’ he barks out a laugh, ‘ya were cryin’ like a damn baby, of course. _Daddy, daddy, save me_ ,’ he grins, ‘but ya did a’right out there. And we’re just going to keep doing all right ‘till we get to Atlanta.’

‘What happens if the army ain’t there?’ Daryl asks.

‘They will be.’

‘Yeah, but what if-‘

Will places his bottle of moonshine on the table with a soft thud. ‘Enough. Shut your trap and get some sleep. We’re getting up early to head to Atlanta. It’s a long drive.’ He gets up and walks to the bedroom. A couple of seconds later he returns with some blankets. ‘Get up off the floor. You can sleep on the couch.’

‘I’m fine, dad.’

Will grabs his son by the arm and yanks him to his feet before shoving him towards the couch. ‘I’m warnin’ ya, Dare, I’m sick ‘nd tired of your back talkin’. Get on the couch.’

Daryl stumbles towards it. He kicks his boot off and curls up with his head on the armrest.

Will nods and dumps one of the blankets on him before falling down on the other end of the couch again. He leans forward to grab the gun and places it over his knees. ‘This we’ll defend,’ Will mutters when Daryl looks at him. He pats on his son’s lower leg.

Daryl wraps the blanket around his shoulders even though it’s way too hot. He presses his foot against his father’s thigh to make sure that he’s still there.

The cabin reeks of cigarettes, booze and sweat.

The dead might be walking, but nothing really changes in Georgia, Daryl supposes. Not for him, at least.

Will falls asleep after a couple of minutes.

Daryl carefully lets the blanket slide off of him. He turns and puts his feet in his father’s lap so Will has no choice but to wake him up when they leave tomorrow morning. He doesn’t want to be left behind.

The boy falls asleep while watching the silhouette of his father, both comforted and scared by the shadow.

 

 


	3. Atlanta

 

* * *

 

 

The town is deserted when they arrive early in the morning.

Daryl leans against the window of the truck and watches how the houses glide by. First the trailer park, the suburb, then the gas station which marks the turn for the freeway. He notices how all of the houses seem abandoned now. Some of the fancier ones in the suburbs have broken windows and wrecked doors. Even from the outside he can tell that the places have been looted.

That’s something else that’s been on the news a lot lately. Most people in the cities were escorted to safe zones. Parts of Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington were evacuated. That’s when the looting had started.

Their area hadn’t been part of the evacuation program. The reporter on the news had said that the country side had not yet been affected. It was spreading fast in the cities and with so many starting to panic, it had been the only option to abandon parts of the cities and head to safer places.

Some areas inside the cities had been fortified. Washington remained their capitol, with the proud flags waving on capitol hill and the army concentrating on keeping the president and congress safe. No doubt they were hiding in shelters now.

There hasn’t been an evacuation notice for their area but people have left all the same. Last couple of nights there had been a lot of helicopters flying low over the town, maybe that had scared people away. Daryl hadn’t cared much. Will had been gone so he finally had control over the remote and had spent all night watching taped NASCAR races.

‘Will you fuckin’ look at that,’ Will mutters as he leans onto his steering wheel to look past Daryl’s form. There are several cars piled up on the ramp. One of them is on fire. All the doors are open and flames are licking at the paint job, melting the frame and scorching the inside.

‘Do you think they made it out?’ Daryl asks, hand going to the door. ‘Do we need to help?’

‘No. Look at it, all burned out. If someone’s still in there, they ain’t alive no more, let me tell ya.’ Will sighs and turns the wheel again. ‘They’re blockin’ the way though. Fuck this, we’ll take the ramp on the other side of town.’

‘They’re not all on fire, maybe someone hit the wheel and hit their head, we should check to-‘

‘Talk back to me one more time,’ Will says without looking at his boy. ‘You’re on a roll. Keep it goin’. Keep actin’ like this.’

Daryl swallows his comments about how he’s not even doing anything wrong, that he just wants to help and doesn’t understand what is going on. Instead he watches how they pass the liquor store on the main road, the small supermarket, that diner where Merle once kissed a waitress on the cheek as she’d leaned in to pass Daryl his milkshake. The legal office, the school and the Goodwill. Some shops are boarded up while others have broken windows.

Daryl knows that the lady from the legal office left with her husband and children to see her parents. Rumors spread that they had been infected by the virus in an early stage. She had gone down to care for them. He wonders how that had worked out for her. She hadn’t come back, so maybe that’s an answer in itself.

A lot of people had left to be with their families. Some had claimed that the cities would have been safer if this thing really took off. Their town is small and insignificant to everyone in Washington, surely, but Atlanta is not. Like Will, they reasoned that the military would hold the cities.

Others stayed, trusting the government to not forget about everyone on the country side, but mostly relying on their own guns and knuckles, and preaching about standing your ground and not being scared so easily.

None of those people are out on the streets though.

They pass the gas station and garage.

A thought flashes through Daryl’s mind. He sits up straight and grabs the door handle. ‘Merle’s bike!’ he shouts, ‘stop, turn around, we need to get the bike!’

‘What the hell?’

‘Merle’s bike, man,’ Daryl tells him, ‘dad, pull over, stop! We need to go back and grab the bike, put it in the back, we have to take it with us!’

Will does pull over next to the gas station.

‘He’ll kill us if that thing gets stolen while we’re gone,’ the boy says as he sags in the seat, relieved that his father is finally listening to him. ‘Can’t believe we forgot about it yesterday.’

‘We forgot about it because it doesn’t matter.’

‘What?’

Will kills the engine and pushes his door open. ‘Get out of the car.’

‘What? Why?’ Daryl asks as he undoes his belt and watches how his father rounds the car. ‘We need to go back for it. Dad!’

Will wrenches the door opens and grabs his son shoulder to drag him out of the car. The boy tumbles onto the concrete, scraping his knee and hand as he tries to break his fall. The older man yanks him back to his feet and pushes him up against the hood of the car. ‘I’m going to explain this whole shit storm to you one more time, okay, boy? Hell is overflowin’, a’right? There’s dead people walkin’, ain’t no cops here, ain’t no army here, ain’t nobody here anymore, okay? We need to haul ass to Atlanta to lay low while this blows over. We see a dead one, we blow their head right off, because it’s going to be us at the end of all of this, okay? I don’t care whether it’s your favorite teacher, your goddamn jacking material or any of your fagotty friends, a’right? We blow their heads off.’

‘There ain’t nobody around!’ Daryl objects, ‘maybe it was just-‘

He’s silenced by Will's fist. He can feel his lip splitting, recognizes it for what it is by the blood that’s gushing into his mouth. It dribbles down his chin, too. His teeth hurt.

‘You need to get smart fast,’ Will tells him. ‘Dead people are walking. The goddamn apocalypse is upon us and you’re getting’ your panties in a twist over Merle’s _bike_?’

‘It’s just-‘

Will punches him in the stomach.

Daryl gasps for air and coughs. Blood sprays onto Will’s chest from his split lip.

‘Get it through your thick skull, boy,’ Will snarls. ‘We’re never going to see him again. He’s locked up. If the world is crashing down, ain’t nobody gives a shit about who’s in the big house, okay? Guards went home to their wives and the army cares about the good people. He is dead, or he will be soon. No two ways about the end of his tale, okay? He’s dead and I’m not goin’ to drag that motorcycle anywhere.’

Daryl winces and curls his arms around his belly.

‘Look at me.’

He looks up through his fringe.

‘This is how it is now,’ Will nods. ‘It’s _us_. And we’re goin’ to be smart and we’re gonna be fine. But if you keep bitchin’ and complainin’ and being a dumbass all the fuckin’ time…’ He sucks on his teeth for a second. ‘You’re a Dixon, right? Might not fuckin’ look like one, but you’re my blood. Start acting like it.’

Daryl nods.

‘So?’ His father demands.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t want to hear it.’

Daryl searches for the right words. This is always the most difficult part of any speech his father gives. He’s not sure what the old man wants to hear this time. After a couple of seconds, he settles on, ‘it’s gonna be us. Ain’t nothing I going to kill us but us.’

‘Tough as nails, us Dixons,’ Will nods. ‘And?’

‘We’re goin’ to Atlanta.’

‘Yeah…’

‘And we’re going to stay there till it blows over and then come back.’

Will smiles, ‘sounds like a good plan. Must be because I thought of it.’ He reaches out and ruffles Daryl’s hair. ‘Okay, you got it. Get back in the truck, boy.’

Before he does that, Daryl sweeps his tongue over his teeth and lips to gather the blood. He spits it on the ground and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

It’s been a while since his last beating. The bruises had faded a couple of weeks ago. That one he’d deserved because he’d failed yet another one of his tests and his dad wasn’t paying that school for him to flunk his classes. He’s not a great student but usually he’d managed to get a good enough grade to just scrape by, but now they’d gotten a surprise test and he hadn’t even understood what the questions were really asking. After class, he’d asked his teacher if he could earn some extra credit if he did extra work but she’d refused. She was an older lady, almost ready for retirement and she had taught Merle back in the day. And no one who had taught Merle ever gave Daryl a chance to fix his grades. When he’d tried to explain this to his dad however, the elder Dixon had told him to stop it with the excuses and take it like a man.

So he had.

The next day at school, the teacher had looked at him with wide, shocked eyes, her gaze lingering on his black eye and the way he couldn’t sit straight without wincing. She’d called him back after class.

He’d flicked her his middle finger before throwing his hoodie over his hair and slipping away into the crowd of students.

There’d been an intervention once. One of his favorite teachers had sat him down after school and had asked him how things were going at home. What Merle was up to now, whether his dad had found a job yet, what he did in his free time. He’d answered truthfully while gnawing on his thumb, suspicious eyes on the teacher. He was fine, everything was fine, Merle was away for basic training, his dad had a job but Daryl hadn’t known what kind of job, exactly. Didn’t really matter to him. It brought enough money in for them to have some decent food in the house and gas in the tank, so everything was going all right.

The teacher had looked at him sympathetically. And then asked about the bruises and cuts.

Daryl had said he fought a lot, which hadn't been a complete lie.

The conversation had seemed endless. He remembers looking at the teacher and thinking that the man was such an idiot. Yeah, sometimes Will would forget and hit him in the face but most of the time those black eyes and bruises really did come from fights with his friends. Will wasn’t as stupid as he looked. He always made Daryl turn around and lift his shirt whenever the boy deserved a whooping. He wasn’t so stupid as to leave marks where everyone could see.

Daryl prods at his lower lip. He doesn’t suppose that that is still an issue now. Everyone’s got worse problems than some kid getting what was coming for him.

He hops into the truck before his dad can find something else to complain about.

 

 

As soon as they get on the freeway, Daryl starts to understand that everything has gone to shit. It’s busier than he’s ever seen it. Every lane is packed with cars and trucks. He catches glimpses of families, the back of the car filled with bags and belongings, or trucks like theirs which have camping gear thrown in the back. He doesn’t recognize anyone.

Traffic is slow. Will fiddles with the radio but some stations have gone off the grid completely while others only play the emergency message. It warns people to stay indoors. Military gridlock. Curfews. It says something about a refugee camp, but there’s a lot of static and after a couple of repeats, that too fades into nothing.

After a couple of miles, the traffic stops completely. Will curses and kills the engine. He drums his fingers on the wheel for a second. ‘I’m going to step outside, check in with some folks, see what they know,’ Will says as he opens his door.

Daryl nods. He checks his face in the rear view mirror. His lower lip is swollen but not too bad. He worries at it with his teeth and winces before hopping out of the truck too. Instead of following his father, he climbs on top of the cabin of the truck and sits there cross-legged with his bow in his lap. He watches how Will weaves through the cars.

Most of the people have gotten out of their vehicles, either to see what’s the hold-up or to get some fresh air. Children are running around the cars, playing tag or hide and seek while adults nervously huddle together to share whatever news they know.

He sits and he waits. The sun dies behind him. Shadows grow longer, the faces of the people around him start to get more difficult to recognize. There’s a woman crying somewhere behind him. There’s a man to his right, leaning against the guard rail and holding his bible up so everyone can see it. Daryl ignores him.

A small smile tugs the corner of his mouth up when he spots Will, on his way back to the truck. His dad is tall and broad, just like Merle is, and he’s not particularly handsome but there’s something about him that causes women to throw him a smile anyway. Maybe it’s the confident swagger, or the roughness that’s oozing out of his very pores, or that crooked smile he offers in return. When he was young and less damaged, he might have been charming. There’s a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It wobbles when he speaks.

‘You hungry, boy?’

Daryl rubs at his nose. ‘Kinda.’ His gaze lingers on a husband and wife, hugging each other tightly while the woman cries and the man hides his tears in her neck. Their kids are asleep inside the car, tangled up together on the backseats. One of them is clutching a stuffed animal. The other is holding on to their sibling instead.

‘Let me see what we’ve got, a’right?’ Will says as he jumps onto the back of the truck to rummage through their bags.

‘Did you find out anything from anyone?’

‘Hold your horses for a second, boy,’ Will mutters. ‘Where’s that damn knife?’

Daryl glances over his shoulder and lifts his shirt a bit so the hunting knife is visible, ‘I’ve got mine on me.’

‘That’ll do. Forgot any spoons, shit. Ah, fuck it, we’ll just dunk it or something.’ Will slides onto the cabin too. He puts his feet on the windscreen, a tin can between his knees and then holds out his hand for Daryl’s knife. He opens the can easily. ‘Beans,’ he says.

Daryl pulls a face, ‘in tomato sauce?’

‘Fuckin’ smells like it, yeah.’ Will groans, ‘we ever ate this shit?’

‘No,’ Daryl grins, ‘that’s why it was still in the kitchen.’

His father huffs out a breath of laughter, ‘smart ass. Go on,’ he passes the tin to the boy. ‘Food’s food.’

Daryl wrinkles his nose but puts the can to his lips and drinks the beans, trying not to chew so he won’t have to taste it and almost chocking.

His dad laughs, ‘I know it’s good, but slow and steady, okay sport?’

Daryl glares at him. The beans are disgusting, even more so because they’re cold, but he’s also very hungry so he soldiers on.

Will lights another cigarette. ‘Were a couple of people over yonder,’ he points to the horizon, ‘they came across one of them things too. Never figured out they had to go for the head, though. They just ran. Was one of their neighbors, too. Knew the lady. She didn’t know them no more.’

‘Like Jerry.’

‘Yeah, just like him.’ Will leans on his knees with his elbows and looks around. He lowers his voice. ‘You know that emergency message they kept playing while we drove up here? It said something about a safe haven or, like, a refugee camp in Atlanta.’

Daryl nods as he wipes tomato sauce off his chin.

‘Some folks think they closed it down. Too many people flocking to the city or some bullshit. They might not let people in anymore. Can’t say for sure, though,’ Will says when Daryl looks at him with wide eyes. ‘Might be just some bullshit some asshole is spitting, okay? But I’m just tellin’ ya what I heard. It’s probably bullshit. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be in Atlanta tomorrow.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl holds the can out to his dad.

Will accepts it and takes two gulps before passing it back again. There’s still some left. ‘You go ahead now,’ the man nods. ‘I ain’t that hungry. Finish it up.’

Daryl frowns. ‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’

Daryl looks at him warily before tipping the can back and gulping down the rest of the beans. He sticks his fingers in the can and then licks them clean. ‘’s not that bad,’ he says defensively when he catches Will looking at him. ‘Just tastes like tomato with bits in it.’

Will offers him a small smile. ‘I know. Come here,’ he reaches over and gently cups Daryl’s cheek with one rough hand. He licks the thumb of his other hand and removes some tomato stain from the corner of his son’s mouth. Then he runs his finger over Daryl’s swollen lip. ‘You know I’m sorry about that, right? Just lose my shit sometimes. Crazy times, huh?’

The boy nods. ‘It doesn’t hurt no more.’

‘No?’ Will asks, ‘I’m glad, little man. You took it good, though,’ he laughs and runs a hand through Daryl’s brown hair and then pulls him close, kissing the top of his head. ‘Let’s get back into the truck, get some sleep and then we’ll head out to Atlanta first thing in the morning.’

‘Sure,’ Daryl stuffs the tin can into his backpack and climbs down the cabin of car. He wanders over to the safeguard and hops over it.

‘ _Hey_! Where you’re goin’?’

Daryl freezes before he turns to look at his dad, ‘what? Gotta piss!’

Will rolls his eyes, ‘Jesus, fine. Eye on the stars, okay?’

‘Yeah, got it!’ Daryl laughs as he disappears into the woods. He shoots a look up at the dark sky to remember the positions of the stars so he can find his way back should he get horribly lost. It’s one of the survival techniques his dad had taught him over the past year. They would go for a ride and set up camp somewhere deep in the woods. At night, they would hike for hours until Daryl had no clue where they were anymore and then he’d have to lead them back to the tent and truck.

The first couple of times he’d messed up completely, either by forgetting to check the stars as soon as they set out on one of their trips, or by just misreading them. That always ended up in him leaning against a tree and taking a whipping for making his dad walk further than he had to. It had caused him to get good quick though.

Daryl frowns when he spots a couple of people gathering to his right. He veers over there to check it out.

Everyone is standing on the edge of a cliff. Atlanta is looming in the distance. The first thing he notices that the power must have gone out in parts of the city. All the windows of every flat in the entire city are dark. He can only make out the size of the flats by their black outlines against the gray sky. To his right, there are several light sources inside the city. The tail lights of cars, some spotlight. Maybe that’s where the military cordon starts.

Suddenly three choppers fly low over the woods.

Daryl and the people around him duck towards the ground out of instinct. He watches how they fly overhead.

‘ _Dare_!’

He’s suddenly yanked backwards and falls against Will, who’s breathing heavily like he just ran all the way over. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doin’ all the way out here, ya said ya were just going to take a piss, what the hell-‘ his nails bury themselves in his son’s skin. They’ll leave bruises and Daryl winces.

‘Sorry!’ He tries, ‘I saw some people and I just wanted to see what they were all lookin’-‘

A boom silences him.

His dad’s face is suddenly illuminated by orange light. The blue eyes, wide with fright and surprise, seem red due to the strange light.

Daryl yanks his arm free and whirls around.

Atlanta is on fire.

‘Napalm,’ Will breathes. ‘They’re burnin’ the whole fuckin’ place down. What the hell. What the _hell_.’

‘Dad.’

‘Did you see that?’ Will asks. He shields his eyes and watches how the city burns. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ.’

Dad!’

‘ _What_?’ He looks down at his son, who looks on the verge of tears. ‘Oh, damn,’ he curls an arm around his son’s chest and pulls him close. His chin on the top of Daryl’s head, strong arms wrapped around him. ‘I got ya. Easy, we’re fine. I got ya, boy.’

Together, they watch how Atlanta burns.

Daryl thinks of all the people who had been heading towards the safe zone and the refugee camp. The families, the military, all the people who used to live in that big city. And he thinks about Jake, his friend with the crooked front tooth and mean right hook. His mother who had kissed him, his dad who had been driving their car.

‘Damn,’ Will kisses the brown hair of his son and huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘Biggest damn fireworks I have ever seen.’

Daryl wrenches himself free of his father’s grip, stumbles a few feet and then throws up all over his own boots.

 

 

 


	4. Raised right

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t really have a plan anymore.

It’s been a couple of hours since they left the highway behind and Atlanta burned. He remembers the chaos from that night, people shouting and crying, fights breaking out and cars being plundered all around them as they headed back to their own truck. Gun shots in the distance, rumors about mass suicides and thieves, people trying to get away but being blocked by others.

In the end, Daryl had closed his eyes and prayed that they somehow made it out of there alive. And they did. Will thanked their sturdy truck and Daryl their lucky stars, but they got out of that mess.

Dawn is breaking when they pull over at an abandoned service station. It’s one of those places that went tits up before the rest of the world did. There’s graffiti everywhere, tags with people’s names that Daryl can’t quite figure out but he likes the most of the artwork. Some images are kind of stupid, he thinks. Hearts with names on both sides, hashtags and at-symbols with names and movements, but there’s also a dragon that somehow morphs into a girl’s shadow, and the outline of a soldier standing in front of a looming tank.

The windows of what used to be a small store are broken. The inside has been cleaned out for years. Daryl’s never been here before. It’s too far out of town to get to on a bike, and really, there’s nothing here but the thrill of being in a place he has no business being in, so he never bothered. Some older kids had always taunted the younger ones by saying that they went there all the time to hang out and do crazy stuff, but Daryl grew up with Merle and knows bullshit when someone spits it out. There’s nothing to do here. The older kids visited, sure, but they left their name on the walls just to prove a point and then headed over to the city or the lake which are much cooler places to hang out than some forgotten relic of the economic crisis.

Daryl sits with his back against the wall and tries to scrub some dirt off his jeans. The sky is turning orange on his right. Dawn, but it still reminds him of the bombs. He brushes his fringe out of his eyes and peeks at his dad, who is sitting in the truck.

Will’s been oddly quiet the last couple of hours. He just sits there now, leaning on his elbows and sideways on the chair, the door open and engine killed. Every once in a while he’ll get up to stretch, kick a rock and then fall back into the seat.

It makes Daryl a bit nervous.

‘So,’ the boy starts when his dad reaches for one of his bottles to take another small sip. It’s not the green stuff, at least, but their homemade moonshine is not much better. The stuff always makes Will less predictable. Daryl’s never sure when he’s going to get a beating or some loving when his dad reaches for any bottle. ‘What’re we going to do now?’

Will shakes his head.

‘Maybe we can go back home?’ Daryl asks hopefully.

‘To do what? Starve in our own backyard?’

‘No. It’s just… we got all our stuff there and we know the place, so maybe we can just wait there.’

Will slowly looks up. He frowns. ‘Wait for _what_?’

Daryl scratches at his cheek. ‘Like, help.’

‘Good Lord,’ Will sighs and lets his head hang again. ‘Dare… I hate to break it to you, kid, but that _was_ the help. The people who bombed the city? That was the military. Those were the guys we were counting on. And they bombed the fuck out of that place. Nobody made it out of that hell fire.’

‘But if they bombed it, they’re still fighting, right?’

‘Yeah, but….’

‘Maybe they’ll do a search and rescue thing. A mission. You know, to see who is still out there.’

Will opens his mouth but then looks down and closes it again. He scratches at the label of the moonshine with dirty fingernails.

‘I saw it in a movie once.’

That makes his dad laugh and look up again. ‘Yeah?’ he asks with a small smile. ‘What movie was that, huh?’

‘Escape from New York.’

‘Ahw _shit_ ,’ Will laughs. ‘Did it even have color? That movie came out before you were born, what were ya watchin’ that crap for?’

‘Merle was bein’ an ass, hoggin’ the clicker. He made me watch it.’

‘That piece of shit,’ his dad says fondly.

‘At one point, the guy shoots through a concrete wall, like… He shoots in a circle so it creates this hole, right? So he jumps right through the concrete.’ Daryl shrugs and squints up at Will. ‘Looked kinda fake.’

‘Yeah, no shit! Jesus, boy.’ Will puts the bottle away and climbs out of the truck to stretch. ‘Couldn’t have been watchin’ some savin’ private Ryan, some black hawk dawn, nah, you two had to be watchin’ some shit from the damn eighties. Disowned, the pair of ya. Ya ain’t mine no more.’

Daryl snorts. ‘Wishful thinkin’, dad.’

‘That it is.’

They look at each other for a second.

Will is the first to look away. He spits on the ground and waves his son over. ‘Come on, on your feet. We ain’t going back home, ‘cause there’s nothing there, right? The power was running on our generator. That won’t last. And if all has gone to shit, all the tin cans in the world won’t help us, right? So, what do we do?’

Daryl looks at the tents in the back of their truck. ‘We camp?’

‘Yeah. See? Told ya it’d be useful stuff to know. We can fend for ourselves just fine. Live off the land God gave us. So,’ Will puts his hand on his son’s back to guide him to the passenger’s seat. ‘We’re gonna need to find a good place to camp. What’s a good place?’

Daryl climbs in his seat again. He kind of wants to say an even and soft ground, but he’s not keen on the slap he’ll be getting for trying to be smart. ‘Anywhere near fresh water.’

‘Good,’ Will nods. ‘So we’re gonna find water. Where’s water near here, you remember?’

‘There’s a lake on the other side of town, but it’s pretty far. We’d have to go back to the freeway to get there.’

‘Yeah, no,’ Will shuts the door and gets in at his side. ‘There’s a quarry a couple of miles from here. East,’ he glances at his boy, ‘it’s a, - like, it’s like mining pit or something, right? With stones. They dig up stone there, or some shit like that. If you dig deep enough, you’ll get water. That’s what they got, it filled the whole damn pit, created a lake. Happened a while ago, years. A decade, maybe, I don’t know.’ He turns the keys and the car engine roars to life. ‘Wouldn’t expect ya to know about it. It ain’t on the maps.’

‘So that’s where we’re going?’

‘That’s right.’

 

 

They don’t go back to the freeway. Instead, they take small back roads through the forest and country side. Sometimes Daryl can see flashes of a small town in the distance, a farm, or some abandoned barn. After a couple of miles, they turn right onto one of the bigger roads. Will claims it’s not far anymore, but his voice fades when his eye falls on something on the side of the road.

There’s a car. It must have swerved off the road. Dark tire tracks mar the road and deep grooves show how the car had barreled into the side of the road, into the grass, the ditch and then up a small ridge until it came to a brutal stop against a tree.

The windshield is smashed.

Will stops the car a couple of yards away from the crash. ‘Let’s check it out.’ He’s gone before Daryl can object.

The road is wide and open. Daryl hops out of the truck and puts his bow on his back. He lets his nails dig into the strap as he holds on tightly. It prevents his hands from shaking as he slinks after his dad, trying to stay in his shadow.

A soft growling noise comes from the wreck.

At first, Daryl thinks that a dog might have been still trapped in the wreckage, maybe the leash had gotten stuck in the metal, or the glass hadn’t broken on his side. Maybe he was small and in one of those baskets people carried around.

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ.’

As soon as his dad’s exclamation registers, Daryl knows that it’s not a dog. He stops walking.

Will takes a couple of careful steps towards the car, hand on the gun tucked in his pocket. He doesn’t make a sound, but the growling stops for a second and then gets louder, more focused. A banging sound joins it.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Will breathes. ‘Karma got ya good, huh?’

Daryl stares at the car. From this distance, he can’t quite see who’s in the front seats. He takes a couple of steps to the side to round on the car. His foot sinks into the soft grass and it nearly freaks him out, but he curses at himself before regaining his footing. When he looks up again, a small hand slams against the window of the backseat.

‘ _Dad_!’

Will’s head snaps up but his body language relaxes when he sees what causes his son to lose his cool. ‘Yeah, I see it. Come here, Dare.’

‘I don’t want to.’

Blue eyes narrow dangerously. ‘Did I fuckin’ ask what ya wanted to do? No. Get your ass over here.’

Daryl bites on his lip and walks over to his dad, trying to keep as much distance between him and the car as he can. It’s not much, considering that Will is now leaning against driver’s door and peeking in through the window.

‘Come here. Look at that mess.’

Daryl looks inside.

There’s a woman in the passenger’s seat. Her hair is blonde and skin pale. The eyes are too bloodshot to tell which color they once were. He guesses blue, because she just seems like that kinda girl to him. She’s looking at him. Her jaw moves. She’s reaching for him, too. Outstretched arms, grasping fingers.

Daryl stares at her. She’s dead. He knows that instantly. She doesn’t blink and there’s blood all over her head and on the dashboard. He doesn’t know whether that killed her though. It doesn’t matter. Her whole belly is ripped open. Organs are spilling out, dripping onto the floor between her feet. With every move she makes, more intestines slip out.

She’s reaching past her husband. He’s dead too. He’s biting at the window, trying to reach Will. He doesn’t have any visible wounds, but there’s blood on his hands and around his mouth. He seems to be chewing on something.

Daryl frowns, ‘what is he eating?’

Will leans away from the window. ‘Thought you’d have gutted enough deer to recognize that part. Ain’t so different.’

Despite his horror, Daryl leans closer and then pushes himself away from the car when he recognize it. It’s the wife’s heart. ‘Let’s go,’ he says, ‘dad, we gotta go. Please.’

‘No, hang on. Look.’ Will points at the door. ‘It ain’t locked or nothing. Why’re they not comin’ out to get us? Jerry did, remember? He chased your ass.’

‘I don’t know,’ Daryl answers. ‘Fuck them, right? We can leave. We can just _go_.’

‘Stop bein’ such a pussy. Give me your knife.’

Daryl passes the knife to Will.

The older Dixon slowly puts his hand on the door handle. After a steadying breath, he rips the door open. The growling intensifies. The hands now reach outside of the car, the woman leaning over her husband to try and get to Will, but neither of them move.

Will slowly sinks to one knee to look into the car. Then he looks back at Daryl with a stunned smile on his face. ‘Fuckin’ seatbelts. They’re pinned in their seats by the damned things. You know how they lock up when ya pull hard?’

‘Yeah…’

‘They’re stupid,’ Will laughs as he gets to his feet again. ‘Look at them. Growling ‘nd shit, what’s it tryin’ to do? Bite me? Shit, damn rabies, I told ya.’ The laugh fades as he looks at his son. ‘Never get bit, okay? Or scratched, or nothing. Just… don’t get bit.’

‘Okay.’

Will takes a deep breath and then looks back at the corpses. ‘They’re not using their brains no more. They’re not thinking. It’s like… instinct, ya know. It’s like deer. Sight, smell and hearing, but no rational thought in their minds. They heard the car, smelled us and now they’re all riled up hearing us, but neither thought of opening the damn car door.’

Daryl nods as he presses his lips together.

‘Okay,’ Will flips the knife and grips it tightly. With one smooth move, he plunges the blade deep into the man’s eye. The corpse stills immediately. He pulls it out and then leans over the man to do the same to the woman.

Daryl feels sick.

‘The head thing really works,’ Will laughs as he wipes the blade clean on the man’s clothing. ‘Good thinking, Daryl. Here, you do the kid. She’s a little more your size.’

Only now does it register that there’s another corpse in the car. It’s the one that made Daryl jump earlier, the one on the backseat with the hand that’s clawing at the window. The hand is small. On wobbly legs, Daryl walks over to the window to look inside. It’s a little girl. Sundress and a high ponytail, small feet never reaching the floor. She’s up in a booster seat that has cartoon figures on it.

She’s dead. There are no visible wounds on her, but the skin is too pale and her eyes are crazed.

‘Here,’ Will holds out the knife.

‘Dad,’ Daryl objects softly, but he still accepts the knife.

‘It’s us or them now,’ Will says. ‘And they’re dead, son. They ain’t people no more.’

But the corpse still looks like a little girl and she’s still moving, so Daryl’s brain has trouble understanding that she’s not really human anymore. He looks at his dad. ‘We can just leave her here. She ain’t goin’ anywhere.’

Will scoffs at that. ‘What, ya let a damn opossum bleed to death after a messy hit from one of yar bolts, huh? Nah, man, ya kill it good and put the vermin out of its misery. Same here. Do what needs to be done.’

‘But-‘

‘We’re gonna be here all damn day until you do it,’ Will says as he sits down on the hood of the car. ‘But ya better make it fast, hmm? I hate waitin’.’

Daryl looks at the little girl. With a trembling hand, he opens the door.

She snarls at him. There’s drool dripping down her chin but she doesn’t seem to notice or care.

The blade feels slippery in his hand. He’s sweating. He raises the knife. After a deep breath and a quick glance at his dad, he drives it into her skull. It makes a sickening noise. Daryl feels bile rising up his throat. This isn’t like any of the animals he’s killed over the last couple of years.

The girl stills.

‘Good job,’ Will praises. ‘Damn proud of you. Check their stuff, see if there’s anything we can use. You do the front, I’ll check the back.’

Daryl stares at the little girl while Will goes through the bags in the back of the car. Slowly his gaze glides to the bag that’s stuffed between the feet of the mother in front seat. He’d have to crawl inside the car, and climb towards the front. The metal on her side of the car is crushed, he doubts that he can open the car door.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He doesn’t want to get to her bag and go through her stuff.

‘Anything?’ Will asks.

‘No,’ Daryl closes the door and takes a couple of steps back, away from the car.

‘That bitch had nothing in that whole damn bag?’

‘No,’ the boy repeats. He rubs at his nose. ‘Not unless you want ten shades of some damn lipstick. Stuff to fuckin’ powder yar nose.’

‘Fuck you,’ Will snorts. ‘’s more up your lane,’ he says as he kicks the last bag aside and heads back over to their own truck. ‘With you being so goddamn pretty all the time. Bat your lashes at me, Darlina, oh come on, please? I’m your dad!’

‘Exactly why!’

‘So you’d bat them at some other guy, who ain’t your dad? Always knew you were a pillow biter.’

‘Ain’t!’

‘Damn right, raised you better than that.’

Daryl spits on the ground to avoid saying; _didn’t_.

 

 

‘Dare. Dare, wake up. Wake up, dammit.’

A sharp pain rouses Daryl from his fitful sleep. He rubs at his ear which was twisted by his dad. Sleep causes his mind to be foggy. He blinks and uncurls from his sleeping position, boots scraping over the dashboard as he shifts to sit normally. ‘What?’ he murmurs.

‘Looks like more people had our idea,’ Will nods, ‘there’s already some folks at the quarry. Look.’

Daryl rubs at his eyes and then looks. ‘That’s a police car!’

‘Never seen you so happy about a damn lost pig. ‘sides, it’s just the one. Cops - cops are like hyena’s, right? Pack animals. There’s never just the one. Nah,’ Will clacks his tongue, ‘someone either stole that car, or it’s just a pig running from a cop’s job. Hell, that ain’t nothing new neither. I’d fuckin’ run too.’

Daryl ignores his dad and leans forward. ‘There’s people there! Look, it’s a guy on top of that camper. You see it?’

‘Nah, my eye fell on that blonde over there, but of course you’d notice the guy. Faggot,’ Will smirks as he kills the engine.

‘He’s got a gun.’

‘What?’ Will leans forward so he can see the guy too. ‘Ah, fuck it. Looks like a chink. Chink’s can’t shoot, everyone and their mom knows that. They already set up camp, though. Probably got some food stashed away in that RV, hmm-hmm-hmm. Let’s check it out. See if it’s worth getting our hands dirty for, right?’

‘Right,’ Daryl nods, but he sounds a bit lost.

Will claps him on the shoulder. ‘Let me handle this, okay? You just look pretty and bat your eyelashes at whoever is in charge okay? Maybe I can pimp you out for a place in their group or something. _Kiddin’_ ,’ he says when Daryl frowns. ‘Hey,’ he taps under his son’s chin to make him look up. ‘You and me, right? Dixon’s stick together.’

‘Right.’

‘Okay,’ Will grins. ‘Now let’s go and meet our new neighbors.’

 

 


	5. Great minds

 

* * *

 

 

The cop’s name is Shane and Daryl hates him.

Before today, Daryl never really understood what Merle and Will meant when they talked about city-slickers, or who they were talking about when they cursed democrats, yanks and white collars. He gets it now. From the moment the cop laid eyes on Will Dixon, Daryl could practically feel the dislike and disapproval. It oozed out of his very pores.

Of course, Will Dixon is not easily impressed, especially not by a pig that can’t button up his shirt properly and acts as if his shotgun is either a toy by swinging it around or a baseball bat by the way he drapes it over his shoulders. So he leers when Shane glares, winks at Shane’s wife and hits on the two blonde women who seem to be part of the group.

Daryl watches how his dad introduces himself with that loud, booming voice and is almost impressed when Shane doesn’t even flinch.

‘Great minds, huh?’ Will says, ‘I remembered this place from a long time ago. Pretty secluded, but the city ain’t too far away. Or what’s left of it after those fireworks we saw on the freeway. Got held up a while back but we took care of it, right boy?’ He curls an arm around Daryl’s shoulders and yanks him to his chest. ‘This heartbreaker is mine. ‘s Daryl.’

‘You were on the freeway?’ Shane asks with a glance at his wife.

‘Yeah. Saw the whole place being blown to bits, so that option went to shit real fast, am I right?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane agrees. ‘We saw it too. What do you want?’

‘Safe place for my kid and me,’ Will says easily. ‘Same thing as anyone else.’ Daryl looks up at his dad and reaches up to fold his hands around the strong forearms, holding on lightly.

‘What makes you think this place is safe?’

‘Natural defenses on two sides. Those deads don’t know nothing so they probably don’t know how to swim neither, there’s a lake over there. It has fish, so there’s food, and the woods are nearby so there’s more food. Ground is soft enough to set up a tent, hell, this is good a place as any,’ Will gently pushes Daryl first to the side and then behind him, keeping a hand on his brown hair. ‘What?’ he smirks at Shane. ‘You didn’t think I’d come runnin’ here for you, now did ya? This is _my_ backyard.’

Shane’s eyes narrow. ‘Are we going to have a problem?’

‘Nah. Well, me ‘nd Dare ain’t. See, we got water, tents, our bows and knives, so we’re all good. Now you,’ Will spits on the ground. ‘You got a shotgun and an attitude, how's that going to feed all them kids ya got there, huh? Your wife?’

‘She’s not my wife.’

‘I don’t care about what goes on in pigsties, man.’ Daryl hides behind his dad’s broad frame and watches Shane warily. There’s anger building behind those eyes. Will can see it too, but he’s eyeing the shotgun instead of the eyes.

Shane slowly walks over. He swings the gun down from his shoulders and grips it tightly. ‘You should –‘

‘ _Shane_.’ The woman who is not his wife comes running over. Her dark hair flows past her shoulders. She’s tall, lean and her eyes flash dangerously when she spots the weapon. ‘For god’s sake, he’s got a kid with him. Put the gun down. I said; _put it down!_ ’

The cop listens begrudgingly. He swings it back up to his shoulder.

Will whistles. ‘Hell flowing over and I can still yank a cop’s chain by callin’ him a pig. Hell, some things never change.’

‘No,’ Shane agrees with a glare. ‘Scum’s still scum’

‘Sticks ‘nd stones, ‘s what I always say,’ Will grins even though Daryl’s never heard him say that before.

‘What’s going on here?’ A young man comes rushing around the corner. His dark hair is hiding beneath a red baseball cap. ‘Dale said-‘

‘Good lord,’ Will laughs, ‘yeah, join the damn party, ya chink.’ He turns back to Shane with a lopsided grin on his face. ‘Quite the group ya got here. Chinks, see some taco vendors, two niggers and a bunch of white trash. That’s just beautiful.’ He spits on the ground. ‘Good luck with that.’

‘You’re more than welcome to leave.’

‘Shane,’ the woman scolds again. She looks at Daryl. ‘Honey? Did you eat anything this morning? We’ve got some food in the RV, Glenn can take you.’

Daryl sets his jaw and stares at her, not making a move.

‘My son is inside the RV too. I think he’s about your age. How old are you? Eleven?’

‘He’s twelve and he’s not comin’ with you,’ Will says. ‘Any of you.’

‘My son’s name is Carl.’

‘He doesn’t give a shit, lady. Stop talkin'  to him.’ Will bites out. ‘Daryl, get up on the truck and stay where I can see you. Got it?’

Daryl nods and slinks back to the truck. His feet on a tire, pulling himself up by the window and then stepping on the windshield to clamber up onto the cabin. He sits down on the roof, legs folded neatly and his elbows on his knees.

He watches how Shane leads his dad over towards the tree line, where they cannot be overheard. Will’s body language is hostile but still relaxed enough to fool the people at this camp. They don’t understand what it means when Will laughs heartily. Daryl does. It means that the blow will come later, that your skin will split and blood will drip down your back because Will Dixon always makes you pay. Eventually.

The woman joins the conversation and Daryl wishes she wouldn’t. She looks more fragile than Shane. Will is a firm believer of the fact that all people should be treated equally. He will not go easy on her just because she’s a woman. Either with words or with his fists and belt, he will make her pay as much as he will make Shane, if he wants to.

Daryl nibbles on the nail of his thumb. It’s a nervous habit. He’s glad that Will isn’t looking at him. He hates it when Daryl puts his fingers anywhere near his mouth, says it’s something only babies do.

‘Hey, want an Oreo?’

Daryl looks down and sees that the younger man is now leaning against the truck. He’s offering a cookie. Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘No.’

‘Sure?’ the man asks as he puts it on the hood of the truck and takes another one out of his pocket. He twists it open and licks the white filling up. ‘They’re good.’

Daryl glances at Will, who is still talking to Shane and the woman. Then he looks back at the cookie. After a second, he slides down the windshield to sit on the hood of the car. He stuffs the Oreo into his mouth.

‘Ah man, you’re wasting it! Twist it, lick it, dunk it! Nobody ever taught you any Oreo manners?’ The young man asks with a pained moan.

Daryl chews quickly. ‘What the fuck am I supposed to dunk it in? Ain’t got nothing but water ‘nd booze.’

‘Good point,’ the man laughs as he stuffs his own cookie into his mouth. ‘Still, it’s better if you twist and lick them.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Want another one?’

Daryl curses himself for leaving his bow inside the car. It’s heavy and a bit clunky in tight spaces, so he’d shoved it down near his feet, and had forgotten all about it in the excitement of seeing the camp. But now he wishes he had it nearby. Instead, he moves his hand closer to his belt where his knife is and glares at the other man. ‘What the fuck do you want in return?’

The man blinks. ‘Nothing.’

‘One’s a kindness, two is owing someone. Ain’t owin’ no chink nothing.’

To Daryl’s surprise, the man cracks a smile. ‘That last sentence almost made my ears bleed. And not just because you called me a chink. Stop that, please. My name is Glenn. Where are you from?’

‘Couple of miles south.’

‘Okay,’ Glenn draws out. He take the baseball hat off and runs a hand through his back hair. Then he reaches into his pocket again and puts another Oreo on the hood of the car. ‘For you. Free of charge, I swear.’

The couple that used to live across had a dog. One of those tiny ones that fits in the palm of your hand and girls carry around in purses like it’s an accessory. Daryl had often seen the woman trying to train the damn animal. She would make him sit and roll over and play dead before giving it a treat.

He reckons Glenn is trying to do the same thing. He doesn’t really like the fact that he’s the dog in this scenario. But he doesn’t hate it enough to say no to another cookie. It’s gone before Glenn even realizes Daryl has moved.

Daryl glances at Will again before putting it into his mouth whole. He knows that Will would give him hell for accepting charity from a chink, but they haven't stopped for breakfast yet and he's hungry.

‘Don’t worry about your dad,’ Glenn tells him. ‘Shane’s all bark, no bite. He won’t hurt your dad.’

Daryl almost tells him that Will is both. Bark and bite.

‘Lori is there, anyway,’ Glenn sighs as he leans against the car again, stretching his back a bit. ‘She’ll keep him in check. She has a kid about your age. There’s a girl, too. I think her name is Sophie. Or Sophia. I’m not sure, she arrived with her parents a couple of hours before you two. The Morales’ got kids too,’ Glenn points at a family huddled in front of a tent, ‘but they’re younger than you are. That’s Dale, over by the RV.’

Daryl looks.

‘He’s talking to T-dog and Jaqui.’

‘If you think I’m going to remember all them names, you’re wrong.’

Glenn shrugs. ‘You’ll know them soon enough.’

‘If we’re stayin’.’

The man looks up at him. ‘You’re staying.’

Daryl bites back a smile.

‘ _Daryl_!’

Something inside Daryl’s chest freezes when his dad barks his name. He pushes himself off the car and lands smoothly on his feet. He runs to meet his dad half-way. Only later, when he’s heading into the forest with his bow safely in his hands again, does he realize he never actually thanked Glenn for the cookies. He hesitates for a second, then shrugs and follows his dad.

 

 

Hours later, Daryl is gutting a couple of turkeys he shot while his dad finishes up the final snare. Blood is slickening his fingers and he made the classic mistake of swatting at his own hair to get it out of his eyes, so now there’s blood in his hair too. He hates cleaning his kills. It’s not the fact that the animal is dead, or that he killed him, none of that. It’s just that it takes a long time and now that the thrill of the hunt has faded, he just wants to go back to their car to eat something and get some sleep.

They’ve spend hours in the woods today. After Daryl shot his second turkey, he was sure that his dad was going to call it a day. He hadn’t. Instead he’d set up trap after trap while ordering Daryl to get another kill in before it would start to get dark out.

All his muscles ache now. His bow arm feels like it’s made of lead, so heavy, and sore too. His fingers were cramping up a second ago from arming his bow. He’s not allowed to use a cocking rope. It takes slightly longer than doing it by hand and that is a good enough reason for Will to make Daryl use his hands. It used to be painful. He’s gotten used to it by now.

‘You’re getting quick with a knife.’

Daryl looks up through his fringe. There’s no mockery in Will’s eyes. ‘Yeah…’

‘That’s good. Real good.’

‘Okay.’

His dad sits down against a tree trunk near Daryl to observe his work. It doesn't make Daryl nervous anymore. He knows what he's doing and he wields the knife with precision, cutting quick and just deep enough. After a couple of minutes, he starts to pluck the feathers. They stick to his fingers and Will laughs when he tries to shake them off.

They're silent for a long time. Will smokes a cigarette while his son works. His bow is resting next to his feet. It's slightly bigger than Daryl's and more powerful. The draw weight almost double that of his son's bow, but he never has any trouble with it.

The silence is broken by the shuffling of feet and ragged breath. Daryl stills and looks at his dad.

Will slowly rises to his feet, silent and cautious. Through the trees they spot a figure moving. It's a man. Daryl can tell from his built, even if he's just a shadow among the greenery. He also knows he's dead as soon as he lays eyes on the figure. The man stumbles through the woods. When Daryl looks at his dad again, Will has put his feet in the stirrup of his bow and slides a bolt in place. He swings it up.

'Hey!'

The man sways towards the direction of Will's voice. He snarls.

'If ya ain't dead, ya better start talkin'. Count of three, man. One.'

The man doesn't answer of course.

'Two.'

Daryl wipes his hands on the grass to clean them. Feathers drift away on a breeze. He watches how the man's features slowly become more visible. He's wearing a jacket, jeans, some kind of boots. The blotches on them might be blood, Daryl can't really tell from this distance. They might just be shadows, playing a trick on them.

'Three.' The bolt is released and hits its intended target with a dull thud. Daryl can see how it sticks out of the man's head for a second. That surrealistic moment when it's a man, standing there with a bolt buried deep into his forehead. In a haze, he thinks that that was a pretty good shot. The man falls down onto the forest floor and stops moving. Daryl turns back to his turkey. It takes him a couple of seconds to realize that his dad is looking at him. He lifts his eyebrows in a silent question. 'Kids,' Will says with something that borders on amazement. 'You adapt like this, huh?' He snaps his fingers. 'Doesn't bother you none no more.'

Daryl shrugs. It doesn't bother him as much now that he knows the guy was already dead. It wasn't even a guy anymore, just a walking corpse, no longer human. Maybe it would have bothered him if he had been the one pulling the trigger, or if he could have seen the man's face just before the bolt hit. But then again, maybe not.

'Us or them, right?' He asks his dad. 'It's gonna be them. Always. That's what you said.'

'Since when do you listen to your old man, huh?'

‘Since I could,' Daryl mutters.

'Yeah,' Will answers. 'You always were good at listenin'. Remember you sittin' at the kitchen table, you know, during dinner. Your momma were real keen on that, eatin'  at the damn table. Said it was family time or something. She'd make us all talk about our day and shit. And you'd just sit there, watchin' us all talk. Sometimes your grandma would come over, remember her?'

'Kinda. She gave me a bike for Christmas once.'

'She'd always laugh at you, head swiveling to catch what everyone was saying all the damn time. Always watchin'. Listenin'. She'd poke your momma and say; _look, he's doing it again_!'

Daryl shrugs. He remembers the time they would have dinner at the table and he got to listen to the stories they all shared. Merle's adventures at his high school, dad's troubles at work, his mom's tales from her job and, sometimes, the stories about his family members he didn't know from his grandmother.

'Never said much, but you loved listening.'

Daryl looks up again. His dad sounds almost sad.

Will is biting on his lip. His thumb is rubbing over his wedding band. He never took it off. After a second, something hardens in his face. 'Gonna grab my bolt, get ready to head back. Stop fuckin'  around with them feathers.'

 

 

When they get back, Daryl understands why Will had insisted on hunting for such a long time. The sun is getting low and casts an orange light over the surprised features of the rest of the members of the group. They stare at the turkeys, some with their mouths open and others with more well-hidden amazement.

'Well,' Shane scoffs when they pass him. 'That's one less thing we have to worry about, at least.'

'Yeah, you're welcome,' Will snipes back. They pass a lady who is holding on to her little girl like she might escape any second. The girl is a bit taller than Daryl, older too probably, but she's holding on to her mom tightly. Daryl glances at her but she's looking at her shoes and won't meet his eye. 'You,' Will says, tone lighter now he's no longer addressing Shane. He's looking at the woman. 'You look like you know how to cook these up just fine, am I right?'

'I do,' she says timidly.

'Go on then,' a voice booms from behind her. There's a man sitting in front of a tent. He's sipping from a bottle with clear liquid. Probably water, but Daryl has gotten used to being suspicious towards anything that looks like water. He's learned to sniff their bottles at home before taking a sip. Water doesn't smell like gasoline. He learned that a long, long time ago. 'Take it off the man's hands,'  the guy yells. Then he looks at Will. 'That's a woman's job, am I right?'

Will frowns, 'nah, it's just that I want Dare to wash up before we eat. He's gotten blood everywhere,'  he shoots Daryl a quick grin and the boy grins back, 'and I don't want him going alone. Would do it myself after, but the kids look hungry, man.'

The man narrows his eyes. 'Whatever. Carol! Get to it.'

The woman takes the turkeys from Daryl with a small smile, 'thank you.'

'You're welcome,'  Daryl mutters back automatically.

'Ma'am,' Will adds pointedly.

'Sorry. You're welcome, ma'am.'

'Good, don't be forgettin' the manners your momma taught you at the end of the world now. Come on,' he places a warm hand on the back of Daryl's head to steer him towards the other side of the camp. 'Let's go get cleaned up for dinner. The water is over yonder. Thanks, ma'am.'

The woman gives Will a tight smile before she slinks away, her daughter following her like a shadow.

It doesn't take them long to get clean. Will stands guard while Daryl strips quickly and dives into the cool water. He washes his hair and scrubs the blood off his hands. When he clambers out again, Will offers him his shirt to dry himself off.

The food is ready when they return back to the camp. There's a small campfire around which they gather. The woman, Carol, has made a stew that causes Daryl to drool at the mere smell. Will sits on a fallen tree trunk and Daryl sits on the ground. He leans against his father's leg and keeps his own legs bend so he can hide behind his knees.

'Thank you for the fresh meat,' an old man comments with a nod at Will. 'This is great.'

'Wasn't me,' Will says easily and he runs a hand through Daryl’s hair. 'My little Robin Hood here did all the dirty work today. Shot it, cleaned it. All he needs to learn is to cook it now, and there's his teacher.'  he gestures to Carol. 'Tastes great. Thanks again.'

A boy peeks at Daryl from behind his mother's frame. 'Wow, you shot them? With your bow?'

Daryl nods.

'Can you teach me?'

'Carl,' his mother chides. 'No.'

‘But mom, he’s just as old as-‘

‘I said no, Carl.’

Daryl watches and listens and doesn’t say anything.

 

 

Later, when the food is gone and the sun down, Will orders Daryl to go to bed and follows his son to their tent. Daryl is glad that they pitched it this morning, before their hunt, because even though he knows how to put it up in the dark, it always takes a lot longer and he’s really tired.

They kick their boots off and leave them at the entrance. Daryl wraps himself in a blanket and uses his backpack as a pillow. He yelps with surprise when Will hooks an arm around his waist to pull Daryl against his chest.

‘Hey,’ Will whispers in the dark. ‘You did real good today. Just… Want ya to know that. I’m real proud.’

Daryl relaxes against his father’s frame. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Those people owe us now. That’s good. And you saw them, they don’t know their ass from their elbow, I swear to God. We’d be lucky if one of them knows how to fire a damn gun, you know, beside that damn cop.’

Daryl plays with Will’s watch, plucking at the metal with his fingernails until his dad bats at his hands to make him stop. ‘Why are we staying then? Why not leave them to it?’

‘There’s such a thing as safety in numbers.’

‘But they don’t know how to fight, right?’

‘No, most of them don’t, but you saw those dead things. They’re slow. One wouldn’t be a problem. Two? Nah. But if they come in a group? Son, you better run. That’s why we stay.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Daryl murmurs as he closes his eyes.

‘Image all of us running,’ Will says softly. ‘And you look beside you and it’s one of those taco vendors, hmm? That nigger? Hell, that chink, whatever, any of them, right? Now, they don’t know how to fight. You do. So what if you accidentally kick their heels a bit? What if they fall and the group of deads takes them? It’ll keep them busy long enough so you can get away. And if that’s the outcome, then it’s worth it. They’re bait. Canon food. Nothing more.’

Daryl shivers.

‘They ain’t ever gonna make it,’ Will says now. Daryl can hear that he’s grinning. ‘Bunch of pussy’s, democrats and damn immigrants. They don’t know shit. They’re never, ever goin’ to make it. But we will.’ He hugs his son tightly and kisses the brown hair. ‘Same goes for all of them as for the dead ones. It’s either us or them. And it’s always gonna be us.’

Daryl opens his eyes again and stares into the darkness of their tent. He can feel Will’s heartbeat against his back, his breath ghosting over his cheek. For just a second, he wants to tell his dad that there must be another way. Maybe they can teach some people how to use a weapon, or maybe they can find a safer place somewhere, or maybe…  but he doesn’t. Instead, he stares at the darkness and thinks about Glenn who gave him a cookie without wanting anything in return. He bites his lip, hard. He should have thanked Glenn when he had the chance. Tomorrow, the chink might be walker bait.

 

 

 


	6. What else is there?

 

* * *

 

 

In a way, Daryl quite likes the apocalypse. All the rules have been suspended. It almost feels like one of their camping trips only his dad’s friends aren’t there to bitch about some stupid chore Daryl has to do. As a matter of fact, he quickly realizes that nobody expects him to do any sort of chore. He watches how Sophia and Carl dash after the Morales kids in a game of tag while their mothers gather laundry and start on breakfast.

He doesn’t join in.

It feels a little unnerving to be among these people on his own. Will is still asleep in their tent. He’d kept watch all night on their way here while Daryl slept in the car after Atlanta got bombed and now he’s catching up on some rest. Hardly anyone talks to Daryl. He’s not sure whether that’s because they are afraid that Will might wake up any second, or because Shane keeps glaring at him and they don’t want to get in trouble with their apparent leader.

However, Carol wishes him a good morning when she passes him a plate of breakfast and he thanks her politely.

Glenn joins him. ‘How did you sleep?’

Daryl glances at him. ‘Fine.’

‘I didn’t. Dale snores.’

Daryl frowns and rubs at his nose for a second. Then he squints at the RV. ‘The old man?’

‘Yeah,’ Glenn seems to hide a smile behind his spoon. ‘I sleep in the RV with him. I didn’t have a tent or anything. I mean, I got my car, of course, but it’s better to group up and the RV has got an actual bed.’ Glenn looks at him expectantly and then continues, ‘I thought I could get out of the city in time and head up to Washington. My parent live there.’

Daryl nods to show that he understands but doesn’t say anything. He chews on his food thoughtfully.

‘What about you?’ Glenn asks.

The boy blinks and then frowns again, eyes narrowing dangerously. ‘What about me?’

‘Is it just your dad and you, or were you heading for someone else? Your mom maybe?’

‘’s none of your damn business.’

Glenn takes that in stride. ‘Okay. Sorry.’

They eat silently side by side. Daryl listens to the asinine conversations of the other members of the group. Andrea tells Lori about the work she used to do while Amy chats to Dale about the university she’d attended. Sophia is asking her mother whether she can go swimming with Carl later on but Carol tells her that she’s supposed to stay close to the RV because it’s safer. It surprises Daryl a little that he’s starting to learn their names already. Carl is sitting with his mother. They’re talking quietly, their heads bowed so their hair almost touches. Her arm is looped around his shoulders, he huddles against her.

Daryl watches.

‘He lost his dad three days ago,’ Glenn says softly and Daryl starts. ‘He was shot before this all took off. Shane was his partner.’

‘The guy was a cop?’ Daryl asks before he can stop himself. He looks at Carl but can’t bear to make a joke about it. For the kid’s sake, Daryl hopes Will never finds out.

‘Yeah. I think they were King County.’

The boy nods but still mutters, ‘don’t care,’ under his breath.

‘Come on,’ Lori tells her son as she kisses his dark hair. ‘Let’s get you set up to do some homework, okay?’

Daryl watches how the boy stands up, dusts himself off and then heads over to the RV. Daryl can’t help himself. He turns to Glenn. ‘Is she serious?’

‘Guess,’ Glenn shrugs.

‘Whole world gone to fuckin’ shit, and he’s goin’ to do his damn homework?’

‘What else is there to do? It’s something normal. It takes his mind off of everything. Leave him be.’

Daryl stares at the young man. ‘ _What else is there to do_?’ He echoes with disbelief.

‘Yeah.’

Will was right, Daryl realizes. They are going to die. The dead walk among the living and they are trying to take their minds off of it. They do their chores, but none of the chores that matter. There’s no one filtering water and none of these people know how to hunt and nobody has send Daryl on his way to catch something for dinner. There’s no perimeter, nobody teaching Carl or Sophia how to read the stars to find their way back to their mothers.

Glenn lifts his eyebrows, clearly surprised by Daryl’s gob smacked expression. ‘What?’

‘I’ve got to go,’ Daryl mutters before he takes off running back towards his tent.

 

 

An hour later, the group surprises Daryl by calling a meeting. Will is not up yet. Daryl is not invited. He’s up in a tree and lounges on one of the branches when Shane rounds up all the adults and Amy and Glenn. All the kids are safely locked away in the RV. All except for Daryl. He supposes that Shane had just forgotten all about him and that’s fine by him. This way he can still listen in on the conversation while not having to participate.

The first part is boring. Everyone is complaining about something. There’s no running water, they miss their electricity and their friends. Some want to move on to find their family, others have nowhere to go and suggest that they should stick together now. Carol’s husband loudly claims that people should contribute more if they want this camp to stay standing and a guy called T-dog shuts him up by asking what he’s brought to the table, exactly.

Nobody mentions Daryl’s hunting. Instead they talk about how many cans of food they have left still, how much any of them had packed in their haste to get in or out of Atlanta. Not much, as it turns out. Carol claims not to have anything while T-dog has some candy. Dale’s RV is stocked but only for one person.

They’re running low on water too.

And then Glenn says something interesting. He wants to go back to the city, see what’s left of it, to check whether reinforcements have arrived or the military is on its way. He offers to go back himself. He’s just one guy, if he runs into any trouble, it’ll be easier for him to get out of the town than with the whole group. Shane reluctantly agrees. They need to know what’s going on. In the meantime, he will try to rig up that radio from his patrol car to try and reach out to anyone who is still out there.

T-dog is put in charge of gathering and boiling the water. The rest has to improve their camp. They have to dig trenches around the tents and set up some sort of alarm system made of wires which Jaqui thought of. When the tin cans sound, there’s trouble in their new paradise.

Daryl sits up in the tree and listens to the plans. Some sound stupid to him. They don’t need trenches. He wonders whether these people know they’re in Georgia. The rest sounds pretty sensible. When the meeting ends, he climbs down and sneaks past the tents until he catches up to Glenn.

‘Can I come with you?’

Glenn frowns at him, ‘what?’

‘When you’re going to the city, can I come with you? I can help. I won’t be no bother, promise.’

‘No, it could be dangerous,’ Glenn says as he grabs his backpack from his car and checks the contents. ‘How did you know I was going into the city? I thought you were in the RV with Carl and Sophia?’

‘Weren’t.’

‘Glenn!’ Shane comes over. He’s holding a knife and looks very serious. ‘Here. I want you to take this, man. Take care of yourself out there, you never know who you’ll run into.’

Glenn looks a bit nauseous as he takes the knife. He holds it awkwardly. ‘Erm… thanks. Yeah,’ he puts it into his backpack which makes Daryl groan a little. First rule of carrying a weapon. If you carry it, you intend to use it, and if you want to use it, you have to be able to reach it. What good is a knife in a backpack going to do when one of those dead things grabs your arm?

Daryl doesn’t say anything though, but only because Shane is looking at him oddly, like he just remembered that Daryl exists at all.

‘Is Will up yet?’ Shane asks.

‘Ain’t his keeper.’

‘Go and wake him up. I need to talk to him.’

‘I ain’t yours.’

Shane frowns, ‘what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Don’t tell me what to do!’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Shane curses. ‘I’m just asking you to-‘

Daryl flicks him off and saunters away, kicking at a rock as he goes. When he throws a wary glance over his shoulder, he sees how Glenn is holding on to Shane’s shoulder. The younger man is easily shoved aside by the cop. That doesn’t matter. Daryl is long gone by then. He ducks between tents and runs along the small path towards the tree line but just before he wants to duck into their tent, a hand grabs his upper arm with surprising strength. He stops dead in his tracks and looks up at Carol.

‘Where are you going?’ she asks.

‘My tent,’ Daryl snaps as he yanks his arm free.

‘Good. Why won’t you play with Carl and Sophia?’

Daryl just scowls at her for a second. Then he crouches down and unzips their tent to grab his bow. He glances at Will, who is still asleep. It doesn’t matter. His dad will know where he is when he sees that he took his bow with him. With a practiced move, he swings the weapon onto his back.

‘Is that yours?’ Carol asks with a small frown.

‘’course it’s mine.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’

The question nearly floors the boy. ‘What the hell do ya think, lady?’ he spits out, ‘going to shoot a damn turkey between the eyes! Leave me be!’

She blinks, unimpressed by his sudden outburst. ‘I thought Will was joking when he said that you shot those turkeys yesterday.’

Daryl snorts. ‘My dad ain’t ever jokin’.’ He turns on his heels and stalks towards the woods.

‘I don’t like the idea of you going out there on your own,’ Carol objects.

‘Tough,’ Daryl mutters as he disappears between the trees.

 

 

Daryl is grinning by the time he runs back to the camp and finds his father helping Shane with some water barrels. Will’s shirt is drenched with sweat and his dirty blond hair is plastered to his forehead. His eyebrows shoot up when he spots his son zipping through the camp. There’s a string with rabbits dangling from Daryl’s shoulder, his bow bobs on his back. The black shirt he’s wearing is ripped in several places and he’s covered in mud.

‘Hey, dad! Look what I got,’ Daryl laughs excitedly as he jumps around his father. ‘Dinner!’

‘Jesus Christ, boy,’ Will grabs him by the shoulders to hold him in one place, ‘what the fuck did you shoot up on, huh? Speed? Calm down. What happened to you?’

‘What?’ Daryl looks down his front, ‘oh, yeah. There was one of those deads hangin’ around one of your traps. It was snackin’ on our rabbit, that was our kill, right? So I snuck up on it with my knife, but it must have heard me anyway.’ Daryl laughs as he tries to brush the mud off his clothes. ‘Might be fuckin’ dead, but they’re damn strong.’

‘It got its hands on you?’

‘Yeah. It sorta fell on me, I lost my balance and we both went down. Weren’t too bad. They’re not like Merle, they don’t fight dirty. Haven’t got the brains for it, right?’ Daryl grins up at his dad, ‘I got it in the end. Knife to the brain. It really works. Rabbit was all gnawed up, though. Sorry.’

‘Why didn’t you use your bow or run back here to come and get me?’

‘What for?’ Daryl frowns, feeling that his dad is not as thrilled with his latest victory as he is. ‘I got it in the end! And I was already pretty close when I spotted the thing. It would have heard me loading up the bow, so I just…’ he glances from his dad to Shane, who is looking on with a slightly sick look on his face.

‘You killed one of those things?’ the cop asks. Daryl can’t quite tell whether he’s more surprised by the fact that the boy took one of them out on his own, or the fact that the dead things can be actually killed.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Weren’t nothing. We’ve done it before.’

The way Shane looks at him makes Daryl uncomfortable. He edges towards his dad’s broad frame, trying to hide in his shadow.

‘We’re done here, right?’ Will asks as he curls an arm around his son's shoulders and tugs him against his side.

‘Yeah,’ Shane nods as he runs a hand through his hair. ‘Thank for your help.’

‘You’re welcome, man,’ Will slaps him on the shoulder before he steers Daryl towards the lake. They walk side by side. Daryl glances over his shoulder. Glenn is standing with Shane again, but this time they’re talking quietly. Their gazes follow the young boy.

‘Didn’t know you and Shane were buds all of a sudden,’ Daryl mutters. He can’t help but feel a little betrayed.

‘We ain’t.’

Daryl worries his bottom lip. ‘What did Glenn find out? Did he go back to the city?’

‘The chink?’

Daryl nods.

‘Yeah, we went back to the city, all right,’ Will mutters. ‘Don’t go expecting help to come from that shithole. He parked his car at the edge and snuck in on foot. Clever thinkin’, gotta admit it. Turns out, the whole city is overrun with those dead things. Geeks, he calls them. Stupid name.’

‘So there are more?’ Daryl squints up at his dad. ‘Like, way more?’

‘Way, way more. Hundreds. Everyone who lived in the city seems to have turned into one of those mindless things. You get bit, you turn, and boy they turned.’

They reach the water and Will sits on one of the boulders from where he can see most of their surroundings. He doesn’t have a weapon on him as far as Daryl can see, so the boy leaves his bow with his dad. He kicks his boots off and hops around to get out of his jeans. The shirt can’t be saved, it’s all torn to pieces so he throws it aside. He shrugs when he catches his dad’s disapproving look. ‘I’ve got more shirts.’

‘Clean up,’ Will orders.

‘Haven’t been this clean in years,’ Daryl grins as he wades into the water in his underwear. ‘Second time in two days.’

‘Ya always were a dirty little fucker,’ Will muses with a small smile. ‘Would drive your momma crazy, rompin’ around all day and then dragging the forest home in your clothes and hair. She’d scrub you in the tub until you were pink as the day you were born.’

Daryl dives down for a second to get his hair wet. ‘I don’t remember that.’

Will grabs the boy’s bow and checks the mechanics. ‘Ya remember her at all?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says as he kicks his feet up and drifts on the surface. The sun warms his naked skin and makes the water shimmer around him. ‘Not much, though. She used to smoke.’

‘All the damn time. Virginia Slims.’

Silence rings out between them for a while.

‘That’s all ya remember?’ Will sounds mildly put-out.

‘Kinda,’ Daryl turns around and swims back to the shore again. ‘Just remember her, ya know? I know she were there, just… don’t really remember anything specific.’ He wipes the water from his face, ‘she used to sing, too. Sometimes. Not to us or anything, just… While she did chores. She used to sing.’

‘She was in the church choir. She used to practice at home. That’s what she were doin’.’

‘Right.’ Daryl is not sure why any of that matters. He struggles to put his jeans back on now that his legs are wet. The denim quickly turns dark due to the water. He scratches at some dirt with his fingernails and then wades back into the lake. He rubs his hands over the denim to clean it as best he can.

Will watches and shakes his head. ‘You really are a dumb sack of shit, now ain’t ya. That the best way to clean your damn clothes?’

Daryl shrugs, ‘they’re clean now, right?’

‘You’ll get chafing everywhere.’

‘Won’t.’

‘Careful,’ Will warns him. He hates it when Daryl talks back to him.

‘Sorry.’

His dad nods and slides off the boulder. ‘Get out of the water, boy.’

Daryl wades back out and squishes the water out of his jeans the best he can. Then he puts his boots back on. He looks at his shirt and screws up his nose. ‘My shirts are back in the tent, so I’ll-‘

‘Don’t worry about your shirt. Turn around and brace yourself against the rock.’

Daryl freezes. His heart immediately pounds inside his throat, in his ears, so loud that he can hear his own blood flowing. The hairs on his arms rise. He can’t even feel the sun anymore. ‘W-what – why?’ he manages to stutter. He knows what it means when his dad tells him to brace himself.

‘’cause you’ve been actin’ like a damn fool today.’

‘But I-‘

‘Your shirt is all ripped up due to one of those dead things. You realize that it could have been _you_? Bites, that’s how they get ya sick and you get close enough to get bit. Now, if that ain’t bein’ a damn fool, then I don’t know what is. No,’ Will says when Daryl opens his mouth. ‘Shut it, right now. You’re going to listen to me, boy. This is a new world now. And you can’t be actin’ this stupid, or reckless. Don’t you get that? You could have been killed, or worse, today. You could have been bit.’

‘But I wasn’t, I was fi-‘

‘You got lucky. And we don’t get lucky. We get _smart_. So you’re gonna learn and you’re gonna learn right now, am I right? Because you ain’t going to forget this, not for a long while, okay?’

‘Dad please, I won’t forget!’

‘No, you sure as hell won’t. Brace yourself. Don’t make me tell you again.’

Daryl’s hands shake when he puts them on the sun-warmed rock. Water drips from his hair into his eyes. He blinks against water and tears. He looks down at the ground. He shivers when he hears the tell-tale sound of Will unbuckling his belt.

Footsteps coming closer, just a step away from him. They stop.

The sound of a belt sliding out of its loops.

Daryl makes sure to set his jaw and grind his teeth together. That is something else he learned, a long time ago. One time he hadn’t, and he’d almost bitten his own tongue clean off.

‘Ready?’

It’s one of the cruelest questions Daryl ever heard. He hates that question. His dad always asks it, just before, and he always makes it sound like a kindness. But the answer is always the start sign and it makes Daryl feel like he’s giving permission. He hates that. He hates this, all of this.

His fingertips turn white on the gray rock.

He nods.

Will brings the belt down on his back in one fell swoop. And Daryl learns his lesson.

 

 


	7. Into the ground

 

* * *

 

 

People stare and Daryl pretends not to notice. He slinks alongside his dad, eyes down and shoulders hunched, fists hidden in the pockets of his wet jeans. His back burns still. He knows the stripes are an angry red, he can feel the heat radiate from the wounds, and he’s just glad that Will did it while sober this time. There’s no blood. His dad had the sense to stop before his skin could split open under the force. Afterwards, Will had knelt before him, wiping away his tears with a rough hand before tousling his brown hair and kissing his forehead.

When they are halfway through the camp, Will makes Daryl carry his own bow. At first Daryl thinks that that is just mean because the metal bobs against his back, which makes it hurt more, but then he realizes that the weapon and strap might cover some of the strikes, so he doesn’t mind too much.

‘You hungry?’ Will asks.

‘No.’ Daryl bites on his lip. He’s still sick to his stomach from the pain.

‘Okay,’ his dad nods. ‘Take your kills to whoever is cookin’ tonight and then come back to the tent, okay?

Daryl sighs and then nods, glancing up at his father through his fringe. ‘Yeah, okay, dad,’ he pulls on the strap of his bow so the weapon is pressed against his back and then darts towards the campfire.

It’s not hard to find Carol. She’s sitting at the table near the RV with Amy, Andrea and her daughter, Sophia. Daryl’s eye falls on the girl. She’s swinging her legs and looks quite happy and oblivious while she colors. She has a stack of papers and a lot of markers. He tries to see what she’s drawing but his gaze snaps to Andrea when she clears her throat pointedly.

‘It’s not polite to stare,’ she tells the boy.

‘Weren’t,’ Daryl counters immediately. He can feel a blush starting to creep up on his neck and ears. With some trouble, he meets Carol’s eye. ‘Got some meat. Dad told me to bring it.’

‘T-dog is right there,’ Andrea butts in. ‘He is cooking tonight. What, you think that’s our job just because-‘

‘Andrea,’ Carol hushes her easily. She takes the rabbits from Daryl. ‘Thank you. I’ll take them to T-dog.’

Daryl glares at Andrea, ‘didn’t mean nothin’,’ he mutters as he slinks over to Sophia, leaning against the table to see what she’s drawing. It’s a house with a garden, a tree on the left and green fields. There’s a sun in the right corner. Daryl rolls his eyes and stretches by leaning heavily on the table and arching his back.

‘T-dog is really nice,’ Sophia tells him after she glances at him side-ways. ‘You don’t have to be scared of him.’

‘Ain’t scared,’ Daryl says even though his hand almost slips off the table from shock when her comment registers. He thought he was being quite sneaky. Of course he’d seen T-dog near the fire pit, boiling water to make some sort of stew or pasta, but the man is big, even bigger than Shane or Ed, and Daryl doesn’t want to deal with that right now.

‘T-dog is also really _black_ ,’ Andrea says, ‘so Daryl doesn’t want to get too close. He probably thinks it’s catching or something. What?’ she asks when her sister stares at her with a horrified expression. ‘Look at him! He’s red neck trash!’

‘He’s just a _kid_!’ Amy protests.

‘Are you kidding me?’ Andrea laughs. ‘Have you met Will? Apple and tree.’

Daryl doesn’t give a damn about what she thinks of him. The two sisters are fighting on their side of the table and it draws Sophia’s attention away from her markers. After a glance at Andrea and Amy, Daryl snatches the black marker off the table. He stuffs it into his pocket. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he mutters in Andrea’s general direction but he freezes when he spots Carol, who’d been watching him the whole time. She’d seen him steal the marker.

‘Go on,’ Carol says with a soft smile. ‘I’m sure your dad is looking for you.’

He blushes and runs off, back towards his tent. When he gets there, however, Will isn't anywhere to be seen. He puts the bow back near his sleeping bag and puts on some clean, dry clothes. With his wet clothes in his arms, he walks around camp to get to the place where he'd seen Amy hang up their laundry earlier. He hangs it all up so it can dry in the sunshine and breeze. After a second, he checks the other clothes and takes the items which are already dry down. He folds them and puts them in separate piles.

Lori looks surprised when he delivers Carl's clothes.

Daryl scratches at his cheek and gestures to the pile in his arms with his chin. 'Don't know which ones are yours, so...'

'Let me see,' Lori riffles through the clothes and pulls a shirt from the pile. 'Thank you, Daryl. That's really nice of you.'

He just looks at her.

'You don't really say much, now do you?' Lori laughs. To his horror, she reaches out and puts a warm hand on his cheek. To her credit, she immediately draws her hand back as if she'd burned herself when she sees his expression. 'Sorry,' another smile, 'the habits of a mom, hmm? Let me help you with that.' She reorganizes his pile of laundry and tells him which item belongs to who.

It doesn't take him long to distribute it.

Sophia's things are last because their tent is closest to Will's and Daryl's. Nobody of the small family is there to take the clothes off his hands so he unzips the tent and puts them at the foot of the small camping bed on the right of the tent. When he tries to shimmy out again, he's suddenly grabbed by a hand. Nails dig into his shoulder as he's yanked to his feet.

'What the hell do you think you're doin', boy? Nosing around my stuff?' It's Ed. He stares at Daryl, an angry scowl on his fat face. He shakes Daryl so hard that the boy's teeth rattle. Then he pushes him towards the right, then left past the tent towards the tree line. Daryl stumbles and then tries to run, but Ed is surprisingly fast. He grabs his arm and drags him off.

'Best let go of me!' Daryl shouts as he tries to aim a kick at the man. 'I'm gonna fuck ya up, ya hear me? Let go! _Let go_!'

'I'm gonna teach you a damn lesson. Don't go actin' like your old man never taught you no lesson like this,' Ed bites back. 'Stop your squirming! I've seen you lookin' at my daughter, 'nd now you're goin' through our stuff?'

'Was just puttin' your stuff back, man,' Daryl wheezes. 'Didn't do nothing wrong!'

'Don't bullshit me!'

The hit comes and even though Daryl is expecting it, it still hurts like hell. Pain flashes through his eye socket and radiates through his entire skull. A closed-fist punch, right on target. That's going to bruise, he realizes when he hits the ground. Dirt sticks to his face, to his mouth. For a second, he stills and then tries to jump up and sprint off but a foot comes down on his back. He's not sure how to fight Ed. He knows what to do when it's Merle, even though Merle rarely lashed out and was always playful with his fights, tapping him on the cheeks with a couple of fingertips instead of this sucker punch.

Of course, when Will hits, he wants it to hurt, but he never hits him in the face. Never anywhere so obvious.

'Jesus motherfucking Christ,' Daryl swears as he bites the dust. 'You're crazy, man. Bat shit crazy!'

'Shut your damn mouth.'

'I'm gonna fuck ya up,' Daryl grouses even though it would probably be better if he just played dead. Rage starts to build up inside of him, making him feel sick because he knows that he can't do anything against the bigger man. A boot digs between his shoulder blades. It presses against the marks of Will's lashing. Daryl screams into the ground. He tries to hold it in with all his might because he doesn't want to look like a wimp but it just hurts too much. Tears are starting to form in the corners of his eyes, created due to both anger and pain.

Later, he won't remember whether he actually heard the approaching footsteps, running, or the enraged growl that could have reminded him of an angry animal. Right now, he just feels how the pressure is relieved from his back. He hears two bodies colliding, the scuffle of feet on an uneven ground. When he looks up through his lashes and fringe, he sees how Will pushes Ed up against a tree, one arm pressed against the man's throat, the other on his chest.

He's never been more glad to see his dad.

'What the hell, man,' Will growls into Ed's face. 'I don't give a damn about what you do to your blood, but you ain't layin' a finger on mine. That's my boy,' he shoves Ed against the tree again, causing the man to gasp for air. ' _My boy_. You don't touch him. You don't even _look_ at him, you hear me? You fuckin' pathetic piece of shit.'

Ed whimpers.

'What's that?' Will asks, ducking down so Ed has no choice but to meet his eye. 'Oh, that's right. I get that, you ain't used to someone fightin' back, huh? Well, let me tell ya this, I say the word? Hmm? I say the word and my boy will shoot you between the eyes and guess what, man? You'll never see the fuckin' bolt comin' your way. But I'm not goin' to tell him, you wanna know why? 'Cause you look at him the wrong way again, you so much as _breathe_ into his direction, and _I'll beat your ass into the ground myself_.'

Daryl shivers at his father's tone. He sits up on his knees and glares at Ed for good measure. He wipes his mouth and face, grimacing when his fist brushes against the tender area around his eye.

'What the hell is going on here?'

Of course it's Shane. Once a cop... Daryl thinks bitterly, but hot on his heels is also Glenn. The younger man looks surprised to find Will and Ed near the tree but his gaze lands on Daryl immediately. He rushes over. An outstretched, open hand, ready to help him up.

Daryl accepts the offer.

'You okay?' Glenn asks softly as he examines Daryl's eye. 'What happened?'

'What's going on?' Shane barks again.

‘Nothing, man,’ Will says with a smile as he slowly lets go of Ed. ‘Just a misunderstanding, right Eddie? We friends, right?’

Ed pushes himself away from the tree and coughs, rubbing over his neck where Will had been pressing on with his forearm.

Will turns to face Shane. There’s something nasty in his dark eyes but it slowly fades now that he’s no longer looking at Ed. ‘We don’t need your help, officer. We’re all good.’

‘Daryl?’ Glenn ducks to the side to catch the boy’s eye and attention again. ‘I asked you; are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ the youngest Dixon mutters. ‘Weren’t nothing. Just a misunderstanding.’

‘That’s right,’ Will nods. ‘Come on, Dare. We’re done here. Sorry guys,’ he shoulders past Shane to lead the way back to their tent. ‘We gotta be up at the crack of dawn to check them snares, so we’ll catch all y’all later, a’right?’

 

 

There’s not much they can do about the black eye. Will orders him to tough it out and Daryl shrugs it off like he’s done every other injury he’s ever had. It doesn’t even really hurt anymore. The pain has dulled into a nagging soreness except for when he pulls a face or laughs so he tries to do neither. At the moment, he’s lounging on his sleeping bag and staring up at the tent. He can see shadows of mosquitoes dance against the thin fabric. Daryl pokes at their outline with one of his bolts and traces the patterns they fly in.

Will is on his side of the tent. He’s drinking his booze, slow, small sips instead of his usual pace. ‘You’ll tell me, right?’ He suddenly asks and Daryl looks at him with one raised eyebrow to show that he doesn’t understand. ‘If he bothers ya again,’ Will clarifies, ‘you’ll tell me, right?’

‘Sure.’

‘Gotta stick together, us Dixon’s, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good man.’ Will frowns as he watches how Daryl shifts on the hard floor. The boy grimaces. ‘’s your back hurtin’ still?’

‘Jackass stepped on it with his fat ass,’ Daryl grouses but grins when he hears his father snort. ‘Hurts.’

‘Where?’ Will asks as he puts his bottle aside. ‘Spine or shoulder blades?’

The boy squirms a bit, ‘like, _under_ my shoulder blade? I dunno. Feels weird.’

‘It’s your nerve, come here.’

Daryl throws his bolt aside and then crawls over to his dad. He sits down Indian style and bows his head so his chin almost touches his chest. It gives Will more room to work. His dad scoots closer and puts his broad hands on the boy’s back. Thumbs digging into muscles and nerves, firm and gentle at the same time.

‘Ya good?’ Will asks to be sure.

Daryl nods and then leans a bit to the side, ‘little bit – yeah.’

Will massages his back to get rid of the ache. It’s something he’s done a lot over the past couple of years, ever since Daryl learned how to hunt. The bow used to be a bit too heavy for him, but it hadn’t made sense to buy him another one as he was going to grow into it eventually. It had taken a lot out of him the first couple of months. Aching muscles and a screaming back, bleeding hands from pulling the string back. And while Will scoffed that it would make a man out of him yet, he’d also massaged his back at the end of the day to relieve some of the pain.

Daryl rummages around his pocket and pulls the black marker out.

‘Where’d you get that from?’

‘Took it,’ Daryl admits. He twists the marker between his slim fingers. ‘Sophia was drawing when I took them rabbits to her mom. She weren’t payin’ no attention.’

Will laughs softly, ‘damn, son. You’re like a crow, ain’t ya, picking up shiny new things everywhere. What’re you gonna do with a marker?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘What, weren’t smart enough to steal some paper?’

‘She was drawing on it, couldn’t take it,’ Daryl answers because he had thought about taking some, but it hadn’t been possible.

‘Well, that never stopped ya before, did it?’ Will asks. He shoves Daryl’s shoulder to signal that he’s done with the massage. ‘Remember that time your grandma gave you those markers for your birthday and ya decided the whole house needed a damn make-over?’

‘Weren’t the _whole_ house!’

‘Just our living room, huh?’ the man laughs. He falls back onto his sleeping bag and grins up at his son. ‘That was one of the dumbest shit you’d ever done. We came home? Hmm-hmm, still remember that look on your momma’s face. Nightmares, son, _nightmares_. There was hell to pay. Right there, next to the TV, plain sight, you’d written your own damn name like you owned the damn place.’

Daryl grins and stretches. His back feels a lot better. He lays down next to his dad.

‘’course, your momma was real patient, right? I was ready to tan your hide, but she sat you down at the kitchen table and asked ya; you did this, boy? And what did you say?’ Will asks with a laugh.

Daryl snorts, ‘I said it was Merle.’

‘ _Wasn’t me, momma_ , you said!’ Will hoots. ‘ _Merle wrote my name on the wall with my markers in my handwriting so you’ll all blame me_. Hell, like Merle had half the brain for such a genius masterplan! What would he be writin’ your name for, anyway?’

‘To frame me!’

‘Psssh,’ Will scoffs. ‘He could barely write his own name. Why’d you write your name, anyway?’

‘I dunno,’ Daryl shrugs, ‘didn’t know what else to write.’

His father looks at him.

Daryl cracks under the pressure within seconds, ‘I just liked that house,’ he blurts out. ‘Like how you had to write your name on your papers at school so you got to take it home? Thought it worked like that, you know, write ya name on the top right corner.’

‘You wrote it on the middle of the wall.’

‘Weren’t tall enough for the corner.’

Will snorts and then sobers up. He looks at his youngest son and reaches out to run a loving hand through the brown hair. ‘I know you loved that house. I’m sorry we lost it.’

‘’s fine,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Don’t care.’

‘No. Merle and I don’t care none,’ Will corrects. ‘You’re your momma, through and through. She loved that house too.’ He smiles hesitantly. ‘She always used to stroke the doorpost whenever she got home, ya know? To greet the house, let it know she was back. One of the weirdest habits she had, I used to bitch about it all the damn time, sayin’ I weren’t supposed to be jealous of a pile of bricks.’

Daryl smirks and stretches again, arching his back to get rid of a twinge. ‘Didn’t know she did that.’

Will nods. ‘One time we’d taken Merle upstate for a holiday. You weren’t born yet. Just a couple of days, ‘nd when we got back? Psssh. She had a whole therapy session with the damn house, asking if it’d missed us. She was crazy, your momma.’

‘Weren’t!’

‘No,’ Will agrees easily. ‘She was the best damn thing that ever happened to me. Didn’t deserve her none.’

Even Daryl knows that that is just a fact. His mother was far from perfect, but a lot of people blamed that on Will. Daryl doesn’t, of course. He never knew his mother without his dad’s influence, and now he can barely remember her at all. For a second, he wonders why Will is talking about her so much now. He never used to, before.

His dad yawns and looks at the marker. ‘Ya still want to be a tattoo artist when you’re all grown?’

‘I _am_ all grown!’

‘Psssh,’ Will scoffs. ‘You gonna be two thumbs tall for the rest of your life? Good luck with that, boy.’

‘Shuddup,’ Daryl mutters with a sly grin.

‘Come on.’ His dad sits up, pulls his shirt over his head and throws it into the corner of the tent. He turns to his stomach and rests his head on his folded arms. ‘Get some practice in. Since ya were dumb enough not to steal some paper and all.’

The boy grins and slides over, climbs onto the small of his dad’s back and uncaps the marker. He hums to himself as he draws on the pale skin. Fluent lines down the spine, rounding over ribs which causes Will to hit Daryl’s leg lightly because he’s ticklish. After a couple of minutes, Daryl leans back and looks down at the dark angel wings drawn on his father’s back.

The ink barely covers the scars.

 

 


	8. Squirrels

 

* * *

 

 

Nobody likes Will and on some days Daryl thinks that’s fair enough.

Today is one of those days. The traps were empty this morning. That pissed Will off right away because it means they’ll have to do some real hunting if they want to have fresh meat for dinner tonight. Will is one of the best hunters Daryl has ever seen but he’s in a foul mood and hates working for his kills. He likes to lie in wait, to hunker down in a deer stand until his prey just walks right into his crosshairs but now they don’t have time to wait around. It’s a big group to provide for. They can’t afford to be lazy.

Daryl doesn’t mind that. He likes it better to follow trails and sneak around the woods with his bow than just waiting in a stand until some stupid deer saunters by.

The thing is; they don’t really find much.

For hunting you have to be good. But you also have to be a bit lucky.

They’re not lucky today.

All the trails they come across are old. All the traps are empty.

It’s noon and Daryl is drenched in sweat. It’s a hot day. He runs a hand through his brown hair and pulls a face when he has to wipe the sweat on his jeans. He’s glad to see the tents of their camp appear between the trees and hopes that someone has boiled some water.

Lori spots them first. She rises from a log and frowns, hands on her hips as she looks at Will. ‘You didn’t catch anything?’

Daryl winces as Will turns sharply to head over to her instead of going straight back to their tent. There’s anger in his shoulders, in the way his hands curl into fists.

‘Got somethin’ to say, lady?’ Will snarls. ‘No, I ain’t got no damn deer carcass hidden up my asshole, okay? Jesus Christ! What the hell have y’all been doing, huh? Doin’ the damn dishes now?’ he asks when his eye falls on Lori’s abandoned chore. ‘Psssh. Bitchin’ to poor old Will about a bad hunt while never bringin’ anything to the table.’

‘Will, calm down,’ Lori tries, ‘I didn’t mean-‘

‘Nah, I’m sure you didn’t mean nothing by it,’ the man says as he gets into her personal space. Daryl is slightly surprised that Lori doesn’t back away or search for someone to have her back. Instead, she meets Will’s gaze head on. ‘Don’t change the fact that you ain’t carryin’ your weight, missy.’ He smirks at her, glances at her chest and mouth, ‘why don’t you go to your knees, huh? That way you’ll contribute something, at least. Come on. Be a dear.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Wish ya would, sugar tits,’ Will grins. He glances at something over Lori’s shoulder. He’s looking at Shane. ‘Ah, I forgot. Your mouth’s been plenty busy these days. Thought your man died, like, two days ago? Three tops? Pssh,’ He meets her eye again, ‘and y’all are calling _me_ trash.’

 ‘Leave me alone. _Now_.’

Daryl shivers at Lori’s cold tone but Will is not impressed. He spits on the ground beside their feet.

‘ _Dixon_!’

The heads of both Will and Daryl snap up to glare at Shane.

‘What’s going on,’ the cop asks.

Usually Will bows out of the conversation with some sass and a smirk, but that’s on his better days. Now he’s angry and looking for a proper fight. The hunter looks at Lori, bites his lip and wiggles his eyebrows, ‘nothing, man. Just makin’ some conversation. Askin’ the price for what’s between her legs.’

‘Hey!’ Shane storms forward, but Lori steps between the two men, pushing Shane back and then turning back to Will. The slap comes out of nowhere. It shocks both Daryl and Will. The older man blinks and then snarls.

The younger Dixon drops his bow and goes for his knife.

‘Your son is listening,’ Lori snaps. She’s not looking at the boy. Instead she glares at Will. ‘How dare you.’

‘He’s heard worse,’ Will smirks like it’s something he’s proud of. ‘Touch me one more time, and I don’t care you’re just a cunt. Get what I’m sayin’? I’ll nail you to a wall like I would any man.’ He shifts his bow to his other shoulder and then pushes past her and Shane. ‘Dare,’ he throws over his shoulder, ‘find that chink, see if he has dragged his lazy ass to town yet. I ran out of smokes.’

Daryl lets his knife slide back into the sheath.

It draws Shane’s attention. ‘Jesus, you’re carrying a _knife_ on you?’

Daryl shrugs and grabs his bow, throwing it onto his back with a practiced move. ‘Yeah, so?’ he asks as he slowly walks backwards, not taking his eyes off the cop until he’s out of range of those long arms. ‘Ain’t the most dangerous thing about me.’

Shane frowns.

‘He means the bow,’ Lori supplies with a sigh. Her shoulders slump and her posture crumbles now Will isn’t there to see it. She sinks to the ground. Her hands shake as she runs them through her thick hair. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that, Daryl.’

‘Heard worse.’

Lori makes a sound that could either be a sob or a laugh.

‘He’s just mad,’ Daryl mutters. He brings his hand to his mouth and bites on his fingernails. ‘Ya shouldn’t edge him on like that. Best to stay quiet.’

‘I just asked him a question!’

Daryl shrugs. ‘He don’t like that.’

Shane sighs and stretches, letting his hands rest on top of his head. ‘He can’t act like that, Daryl. If you want to stay here, he needs to play by the rules.’

‘What rules are that?’ Daryl asks as he spits on the ground, ‘all y’all eating our meat and then lookin’ down at us for draggin’ it home? Nah. That dog won’t hunt for us.’

‘ _Shane_ ,’ Lori says when the cop opens his mouth and takes a step towards the boy. ‘Daryl, honey, we’re really grateful for all the meat you and your dad brought us, okay? But we’re running low on food and I just hoped that you…’ She shakes her head.

‘He can’t act like this,’ Shane adds. ‘We’ve got to pull together. Survive this.’

Daryl glares at the ground and then up at Lori. He scuffs his boot on the ground, kicking up some dust. ‘Snares were empty. Trails cold. We just didn’t get lucky enough, is all.’ He rubs his nose on his shoulder before continuing. ‘’s good sign there are trails, though. We’ll get something tomorrow.’

‘We need something _now_ ,’ the cop sighs. He runs a hand through his hair and scratches at the back of his head.

‘Could get us some squirrels.’

Shane and Lori’s gaze snaps back to him.

Daryl shrugs, ‘there’s loads of them here.’

‘Why didn’t you get them before?’

‘Ever _seen_ a squirrel?’ Daryl snaps back. ‘Tiny fuckers, ain’t much meat on them. Ya’d need a lot.’ He scuffs his boot again and glances at Lori. ‘Dad says they ain’t worth the trouble.’

‘But you can…’ she waves her hand vaguely, ‘you can skin them? We can cook them up?’

Daryl frowns at the weird question. ‘’course I can. And meat’s meat.’

‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ Shane says. ‘If Will’s not willing to play ball on that… you’re not going out on your own. Nobody is.’

That almost makes the boy laugh but he manage to scowl instead. ‘You ain’t the boss of me, and no damn city slicker is comin’ with, neither. I can do it, just gotta get something to drink first. I’ll be back before dark. Glenn still around?’

Shane nods.

‘Hey, Daryl?’

The youngest Dixon looks at Lori. He barely meets her eye. ‘What?’

‘Be careful, stay close to the camp, okay? And you’re back _way before_ dark.’

Daryl bites on his lip, glances away and then nods curtly. ‘Yes ma’am.’

 

 

Glenn is still getting ready to go back to Atlanta by the time Daryl finds him. He’s been out there several times before and always returns with a backpack full of stuff. Sometimes it’s canned food, other times clothes or items people had asked for. He tells stories about how there isn’t anyone alive in the city anymore, how he’s pretty sure that the dead people can see, hear and smell those who haven’t died yet. He calls them geeks.

The young man startles when Daryl takes a run up and leaps onto the car, landing on the hood with a loud bang. ‘Jesus,’ he swears under his breath, ‘Hey, Daryl. No, you can’t come with me.’

‘Ain’t asking to,’ Daryl says as he climbs on top of the car to sit on the roof, legs dangling off the side while Glenn rummage through his bag. ‘Can you get me some smokes? Any brand. Don’t matter.’

‘You _smoke_?’

Daryl bites on his fingernail and shrugs. ‘’s for my dad.’

‘Oh. Right. Why won’t he ask me if there’s something he wants?’

Daryl thinks about lying but there’s really no point. ‘He don’t like talkin’ to a chink. ‘specially if there’s something he wants. Don’t want to owe y’all nothing.’

Glenn grinds his teeth together for a second and throws his bag onto the passenger’s seat. Then he leans against his door and looks up at the boy, who’s now swinging his legs and kicking his heels against the window. Not hard enough to do any damage, just another habit. ‘Okay,’ he says, a bit resigned. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for him, but I can’t promise anything.’

‘Thanks,’ Daryl murmurs around his thumb, ‘he gets all riled up when he’s out.’

‘Yeah?’

Daryl nods.

‘What happens when he gets riled up?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Gets into trouble. Goes lookin’ for trouble.’

‘And, let me guess. He finds you.’

Daryl stills and looks at the older man. Then he lets himself slide off the car, landing on his feet heavily but immediately setting off back towards the camp. ‘I ain’t trouble,’ he mutters defensively.

‘Hey!’ Glenn grabs his arm, ‘that’s not what I meant. Daryl!’ The boy stops. He glares at the hand until Glenn lets go off him. ‘I just meant… _He_ thinks you’re trouble sometimes, right?’

‘No.’ Sure, sometimes Daryl gets his ass handed to him but he knows he deserves that. That doesn’t mean he’s trouble, because he knows that his dad is just looking out for him, in his own way. It was only a couple of days ago that Will told him he was proud of him, and Will never says anything he doesn’t mean.

Glenn frowns. ‘No? Then why did he hit you?’

Daryl shrugs, ‘to learn me a lesson? ‘s how we learn, right? I did something stupid and got lucky. We don’t get lucky. We get smart.’

Now Glenn is staring at him and Daryl starts to get the feeling that something is wrong with this conversation. His gaze flits towards the forest, the tents, he’s already calculating his exit when the Korean steps up to block his way. ‘This wasn’t the first time?’

‘First time of what?’ Daryl hates how his voice starts to rise in pitch, a little panicky.

‘How often does he hit you?’

‘He don’t hit me.’ Daryl is reminded of every intervention his teachers had ever staged. Him, in an uncomfortable chair in an office that was too cold for Georgia, with men and women on the other side of the desk who were paid to care. Their forms and questions and concerned looks. The pens and pencils marking down his every word. A tape recorder on the corner of the desk. He remembers how difficult it was to navigate those conversations. Like a minefield, every word could pull the trigger on his whole life.

There had been moments that he’d wanted to pull that trigger. When Will was high and drunk and wasn’t teaching him any lesson but just wanted to hit something. When it just seemed so _unfair_. Later he knew that that too was a lesson. To stay out of Will’s way when he got like that, to be quieter, smarter, quicker. He realized he’d deserved that beating because, really, he should have known to get out of the house quick the moment he’d seen those empty bottles and used needles.

It had been his own fault.

And he never pulled the trigger.

‘Daryl!’

‘Fuck off, you stupid fuckin’ chink, mind your own damn business!’

They stare at each other. Chests heaving, eyes dark.

‘That is not how we learn,’ Glenn says softly.

‘How the hell would you know, huh? Never learned anything worthwhile, don’t even know how to use a damn knife! Think you’re so smart, with your books and everything? Psssh. What’s your damn education gonna do now, huh?’

‘Daryl….’

The boy hates how Glenn’s voice breaks on the word. It reminds him too much of pity. He flips him off before he leaves, ducking around the young man to get back to the camp.

Glenn lets him leave.

 

 

He’s treading on thin ice.

Will’s mood is getting darker by the second. He sits and sulks in their tent, ranting about all those stupid city slickers and their worthless wives. The anger makes the air thick. Daryl sits on his sleeping bag and keeps his head down. He cleans his bow methodically. It’s difficult to breathe, especially when Will rummages through his bags and pulls out a bottle. The one with the green liquid. The one that smells like mint.

Daryl swallows thickly.

‘They don’t deserve us,’ Will tells him with a decisive nod. ‘We ain’t goin’ to lift a finger for them anymore. You hear me?’

‘Okay, dad.’

Will glances at him like he didn’t really expect an answer and only just remembered that Daryl is there. ‘You’re always so easy, huh? Little bitch.’

Daryl looks up from his work and bites on his lip, preventing himself from back talking.

‘Wish Merle were here with me, instead of your sorry ass. The two of us? Hmm. We’d rob them blind and move on, but with you? Goddamn. Good thing there are so many bitches here. You fit right in.’

Daryl puts his bolts back in his quiver. He knows better than to answer.

‘Don’t go acting like you’re such a big bad hunter now,’ Will aims a kick at his bow. Then he seems to remember something. ‘You reset those snares, boy?’

‘What? No, they were empty so…’

‘So they’re in the wrong damn place! Jesus Christ, what’s your brain made off? Get out there,’ Will orders between swings of his drink. ‘Reset them snares for tomorrow. Leave me be a while.’

‘Sure, dad, sorry,’ Daryl mutters as he grabs his stuff and quickly leaves. There’s a small grin on his face as he runs past Lori, who shields her eyes from the sun and watches him tear through the camp to get to the small path leading into the woods. She waves when he glances over his shoulder.

 

 

He returns with enough squirrels to feed a small army.

It takes T-dog and Jim some time before they get the hang off skinning them, which makes Daryl a bit nervous because Will can come looking for him any second now. He’s been away far too long to just reset the snares. And he didn’t reset them either. His dad probably won’t remember the order tomorrow, anyway.

‘No, cut _here_ and then pull,’ Daryl snarls impatiently as he grabs T-dog’s knife and jabs the carcass. ‘What the fuck is so difficult about this, huh? Hurry up.’

‘Got a train to catch or something?’ Jim asks.

‘Sorry company to be in,’ Daryl spits back.

‘All right, all right,’ Shane steps in and gently pushes Daryl aside. ‘I got it. Let us do the rest.’

Daryl looks doubtful, ‘you’d never even seen a squirrel before. You can skin it?’

Shane hides an amused smile at the boy’s frankness. ‘Beat it, kid. And thanks.’

‘Welcome,’ Daryl says before he slinks away again. ‘I’m gonna go get some sleep. Think my dad’s down too. Don’t bother us!’

‘You don’t want dinner?’ Lori asks.

‘No!’

‘Daryl!’ Glenn calls out. For a second, Daryl is scared that he’s going to say something about their encounter earlier, but the young man takes a small package out of the pocket of his jeans and throws it to the boy. Cigarettes.

‘Thanks,’ Daryl breathes when he catches it.

 

 

His dad is, of course, still awake when he returns. He’s too drunk to tell the time though, so he doesn’t even notice that Daryl is back late. His mood hasn’t improved.

Daryl’s stomach rumbles when he cautiously sits down next to his father in front of their tent. The last rays of sunshine warm his face. He brushes his brown hair out of his eyes and hands the cigarettes over without a word.

Will doesn’t thank him but lights one immediately. He glances at his son, ‘ya hungry?’

‘A little,’ the boy mutters. ‘It’s okay though.’

‘Of course it is, you’re not going to starve because ya missed dinner once, ya pussy.’

‘I know.’

‘Here,’ his dad hands him a cigarette and the lighter. ‘Come on, light one up. Ya won’t be hungry after that.’

Daryl nods and puts the cigarette between his lips. It takes him two tries to use the lighter, but eventually the tobacco glows red and smoke rushes over his tongue and down his throat. It tickles.

It’s not the first time he’s smoked a cigarette. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book to combat hunger and he’s been hungry a lot in his life. The smoke makes him lightheaded and nauseous. The hunger disappears.

He quite likes the smell. It’s such a familiar scent that it’s comforting. He remembers sitting on the backseat in their car, looking out over the country side while their dad smoked cigarette after cigarette. The window had been down, probably because their mother had insisted on it, but he could still smell the smoke. The sun on his face, that scent all around him. Home.

Approaching footsteps cause Daryl to go still. He holds his breath.

Shane comes around the corner. He’s carrying two plates. The moment his gaze falls on the cigarette in Daryl’s hand, his mouth turn into a disapproving thin line. He seems to bite his tongue, however, and for that Daryl is grateful. ‘Good evening,’ he says instead. ‘I heard your voices, figured you’d all be hungry too.’

‘Look at you, protect and serve, huh?’ Will leers.

‘That’s right,’ Shane nods as he puts Will’s plate on the ground and hands Daryl his. He kneels down beside the boy. ‘You doing all right there, Daryl?’

‘Don’t talk to him.’

Shane ignores Will. ‘If you get cold during the night, I got some extra blankets in my car. It’s okay to take them.’

Daryl nods, not because he will ever accept the charity, but because he wants Shane to go away. This conversation is yet another minefield and Daryl can feel sweat starting to form on his back. He shivers and hopes that Shane won’t mention the squirrels.

‘Eat up, okay?’ Shane gestures to the plate and gets up. He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezes. ‘You earned it. Have a good night.’

Will watches how Shane saunters back to the group, eyes small and bloodshot. He grabs his own plate, almost falls off his camping chair when his balance shifts and he’s too drunk to anticipate it. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, ya earned it?’

‘He’s just a dumb pig, don’t know what he’s spewing now,’ Daryl dismisses easily. He smokes the rest of his cigarette quickly because Will would give him hell if he just threw it away, but he really wants to eat the food Shane brought.

‘That right, huh?’

Daryl stills at Will’s quiet voice. He looks up to see his father stir the food and fish out a piece of meat. ‘Now where would a bunch of city slickers get squirrel meat from, huh?’

The boy swallows with some difficulty.

‘Didn’t I tell ya; we don’t lift a finger for them anymore?’

‘Yeah, but I’d already promised-‘

‘Give me your plate.’

Daryl hands the plate over and watches how Will throws it into the bushes. Then his dad starts to eat his own food, licking his fingers clean and belching when he’s done. Daryl wraps his arms around his growling stomach and wishes he’d had another cigarette.

‘Shirt.’

Daryl whimpers, ‘no, dad, come on! I’m _sorry_.’

‘Don’t care. You need to learn to listen to me. Take your shirt off.’ Will gets up and sways dangerously on the spot. His hand slides to his belt buckle. His eyes are hazy and dark when he looks at his son. ‘Brace yourself.’

 

 


	9. Swim, son.

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl knows that his dad is sorry the next morning.

Will wakes up with a hangover and guilty look in his eye. He mumbles his thanks as he takes the painkillers Daryl had laid out beside his bed last night. Bloodshot eyes follow his son as Daryl carefully puts on a shirt. The wounds on his back hurt. He hisses when he moves his shoulder blades too fast. He can feel how one of the stripes breaks open again. The shirt clings to the wound. Blood seeps into the fabric.

‘Shit,’ Daryl whispers.

‘Your favorite shirt or something?’ Will snipes but he rummages through his bag and pulls something out. ‘Dare,’ he says to attract the boy’s attention. ‘Here. Put it on.’

It’s the leather vest. The one with the white wings on the back. The one Daryl’s always loved.

‘You sure?’ Daryl asks as he takes it.

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ Will mutters as he puts his boots on. ‘You can have it. Sick of you drooling whenever I wear it.’

‘Thanks,’ the boy grins as he puts it on.

It hides the bloodstains.

Will sits on his bed and watches how his son crawls around the tent to gather his stuff. The knife for on his belt, the boots he fumbles on and at last the bow which is thrown onto his back with easy grace and only a slight grimace when it digs into the wounds. He rubs at his cheek and then scratches on the back of his neck, looking away. ‘I’m sorry, you know that, right? I mean – I get that you were tryin’ to do good. Just had a bad day, okay?’

Daryl nods and fidgets with the hem of his shirt. He squints up at his father, ‘I know.’

‘Good,’ Will pushes himself off the bed and leads the way out of their small tent. It’s still early in the morning. Dawn breaks over the horizon, soft morning light filters through the trees. They walk towards the fire where some members of their group have already gathered for breakfast.

The boy plucks at the strap of his bow.  ‘So, we still goin’ to look out for them? Hunt? Or…’ he lets the question trail off because he’s not sure what they’re going to do otherwise. Let them starve, maybe.

‘Yeah,’ Will nods. ‘We’ll hunt for them. Ain’t no bother. Gives us a chance to be away from those fuckers anyway, right?’ He smiles down at his son and loops an arm around his shoulders. ‘You’re not goin’ out today though. I’ll check them snares, get us some rabbits, maybe even a deer.’

Daryl bites his lip. ‘I didn’t move them snares.’

‘Okay,’ Will tousles the brown hair, ‘don’t matter none.’

A relieved sigh escapes the boy. He grins up at his father. ‘I could come with ya. I won’t slow ya down, promise.’

‘I know that, boy. You’re like a damn bloodhound in them woods, best tracker I’ve ever seen, but you need to get some rest. You’ve done enough these past couple of days. Proud of you.’ Will tugs him close for a quick kiss to his temple. ‘Let’s just get breakfast first, hmm?’

‘Sure.’ Daryl escapes his father’s grip and practically skips over to the fire pit. Jacqui and Glenn are fixing breakfast, which means that the Asian looks on helplessly while the eggs burn and Jacqui actually tries to do all the cooking. Daryl’s nose wrinkles as he sits down on a log and wraps his arms around his knees to watch.

Will saunters over. He lights a cigarette before stepping into the circle. ‘The fuck are ya doin’?’ he asks Glenn, who’s trying to save the eggs by frantically petting them with a spatula. ‘Give me that.’

Glenn hands the spatula over with a wary look in his eye.

‘Hmm, hmm, hmm,’ Will comments around his cigarette. ‘Never made no scrambled eggs before? Or what’s that shit y’all eat? With the rice?’

 ‘Err…’ Glenn tries but falters and then just shrugs.

‘Burned the eggs ‘nd your tongue both? Sit your ass down. I got it.’

Daryl watches how his dad helps Jacqui make breakfast. The man easily saves the eggs and then takes some chores of Jacqui’s hands, throwing the meat into another pan and frying it up. They work together seamlessly. It’s done by the time the rest of the group joins them. Lori and Carl come bounding over. They’re joined by Shane seconds later and the smell even lures Sophia and Carol over. T-dog is on guard duty, but Dale sits down next to Glenn while Amy claims the spot on Daryl’s right hand. Andrea looks at the spot on his left and then decides to sit next to Lori instead.

That suits Daryl fine. It leaves the spot for Will, anyway. His dad claims it with a sigh and two plates, passing one to his son.

‘Thanks, dad.’

‘And?’

Daryl glances up to meet Jacqui’s eye, ‘thanks ma’am.’

The group shares curious looks. Lori is the first one to brave the interaction. She takes a bite and hums, ‘thanks Jacqui. And Will.’

‘Welcome,’ the hunter mutters as he digs in too. He watches how Daryl wolfs his food down in a matter of seconds. Then he shovels some of his own food onto Daryl’s plastic plate. ‘Eat up,’ he says before the boy can protest. ‘Ya must be hungry.’ There’s a faint trail of guilt in the words, but no one but Daryl seems to notice.

When breakfast is done, Will smokes another cigarette while most of the group disperses to do their chores. Shane lingers around the fire. ‘So,’ he says carefully, hands on his hips. ‘Are you two going out hunting again?’ He glances at Lori who is telling Carl to stay in sight of T-dog while she goes out to find some mushrooms and berries.

Daryl licks his finger and tries to clean some mud off his boots just so he won’t have to look at the cop.

Will has no problem meeting the man’s eye. ‘I am. Dare’s staying at the camp today.’

‘I can help,’ the boy urges.

‘Nah, don’t need the help. Besides, it’d be good for ya. Just stay here a while, horse around a bit with them other kids,’ he waves a vague hand at the Morales kids, Carl and then Sophia, who is still sitting around the fire with her mother. Ed is nowhere to be seen. Daryl figures he’s still asleep, or actively avoiding Will. ‘I heard ya were drawin’ the other day,’ Will says to the small girl, who shrinks into her mother when addressed. ‘Maybe Dare can play too? He likes to draw.’

‘Dad!’ Daryl hisses, ‘I ain’t no kid no more!’

‘Of course you’re a kid,’ Will scoffs. ‘And I'm getting sick 'nd tired of being drawn on, so ya’d better ask real nicely if the lady wants to share her paper with ya.’

Carol frowns as she drapes a protective arm around her daughter, ‘being drawn on?’

Will grins, ‘Daryl wants to be a tattoo artist. Wanted to be one, anyway. He gets to practice on me sometimes. He’s good. Real good.’

Pride swells in Daryl's chest but he ducks his head and checks his father's shoulder with his own to stop his boasting. 'Stop,' he mutters for good measure.

'You can come sit with us anytime, Daryl,' Carol tells him kindly and Sophia nods in agreement.

'Time to get some work done,' Will says as he gets up and stretches. He throws the last of his cigarette into the dying embers. 'Walk me to the edge?' He aims a kick at Daryl's boot.

The boy jumps up and follows his father to the trail leading into the woods. Near the first tree, Will turns and sinks to one knee so he has to look up at his son. 'You be good now, okay?'

It sounds like a joke to Daryl because Will has never cared before how he behaved. He sticks out his tongue.

'No, I'm serious,' Will says sternly.

Daryl quickly retracts his tongue.

'Look...' His father sighs and rubs at the stubble on his cheek. 'I know I've asked ya to do stuff... Hard things, right? And that's - that's necessary right now, okay? You can't be weak. And ya ain't,' Will quickly says when Daryl frowns. 'Ya ain't. You're a Dixon. Damn, the Lord knows you're tough as nails, but... you're also _twelve_. And my boy. Last boy I have, hmm?' Will cups Daryl's cheek. ''s a tough world, but don't... Don't lose yourself, okay?'

Daryl nods even though he's not sure what his dad means.

Will can read him like a book, however. 'Carl's your age, right? Don't see him killin' deads. Don't get me wrong,' he adds, 'you're not like him and I don't want you to be. You're strong and a lot smarter than your old man. But I see him, runnin' around, playin'. Hmm. You should be able to do that, too.'

'Dad,' Daryl objects, 'but I can help. It's what you always say, right? They're damn city slickers who don't know their ass from their elbow! I don't want to play. I want to _help_.'

'Then help me by stayin' here today. Go swimming, ya like that. Draw something, hell, play goddamn tag for all I care. Just... play, okay? Give your old man some peace of mind.' Will worries his bottom lip for a second. 'Your mom wouldn't want ya to.... you know? Be too much of a Dixon,' he grins at the end but Daryl knows that he's not joking.

'Why're ya always mentioning her now?' Daryl asks because he's too curious to keep it to himself anymore. 'Ya never did before.'

Will looks down at his wedding band. ''cause I loved her. If it were up to me at the time, you wouldn't be here - I haven’t ever lied about that - but she loved ya from the moment ya were born. Hey,' he taps Daryl's cheeks when the boy looks down at his boots. 'I love you _now_. You know that. Chin up.'

Daryl meets his dad's gaze again.

'You 'nd Merle were the most important people in her life. It'd be a damn waste if you didn't know nothing about her. She was amazing,' Will sighs. 'I just wanna do right by her. I know I ain't worth a damn as a dad, but... I'm tryin', okay?' He jostles Daryl's shoulder playfully. _'Okay_?'

'Okay,' Daryl laughs as he shoves at his dad's broad chest.

'Good,' Will stands again. 'Run along now. If ya go out to swim, I want there to be someone else with ya. One of the guys. Jim or Morales or something. Hell, Shane, I don't give a fuck. Don't go off on your own, stay were they can keep an eye on ya. Or stay in the camp with Carol. She seems like good people.'

Daryl wrinkles his nose. 'She's married to Ed.'

'Good women marry bad men all the damn time. Don't change the fact that she's good people.'

His mom was good people, too. Daryl knows that.

'Stay out of Ed's way, though. If he bothers you, go find Shane, okay? Or that China kid. He likes ya.'

'Glenn,' Daryl nods as he aims a kick at a stone. 'Always stickin' his nose in.'

'Gave ya an Oreo though.' Will laughs when Daryl gapes at him. 'Don't think I ain't keepin' my eye on you. Don't get attached, okay? They're still stupid city folks. They'll die first.'

 

 

It feels strange to be among the group without the shadow of Will looming over him. He feels oddly vulnerable. The mean looks Andrea shoots him sting a bit more, Ed's presence in his peripheral vision causes the hair on his arms to rise and, whether he likes it or not, he subconsciously keeps track of where Shane is at all times. Pig or not, the man at least tries to be good and seems to hate Ed as much as Will does. When shit goes down, Daryl is sure he'll be able to keep Ed at bay.

For a while, he just slinks through camp, observing everyone as they do their chores.

Shane is teaching Carl how to tie knots. From a distance, Daryl watches. The boy messes up again and again but Shane stays patient as he goes through the entire process for a third time. Daryl chews on his thumb and frowns. By this time, Will would have given him a slap for not paying attention, but Shane just laughs and checks Carl's shoulder. After what seems like a millionth attempt, the boy gets it right.

'Yes!' Shane hoots, hugging the boy tightly. 'Good job! That's it!

Daryl leaves them be, a sour feeling building in the pit of his stomach. He walks past the RV.

'Dixon!' It's Morales. The large man heads over to him, throwing a look over his shoulder at his family that's waiting near their car. A boy and little girl, a wife who has a doubtful look on her face.

'What do ya want?' Daryl asks, lifting his chin high and glaring at the man. 'Will ain't here no more.'

'I know. The kids want to go swimming. Wanna come with?'

Daryl stares at him for a second. Then he shakes himself out of it. 'The fuck would I wanna do that for?'

Morales shrugs. 'It's hot.'

It _is_ hot. Daryl's shirt sticks to his chest, and sweat plasters his hair to his forehead. He doesn't know Morales, however. The man seems a little resigned to be talking to a Dixon. A baseball bat rests on his left shoulder.

'You comin' with?' Daryl asks as he glances at the Morales family. The boy and girl are already wearing their swimsuits.

'Yeah. I'll keep an eye out. Be on guard.'

Daryl clutches to the strap of his bow.

'Hey, Daryl,' Glenn appears at his side. There's a small grin on his face. Sweat drips down his sideburns, it has soaked his hat and shirt. Just a couple of minutes ago, he was chopping firewood for tonight with Jim. 'Come on, let's go!'

Daryl frowns, 'you comin' too?'

Glenn gestures to his soaked shirt. 'Yeah, I'm coming too. Let's go.' He gestures for the boy to take the lead and Daryl slinks past Morales with a wary look in his eye. The man sighs and follows them. His family joins too.

The boy and girl dance around their mother.

Morales and his wife go to sit on one of the boulders at the edge of the water, their backs to their kids and eyes on the woods surrounding the lake. They keep watch while their kids run into the water. Their mother tells them to keep their voices down.

Daryl hesitates for a second and then puts his bow down near Morales. He drapes the leather vest over it carefully. Blue eyes glance up at the man. 'Don't touch it, okay?'

 'Of course not, Daryl,' Morales says and Daryl can't help but feel like the man has trouble biting back a smile. 'Have fun.'

After a tiny nod, Daryl toes his boots off and shimmies out of his jeans. He looks at Glenn and is glad to see that the other man doesn't have any swimwear either. Glenn strips to his boxers and heads over to the water. Daryl shrugs out of his shirt and kicks his clothes onto a pile. When he turns towards the lake, he hears Morales' wife gasp. He whirls around again.

'What?' He snaps.

'Nothing, nothing,' Morales says quickly. 'Go on.'

Daryl narrows his eyes but dismisses it. A couple of steps later, he feels like an idiot. A shiver runs over his spine. He'd forgotten about the wounds on his back. He wraps his arms around his waist and thinks about running back to his clothes and disappearing into the woods, away from the prying eyes he can still feel burn on his back. The tips of his ears glow red in shame.

A splash of cold water shocks him out of his thoughts.

 _'Fuck_ , that's cold, man!' He shouts at Glenn, who is laughing at his shocked face.

'Don't be a wimp!'

'Ain't!'

'Come on then,' Glenn leers. 'Prove it!'

Daryl can't help but grin. He runs into the water and then dives down, coming up for air near the Asian.

'Good job,' Glenn laughs as he leans back into the water, washing his hair and running a hand over his face.

A split second of hesitation and then Daryl jumps forward, landing with his hands on both of Glenn's shoulder. The Asian splutters as they go down together. It doesn't take long for the Morales kids to join in. The boy takes on Daryl, dragging him beneath the surface and kicking his feet out from under him. Daryl retaliates immediately, grabbing hold of his arm and taking him with him. They both laugh as they surface again, spitting water out and complaining that it went up their noses. The girl hangs around Glenn's neck, tugging furiously but to no avail. The boys glance at each other before they tackle the young man and help the girl out.

 

 

It's almost an hour later when Daryl trudges back towards his clothes. He's panting and tired, his skin reddening from a mild sunburn. The Morales kids laugh with him over an inside-joke at Glenn's expense, but the Asian doesn’t seem to mind.

It's a bit of a struggle to put his jeans back on, but he manages all the same and stomps his boots on. He scrunches up his nose at the thought of putting on his shirt just to get it wet again. In the end, he decides to use his shirt as a towel and then slips the leather vest on. It covers his back, at least.

'Thanks for keeping watch, Morales,' Glenn says. 'All quiet?'

'Yeah, and you're welcome. Thanks for entertaining these devils,' he hugs his children close. 'It sounded like they had a lot of fun.'

'Least I can do on my day off. Come on, Daryl,' Glenn smiles as he heads back to the camp. 'I don't know about you but I'm hungry. Let's see if there's something we can eat.'

Daryl throws his bow onto his back again and follows him without complaint. His stomach is growling too. Back at the camp he notices that Will hasn't returned yet. He'll probably be gone for a couple more hours.

'Sit down,' Glenn gestures towards the fire. 'Get dry and I'll get us something to chew on. I need to talk to Dale for a second.'

Daryl falls down beside the fire and lies down, staring up at the blue sky. After a while, he looks to the side, where Andrea, Amy and Lori are sorting through some mushrooms they gathered. He bites on his lower lip. 'Ya can't eat those.'

The women look up at him.

'Excuse me?' Andrea says.

'The ones in your hand just now,' Daryl gestures with his chin to her hand. 'Can't eat those. Poisonous.'

'Are you sure?' Amy asks with a doubtful look on her face.

‘Yeah.’

Andrea scoffs, ‘when did you join the boy scouts?’

‘We can ask Shane when he comes back,’ Lori says to calm the situation, ‘or Will, just to be sure.’ She gives Daryl a kind smile. ‘Thank you for the heads up, Daryl.’

He’s not surprised that they don’t believe him. Will never does either, even though Daryl never lies to him. It doesn’t matter. Shane will tell them soon enough.

‘Daryl,’ Glenn calls out from near the RV. ‘Can you give me a hand?’

The boy drags himself to his feet and walks over, scowling at Dale who is standing right next to Glenn. He glances at the Asian. ‘What do ya want?’

‘Inside,’ Glenn nods at the RV.

‘Why?’

The Asian sighs, ‘just go inside, Daryl.’

‘No.’ Daryl lets his hand rest on his knife.

‘Dale,’ Glenn mutters.

The older man throws his hands up, ‘all right, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.’ He goes up the ladder to talk to Jim, who is on guard duty at the moment.

‘The wounds on your back,’ Glenn says with a pained expression, ‘did Will put anything on them?’

‘Like what?’ Daryl asks because there’s no point in denying the fact that he has the wounds anymore.

Glenn blinks, surprised. ‘Like antibiotics.’

‘What for?’ The look on Glenn’s face causes Daryl to feel stupid and that makes him angry and defensive. ‘Why don’t ya mind your own damn business, huh? Done told ya already!’

‘Please go inside the RV,’ Glenn says, stepping a bit closer so he won’t have to raise his voice to shout over Daryl’s outburst. ‘It’s probably hurting right now, right? It burns a bit?’

Daryl bites on the inside of his cheek. ‘Ain’t no bitch.’

‘Daryl…’

The boy huffs and jumps into the RV. He doesn’t wipe his boots and considers it payback of some kind. Of course his back is hurting right now. The water hadn’t been the cleanest and it had stung in the mostly open wounds, but he knows that sting. It always fades. Sometimes it takes a couple of days, or one nasty fever, but it always fades.

‘Dale had some antibacterial cream, but Carol came with this one,’ Glenn mutters as he pulls a small tube out of pocket and reads the label. ‘Maybe this is better, I’m not sure…’

‘You went tellin’?’ Daryl asks as he puts his bow on the couch and sits down on the table, his back to Glenn. He takes his vest off.

‘No, said I stepped on a jagged rock.’

‘They believed that?’

‘Carol never asks any questions. Dale didn’t, though. I didn’t specify, really,’ Glenn says as he steps up behind the boy and puts some cream on his fingers. ‘I washed my hands, don’t worry.’

‘Like I give a fuck,’ Daryl mutters as he braces himself for the foreign touch. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. In fact, it doesn’t hurt at all. The cream is cool on his heated skin. It startles him a bit.

‘Easy,’ Glenn grabs hold of his shoulder to keep him in place. ‘Stay still. Why did he do it this time?’

‘I didn’t listen.’

‘How come?’

Daryl bites on his fingernail. ‘We were low on food. Snares were empty, didn’t find no game. Will got mad, thought Lori was bitchin’ about it, blamin’ him or something. She weren’t. Sometimes,’ Daryl rubs at his nose and ducks his head low, ‘sometimes he just gets mad, right? He told me not to help y’all anymore.’

‘But you got us those squirrels.’

‘Yeah. Thought maybe he wouldn’t find out, but Shane and his stupid mug showed up and gave us the food with the squirrel meat in it. Of course he knew then. Threw away my portion and showed me good.’ Daryl grits his teeth. ‘I _told_ Lori we didn’t want no food. Stupid bitch.’

‘You tried to help. You _did_ help.’ Glenn says. ‘So what happened? He got mad?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Used his belt?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I should have listened.’

‘So he was teaching you a lesson? Again?’

‘You done yet?’ Daryl twists around, trying to see his back.

‘Almost,’ Glenn tells him. ‘Just let me put some bandages on them, okay? Good,’ he comments when the boy sulkily turns back around. ‘Must be nice that Will was gone for the day, right?’

‘Would rather have gone with him,’ Daryl says because Will is blood and he’s not going to betray his dad for some Asian dude.

‘I know. But we had fun, right?’

‘Whatever.’

‘It’s okay to have fun sometimes, Daryl.’

‘Half of the planet is dead and walking,’ Daryl snaps, ‘and ya wanna have _fun_?’

‘No. I want _you_ to have fun. All done.’

Daryl shrugs his vest back on. Then he turns and watches how Glenn washes his hands awkwardly, trying to balance a bottle while letting the water pour over his hands. He hops off the table, heads over and helps the man by holding the bottle. ‘Ya should mind your own damn business, China.’

‘Why?’ Glenn asks. ‘Looks like you could use someone watching your back.’

Daryl hesitates for a moment. He bites his lip.

‘Daryl, we can help.’

‘I don’t need help. Ain’t some stupid city slicker. We do things differently.’

Glenn sighs. ‘Daryl…’

‘Don’t,’ the boy scoffs as he heads over to the exit. ‘Thanks for the stuff,’ he waves at his back. ‘Just… don’t go prodding, okay? Dad is… Just stay out of his way. He don’t like Asians none.’

‘Or democrats, or people of color, or gays, or women who have an opinion, yeah I’ve heard the rant a couple of time already,’ Glenn says while he rolls his eyes. ‘Is he coming back before dark?’

Daryl nods, ‘yeah. He didn’t take much gear. It’s cold out at night, so he’ll be back.’

‘Tail between his legs,’ Glenn mutters. ‘Look, I was talking with Shane earlier, we need to go into the city with a bigger group. There’s only so much stuff I can carry on my own and if we’re all going to stay here a while, we need more supplies. I’ll ask Will too, get him out of your hair a bit, is that okay?’

‘Free country.’

Only later, when Will is back and already picking a fight with Jim over something stupid, does Daryl dare to admit that another day without Will around might not be the worst thing to ever happen.

 

 

 


	10. All gnawed on

* * *

 

 

 

The group leaves at dawn. Daryl is not entirely sure how anyone managed to convince Will to join the little expedition, but he figures that his dad somehow connected the city to both cigarettes and more booze so he’s not too surprised. He doubts that the others will let him make those a priority, however.

Even though he practically begged, Will wouldn’t let him come along to Atlanta. Too dangerous. Andrea and Jacqui were allowed to come, which Daryl had found hilarious because the blonde woman might have a gun, but she sure doesn’t know how to use the damn thing. Glenn is leading the group, so that’s at least something.

Daryl had watched them leave.

Shane had passed a riffle to Will. He hadn’t needed to ask whether the redneck knew how to use it.

The morning passes slowly. There’s not much to do around camp. When the boredom almost drives him crazy, he goes to find Sophia. The girl is folding clothes inside the RV. Daryl slips in too and leans against the table. ‘Hey,’ he mutters. ‘What’re ya doin’?’

‘Helping my mom.’

‘Hmm.’ Daryl glances at Carol, who is smiling at him. ‘Gonna be long?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m bored as fuck. Ya wanna go swimming?’

Carol shifts in her seat. ‘Sophia is supposed to stay inside the camp borders, Daryl. And so are you.’

‘Says who? We went swimmin’ yesterday.’

‘Says Shane.’

‘He ain’t the boss of me.’

Sophia squints up at him, ‘we’re supposed to listen to him. He knows what to do.’

‘What does he know about dead people walking? Pssh. When we was headin’ over here, I saw a guy eat his wife’s guts. Was a little girl too, in the backseat of a car. Dead, but you know? Still movin’ and shit. Who the fuck knows anything about that?’

Sophia stares at him.

‘Daryl,’ Carol says as she reaches out to stroke her daughter’s blonde hair comfortingly. ‘Please don’t talk about such things.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Why not? It happened. I saw it! I ain’t lyin’.’ He looks at the girl, ‘what’re ya cryin’ for? Didn’t happen to you, did it? Weren’t your mom and dad eating each oth-‘

‘Daryl,’ Carol’s voice is suddenly sharp and unforgiving. She stands up to tower over him. ‘ _Leave_.’

The boy gapes at her for a second. Then he shivers and backs away, nerves causing his spine to tingle. He’s suddenly very aware that she’s married to Ed and that her daughter is crying because of him. The blood drains from his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, stumbling over the words. ‘Sophia, I – I’m sorry, okay?’

‘Just leave, Daryl,’ Carol says as she sinks down on the couch again.

He escapes the RV and hates how his heart is beating in his throat. It doesn’t help that the first person he sees is Ed. The man is sitting with Jim near their tents. For a second, the man looks at him and Daryl thinks that he just knows in the way Will always seems to know everything he’s done wrong. That he can read him just as easily. But Ed just glares at him and then turns back to Jim.

Dixon’s don’t get lucky, Daryl thinks as he hastily makes his way over to Lori.

‘Where’s Shane at,’ he asks because Dixon’s get smart.

‘Good morning to you too, Daryl,’ Lori says with a raised eyebrow. ‘He’s getting water from the river.’

‘He _left_?’

Lori’s disapproving look turns into one of surprise. ‘Yes, just a couple of minutes ago. Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothin’,’ Daryl brings his thumb to his mouth and gnaws on the nail.

‘Are you sure? Maybe I can help.’

Daryl glances at her and shifts his weight nervously. ‘Don’t need no help.’

‘Okay,’ Lori smiles down at him before continuing with her chore. ‘I’m here if you change your mind.’

The boy squints at her warily. He lets one hand rest on the band of his bow to feel more secure. When it’s clear that the woman is not going to push him into talking, he relaxes a little bit. With a hop, he jumps onto one of the logs and walks along it, trying to balance. He keeps looking at the RV from the corner of his eye, just to make sure that he can make a run for it when Carol calls her husband over.

She doesn’t. At least, not yet.

He swings his leg a little and hops onto the next log, nearly falling off in the process. With a soft laugh, he spins around to head back to where he started. When he looks up through his fringe, he sees that Lori is looking at him. ‘What?’ he asks. Now that he’s no longer looking at what he’s doing, his feet slip from the log and he drops to the ground again. ‘Ya broke my streak!’

‘Sorry,’ Lori laughs. ‘You suddenly looked your age. It caught me off guard.’

Daryl blinks. Then blushes and transforms his surprised expression into a nasty scowl. ‘Pssh. Mind your own business, lady.’ He sinks down on the log, plucking the bark with his fingernails. He bites on his lip, digs the toes of his boots into the ground. Then he looks up at her again. ‘I made Sophia cry.’

‘Oh?’

He’s not sure what to say to that so he just nods.

‘How did you do that?’

‘Told her something. She started to cry.’

Lori laughs softly and then sits down beside him. ‘I’m going to need a little more information, sweetie.’

He scrunches his nose up at the endearment. ‘She said Shane knew about things now – like the dead people – and we had to listen to him ‘bout stayin’ in camp. What does he know, huh? He ain’t ever out there. Told her we saw a car wreck on the way out here. Mom, dad, little girl too. All dead as fuck. Dad was snacking on the mom.’ Daryl bites on his fingernail. ‘What the hell does Shane know about that?’

Lori is staring at him in the same way Carol had been. She shakes herself out of it. ‘You told Sophia that?’

‘Hmm-hmm. She started cryin’ though.’

‘Yeah, no wonder,’ Lori huffs. Her face softens a bit when she looks at the boy. ‘Look, Daryl, it’s…. She’s really scared. We’re all trying for everything to be as normal as they can be for her and Carl because they’re still so young, so maybe you shouldn’t tell them those kind of things. It scares them.’

‘They’re the same age as me.’

The woman looks pained for a moment. ‘I know. God,’ she brushes her dark hair back. ‘You’re only twelve, for God’s sake. The things you’ve seen, you’re not.. you’re not scared?’

He’s scared of a lot of things in life, of course. Some of them have faded now. He no longer fears changing in the locker room for gym class, nor hearing the doorbell and then the introduction of two new social works who are hoping that he will mess up and rat on Will by mistake. The older kids are gone and dealt with, he supposes, and he doubts that Merle’s old dealers will be able to find them in this mess. Of course there are other things that make him go cold inside now. There’s the threat of Will in the shadow of his very being, everything he does will be judged and the rules are ever-changing and enforced without warning most of the time, so he tries to tip-toe around camp and keep his head down until his dad is back to actually tell him what the rules are today.

He knows he’s messed up already. That scares him. Ed might not know now and Daryl isn’t sure whether he will ever know but it feels like Carol has ammunition and a cocked gun pressed to his temple. She could pull the trigger on him, if she wanted.

He hates that he is scared that Shane isn’t here. Morales is over yonder and maybe he would break up a fight, but he’s not sure. Shane has a sense of duty, and no matter how ridiculous the Dixon’s think that duty is, he will stick to it. Even for him.

He’s scared of people and people not being there, but the things he’s seen?

‘Ya mean of the dead people?’ he asks with a small frown.

Lori nods.

‘No. They’re stupid, ain’t nothing but a rotting sack of bones and blood.’ He watches how Lori presses the back of her hand against her mouth. ‘What? Jesus Christ, they ain’t _people_ no more. My dad shot one in the chest about a dozen times and it wouldn’t go down. They _ain’t_ people!’

‘I know,’ Lori hushes. ‘I know. Daryl,’ she searches for the right words. ‘Don’t get mad, okay? Let me finish.’

He already hates where this conversation is going but nods anyway.

‘You and Carl are the same age, but he is really scared. Everything is new for him. It’s a new place, he’s never been camping before and he doesn’t know these people, but we’re trying to make it work because we have to. We have to get used to these things now. Camping, taking care of ourselves, working for our food in a different way than before.’ She smiles at him, ‘and I try to keep him safe. But I also try to keep him from certain things, like the dead people. He doesn’t need to see that.’

‘Why not?’ Daryl asks because he’d hated when Will had made him kill the little girl but now he understands that she had been dead for a long time already. He knows he’s only delivering the final blow. It’s mercy, in a way. A quick death, painless as far as they know. It doesn’t matter and it’s not on him. He knows that now and won’t ever hesitate to pull his trigger or draw his knife. ‘It’s just how it is now.’

Lori presses her fingers against her lips for a second, swallowing. ‘Maybe we don’t want to believe that yet.’

Daryl frowns, ‘What do ya mean?’

‘Maybe we’re still hoping that the military will roll in and save us. And when they come, I want my little boy to still be my little boy.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Daryl bites out.

‘He’s not like you.’

Daryl just looks at her.

‘I’m not your mother,’ Lori says. ‘But I look at you and want the same thing for you. To be a happy little boy. To be ignorant of how things are now. To not know,’ she explains when he frowns a little. ‘But I know it’s too late for that.’ She reaches out and brushes his brown hair out of his blue eyes. ‘That’s why we’re letting you hunt and go off on your own. Because you’re not like Carl. And you’re too far gone already.’

Daryl can feel his blood turn to ice inside his veins. His mouth goes dry. ‘I’m not a bad person,’ he whispers. ‘That’s not fair. I just tried to help and –‘

Lori cups his cheek, ‘you _are_ a good person, Daryl. Of course you are. You know how Glenn looks out for you, right? And Shane, too? Maybe you can do that for Sophia and Carl. Like a big brother.’

He knows Will would hate that, but he’s been spending more time with these people and he starts to think that they might not be so bad, after all. So he nods, even though it’s a bit hesitant.

‘Okay,’ Lori nods back with a smile. ‘But you’re still supposed to listen to the grown-ups, okay? And always tell us when you’re going out, so we can keep an eye on you.’

He scoffs and jumps to his feet. ‘Whatever. Y’all ain’t the boss of me.’

‘Good,’ the woman says like he agreed. ‘Run along now. Finish your chores.’

 

 

Sophia and Carol are still in the RV. The girl is no longer crying.

Daryl dashes in and slams the black marker on the table. It causes them both to jump and Daryl grits his teeth. ‘I’m sorry ‘bout what I said ‘nd I’m sorry I made ya cry, okay? Here’s your marker back, too. Stole it. Sorry.’

Sophia smiles up at him, ‘you can keep it. It’s okay.’

‘Oh.’ Daryl worries his bottom lip. ‘Okay,’ he stuffs the marker back into his pocket. ‘I mean; thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Daryl glances at Carol, who is biting back a smile. He blushes and wobbles on his feet. ‘Gotta do my chores now and after I’ll go huntin’, but…’ he squints at the girl, ‘maybe I can borrow some paper tomorrow?’

‘Sure, we can draw tomorrow,’ Sophia nods.

‘Cool,’ Daryl ducks his head and then turns on the spot, ‘gotta go now. See ya ‘round. Bye ma’am, sorry again.’

‘See you soon, Daryl. Thank you for apologizing.’

 

 

‘Hey buddy,’ Shane greets when he spots the youngest Dixon readying his bow at the edge of the forest. The boy flinches because they’re not buddies. ‘Lori told me you were looking for me. What’s up?’

‘Nothing, done fixed it,’ Daryl mutters and he sighs when Shane puts his hands on his hips, a sure sign that he’s not going to leave before he knows the whole story. ‘Made Sophia cry, though they’d might call Ed down on me. Will said I should find you if it happens, or Glenn, but he’s gone too, so…’ He trails off and shrugs.

Shane looks surprised. ‘That’s good of Will, real good,’ he nods. ‘He’s right, you should come find me if that happens. Sorry I was out. Did he do anything?’

‘Nah. Threw me a nasty look but that ain’t nothin’ new around here.’

Shane lets his head hang for a second. ‘I’m sorry about that, sport. Where are you going?’

‘Just goin’ to check them snares.’

‘Okay,’ the cop crouches down so they’re on the same level. ‘Got your knife on you?’

‘’course I do!’

‘Good, good. Don’t go too far, now. To the snares and back. It’s going to get dark soon and I want you to be back before dusk. Holler if you need us.’

Daryl rolls his eyes.

‘I mean it, Daryl. I know Lori talked to you today. It seems wrong to send a twelve year old out there on his own, but if you really want to go, you gotta play by the rules. Knife and bow with you, back before dusk and holler if you’re in trouble.’

‘Fine, Jesus Christ, go mind your own damn business.’

‘Will’s gone for the day,’ Shane reminds the boy. ‘That makes you our business.’ He reaches out and playfully swipes at Daryl’s hair. ‘Now go, the clock is ticking.’

Daryl ducks away from the hand and glances up at the sky to check the time. The man’s right. The snares are a ways away and the sun is already getting low.

He takes off running.

 

 

Nobody seems to mind that he returns empty handed that night. He lingers at the edge of the camp uneasily when he notices that Will and the group haven’t returned yet. It’s Lori who calls him over for dinner. She sits him down next to Carl and gives him his food.

There’s no mention of the missing group members so Daryl swallows his words about how they could be dead for all they know and just eats his dinner instead.

He’s a bit surprised when Carl strikes up a conversation. They don’t have a lot in common. Daryl hasn’t been on any baseball team and he doesn’t really play football either. He likes NASCAR but Carl never watched that and the other boy never shot a bow in his life and has no opinion on brands or deals or game. But while he starts to feel out of place and embarrassed, Carl just soldiers on.

They both like candy bars.

They both hate mathematics.

The Morales kids join in, the girl likes mathematics, but Sophia comes to her defense when the boys pick on her for it. They all like their English classes but hate spelling bees. They talk about cartoons Daryl only watched in secret or when he could steal the remote for long enough, and boybands Daryl only knows by name.

He’s surprised to find that he’s having a lot of fun.

When it gets dark, Amy walks him to his tent. It embarrasses him a little but he doesn’t mind so much when she tells him that everything will be fine and his dad will be back in the morning.

 

 

He’s not, though.

The morning passes quick enough because Sophia actually comes to get him so he can use her paper while she finishes her homework. Every once a while she tries to get his help on a problem but he just chews on his fingernails and shrugs. When Carol looks away for a second, however, he quickly leans over and scrawls the right answer down for her. They grin at each other and Daryl doesn’t feel so bad about using her paper because it’s not charity when he gets to work for it.

After that, he helps Amy boil water by carrying the heavy containers for her. She talks about how her dad used to take her out camping all the time but he gets the feeling that the trips were very different from the times Will took him out to learn. She’s smiling when she tells the stories. In the end, he gets caught off guard and laughs out loud when she describes how she fell into the water one time. She looks very pleased and reaches out to ruffle his hair.

Daryl ducks away from her and sticks his tongue out before darting over to where Shane is keeping watch. He picks up a small pebble and throws it at the cop on top of the RV to get his attention. ‘Yo, pig! I’m goin’ out huntin’. Got my knife, I’ll be back way before dusk, okay? Saw some deer trails yesterday. Gonna go find it, drag it back to camp.’

Shane leans forward to check on him, probably looking for the knife and he nods when he spots it. ‘Third rule?’

‘What?’

‘Holler if you need us.’

‘Whatever, man.’

‘And call me a pig again and I’ll throw you into the lake.’

‘Means you’ll have to catch me first, pigs ain’t ever fast enough to catch me,’ Daryl grins before sprinting away when Shane gets up with a laugh and mock threatening look on his face.

 

 

He follows the deer for miles. And shoots it two times.

Sweat is running down his neck by the time he hops over the last boulder. It’s a small blessing that the deer is heading towards camp, it means he won’t have to drag it too far. He already knows that he’ll be too proud to call Shane or any of the guys over for help.

‘Two arrows in the ass,’ he mutters as he wipes the sweat from his forehead. ‘Just fuckin’ die already, Bambi.’

After half a mile, he swings around the last corner only to come face to face with a gnawed-on deer and the rest of the group. Shane is aiming a shotgun at his head, which shouldn’t surprise him so much, but he still backs away a step before hardening his face into a dark scowl as he looks at their lost meal.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he cusses. ‘That’s _my_ deer!’ He jumps over the carcass to yank one of the bolts out. A beheaded walker is on the ground next to it. Damn thing ate half of his kill already. Anger wells up inside of him. He’d wanted to drag the deer back to camp and drop it at his father’s feet to show that he wasn’t some useless kid. He glances at Shane for a second. He also wanted them to eat a good meal tonight, and maybe, if he’s really honest, he wanted to be part of the group. The deer would just sweetened the deal while Will soured it.

‘Look at it. All gnawed on by this filthy disease-bearin’, motherless poxy bastard,’ he aims a mean kick at the dead deer to vent his frustration.

‘Calm down, son,’ Dale sighs. ‘That’s not helping.’

‘What do you know about it, old man?’ He bites back in the heat of the moment. ‘Why don't you take that stupid hat and go back to _on Golden Pond_?’ He glares at Dale before turning to Shane. ‘I've been tracking this deer for miles. Was gonna drag it back to camp so Will could cook us up some venison.’ He scrunches up his nose, ‘do ya think we can cut around this chewed up part, right there?’ He points at it with one of his bolts.

Shane sighs and shakes his head. ‘I would not risk that.’

‘That’s a damn shame.’ He pulls his other bolts out of the deer. ‘I’ve caught some more squirrels, about a dozen or so. That’ll have to do.’

The head reanimates beside his feet. Eyes opening, mouth snapping at his boot.

Amy and Andrea flee the scene.

‘Come on, people,’ Daryl mutters as he loads his bow quickly. ‘What the hell?’ He hits it in the eye. The skull turns to mush beneath his boot when he pulls the bolt out again. ‘It’s gotta be the brain. Don’t y’all know nothing?’ For the first time it registers that there’s a stranger among them. A guy in jeans and white shirt. Clean-cut, with a lightly nauseous look on his face. Daryl dismisses him. He glances up at Glenn. ‘Hey China,’ he grins, hoisting the string with squirrels higher onto his shoulder. ‘Glad y’all are back, is my dad at the camp?’ He hops over the dead body and starts heading back to his tent. ‘Dad! Yo, dad, where are you at?’ He zips past the tents and is met with the shocked and mournful-looking group near the RV.

‘Daryl, why don’t you slow up a bit, buddy? I need to talk to you.’ Shane requests.

‘About what?’

‘About Will. There – eh – there was a problem in Atlanta.’

Everyone is looking at him. The conversation continues and Daryl barely even notices, even though he participates. Will is dead, might be dead, they’re not sure, which makes Daryl even madder because that’s his _dad_ they’re talking about and how can you not be _sure_?

There’s this new guy who steps up but can’t bear to look him in the eye when he does it.

‘Who are you?’ Daryl spits out.

‘Rick Grimes.’

‘Rick grimes,’ the boy growls, ‘you got something you wanna tell me?’

 

 

It’s only later, when Shane is holding him down in a chokehold, that he wishes he’d never asked that question.

 

 


	11. We said we'd try

 

 

* * *

 

 

His dad has been handcuffed to a roof by the new guy – Rick Grimes – and everyone is _still_ looking at him.

Angry tears are rolling down his cheeks. He wipes them away but it's no use because everyone has already seen them. Rick wants to have a calm discussion about the topic but Daryl can't manage that. Not now and certainly not with him because it's all his fault.T-dog might take the fall by claiming that it was on him, but Daryl doesn't want to hear it. He can't even look at Rick who talks about it like it was Will's own fault, like he was asking for it, and just left him there, trapped like an animal.

He _hates_ Rick.

Rick, who turns out to be Carl's dad and came back to him and the kid looks so damn happy that it makes Daryl sick.

'Just tell me where he is,' Daryl and his voice breaks on the words. 'So I can go get him.'

Shane walks towards him, right up into his space and reaches out to land a comforting hand on his shoulder like he hadn't been choking him out seconds earlier. 'Easy, buddy,' he tries but Daryl stumbles out of his reach. The knife is gone. He looks for it.

Rick kicks it away further. 'Watch it, brother,' he warns Shane in a low voice.

'Nah, nah, he's not going to do anything. Daryl, calm down, okay, sport?'

'I'm goin' to fuck ya up.' Daryl is still looking at Rick when he makes that promise. There's an anger inside of him he can't quite control. Suddenly he understands why his dad loses it sometimes, why he lashes out in blind rage and can only calm down when there's blood trickling down Daryl's back. 'Get your hands off of me, you fuckin' pig,' Daryl screams when Shane reaches out to tap his cheek in order to get his attention. With one easy move, he's holding his bow and the cop quickly backs up. 'Easy, now, _easy_.'

They don't even know that he still has to load the damn thing. That makes him even angrier because they're all stupid and his dad is locked up on a roof and not _here_ and-

'Daryl,' Glenn walks towards him now. A calming hand on Rick's shoulder, then a touch to get Shane to relax and walk away towards his partner and the dark eyes on the boy. 'You know what Will is like. Rick didn't have a choice. T-dog made a mistake, but we can still make it right. The door to the roof is padlocked; the geeks can't get to him.'

The words don't make any sense to him but Glenn stops just outside of his personal space and kneels down so he's not looming over him. He's not smiling but he doesn't look as scared as Daryl feels, so that makes it better.

'It's my dad...'

Glenn nods and says 'I know, Dare,' just as Morales scoffs, looks at T-dog and then rolls his eyes.

The bolt is in his hand before he even realizes that he's loading the bow.

'No,' Glenn puts his hand on the weapon to prevent the boy from being able to swing it up and take aim. 'Just focus on me. We'll go back for him. Tomorrow morning. No,' he says quickly when Daryl snarls, ' we can't go right now. It's getting dark, Dare. Think about it. We'd be putting everyone at risk.'

'I don't give a fuck, y'all left him there. Just tell me where he is, if you're too pussy to go, I can go get him.'

'You haven't seen the city, Daryl,' Glenn says softly. 'It's – it's worse than we thought. They were all riled up because of Rick, they swarmed the building. Will got into a fight with us while he was firing at the geeks from the rooftop.'

'So ya got mad because he did what needs to be done, huh?' Daryl demands.

'It didn't help. He took out three, maybe four, but Daryl, there were _hundreds_ of them.'

The boy frowns a little and loosens his grip on the bow. 'How did y'all get out then?'

'It was pretty gross,' Glenn shoots him a small grin and then sinks down to sit on the ground. Daryl lets the bow fall into the soft ground and follows his example. He loops his arms around his legs and lets his chin rest on his knees. 'We wore these suits and covered ourselves with guts. From the geeks. We found a truck and collected the others.'

'So they don't smell you,' Daryl mutters with a small nod. He bites on his thumb. After a second, his eyes grow wide and the gaze snaps back to Glenn. 'It rained a couple of hours ago, near the city. It started to rain.'

'How do you know?'

'Heard the thunder. Kinda difficult to tell here, with them mountains, but I was on a ridge. Could see the clouds swirl.'

Glenn nods. 'It started to wash off, we made it just in time.'

Daryl squints at the young man, ‘ya goin’ back for him? Tomorrow morning?’

‘First thing,’ Glenn promises.

‘I’m comin’.’

‘No, you’re not.’

The boy glares, ‘’course I am. Ya sorry pricks left his ass there, you don’t care none! I’m gonna go get him!’

‘No, you’re not,’ Glenn repeats sternly. ‘It’s too dangerous, Dare. Will wouldn’t want you to be in the city right now. He told you to stay here for a reason. You have to trust us.’

‘I did and you left him there!’

‘And we’re sorry. We’re _sorry_ , Daryl, but we had no choice. He’s locked up on a roof, there’s no other way to reach that place. He’s safe. What does your dad always say again? Dixon's, tough as nails, right?’

‘No-one kills us but us,’ Daryl mutters automatically while he gnaws on his nail.

The sound of Shane snorting registers. Blue eyes flick up just in time to hear the cop say ‘that would save us the trouble. Rick, man, you’re going back for a scumbag like _Will Dixon_?’

It doesn’t matter that Glenn reaches out to grab his arm because he’s too late and Daryl is slippery when he wants to be. He’s fast, too fast for Glenn and then for Rick and he’s already on Shane when the cop finally registers the sudden threat. He’s fast, but unarmed save for his knuckles and his anger. He uses both.

‘That’s my dad, you sorry prick! Take that back! I’m goin’ to fuck y’all up!’

Shane is caught off guard and takes the wrong kind of step backwards. He falls onto his ass and then his back when Daryl presses him into the dirt and dust. His head slams to the side because of the force of Daryl’s fist.

‘Enough, enough,’ Rick growls as he wraps an arm around Daryl’s waist and hoists him off of his partner. He throws the boy back onto his own feet and into Glenn’s frame. The Asian loops his arm around Daryl’s chest, holds on to his shoulder tightly.

‘You stupid scumbag, you fuckin’ pig!’ Daryl rages as tears start to prick in his eyes again. ‘You’re dead! You’re _dead_ , ya hear me?’

Glenn hugs him closer. ‘You’re scaring Sophia, Daryl.’

‘I don’t give a fuck! Fuck you! Let go. Let go of me!’

‘She’s crying, Daryl.’

The boy falters for a second. He looks at the girl who has pressed her face into her mother’s stomach. He looks at Carl, who is looking back with wide, frightened eyes. His mother looks very sad. There’s a tear on Amy’s cheek and even Andrea is looking away mournfully.

‘Daryl,’ Rick says carefully, one hand reached out to him, palm down, but with no intend to touch him. ‘I’m sorry this happened, but Glenn is right. We didn’t have a choice. Your dad? He doesn’t work and play well with others.’

Daryl knows that. He bares his teeth at the stranger and leans against Glenn’s arm, ‘to hell with all y’all!’

‘I’m going back,’ Rick says. ‘There’s a bag,’ he says to Shane when he opens his mouth again, ‘with guns. It’s just sitting there on the street. We need to go back for it.’

‘Ya better get my dad first, ya pig!’

Rick glances at Glenn.

‘Will first,’ Glenn nods. ‘He’s closer. Getting the guns first would mean doubling back.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Rick tells Daryl with finality. ‘At dawn.’

‘Don’t say it like you’re doin’ me a favor,’ the boy spits out. ‘Ya’re just savin’ your own hide. Come back without him, ‘nd I’m gonna fuck ya up!’

‘Yeah,’ Rick says with a grimace, ‘so you’ve said.’

‘Come on,’ Glenn says to Daryl. He slowly lets go of the boy. ‘Grab your bow. I need to take a dip in the lake, can you watch my back?’

Daryl knows it’s a distraction because his mother’s friends used to do the same damn thing when they were still around, offering him a job to do like painting their fences or mowing their lawns just so he had a reason not to be home and around Will on bad days. He doesn’t mind much. ‘Yeah,’ he walks back and hoists the bow onto his shoulder. Shane gets one final nasty glare. ‘Let’s go, chink.’

The adults watch how he stalks away. Glenn’s eyes follow him, they soften when he smiles fondly.

‘That’s who you want to go back to Atlanta for?’ Shane asks. He’s rubbing at his jaw where Daryl had landed his sucker punch. ‘Damn. That kid will never change. I thought he was coming around, you know? He was playing ball the last couple of days, but…’

‘Will is his dad.’

‘Red neck trash that beats him silly.’

‘Still his dad.’

‘It doesn’t matter who he is,’ Rick cuts in. ‘We left him there like an animal caught in a trap – that’s no way for anything to die, let alone a human being. We’re going back for him.’

‘Yo, _China_! What the fuck is the hold up?’

A small smile creeps onto Glenn’s face at Daryl’s annoyed scream from the other side of camp.

Shane winces. ‘Tell him to keep his voice down.’

‘I will,’ Glenn nods. He seems to stand a little straighter when he looks at Shane, ‘and you either apologize to him when we come back, or you stay out of his way. That blow he gave you? You earned it.’ He looks at the rest of the group, ‘we all hate Will, but that’s not on Daryl, okay? He’s been trying.’

‘We know,’ Lori nods. ‘He’s been helping out a lot around camp the last couple of days.’

Shane lets his head hand for a moment and rubs at the back of his head. Then he nods. ‘Yeah. All right, I’ll talk to him when you get back. I’m sorry.’

‘ _China_! I’m goin’ to leave your ass here!’

Glenn rolls his eyes and starts to jog towards the boy. ‘Keep your voice down, Dare,’ he says when he reaches him. Then he reaches out to swat at Daryl’s head. ‘And I’m Korean.’

‘Whatever.’

 

 

Shane brings him dinner.

Daryl is sitting in his tent and works on his bolt. Some of the vanes have come off during his hunt earlier but luckily Will had grabbed their repair kit on their way out. The jig is nestled in his lap, one of the bolts already in place. The rest  of his equipment is scattered around him. A tiny bottle of superglue is locked between his front teeth while he prays some accelerator on the vane before pressing the clamp down against his bolt.

‘What are you doing, bud?’ Shane asks with a huff as he sits down opposite the boy. ‘Looks kinda complicated.’

Daryl glances up for just a second. ‘Ain’t.’ He removes the clamp, inspects his work and twists the bolt so he can do it again.

‘Okay….’

The cop watches how Daryl repairs the bolt efficiently. He’s obviously done it a hundred times before. When it’s done, he takes it out of the jig and grabs another tiny bottle.

‘What’s that then?’ Shane asks to keep the conversation going. ‘Ya didn’t put on enough glue or something?’

‘No. Gotta tip ‘nd tail them.’

‘What’s that, bud?’

Daryl looks at him.

Shane gives him a hesitant smile.

‘If the bolt passes through game, it prevents it from peelin’ off. Makes them more silent too. Makes it difficult for game to hear it comin’. Put some here,’ Daryl points at the vane, ‘and back here. Tip ‘nd tail.’

‘I see. Your… Your dad taught you that, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look,’ Shane shifts a little closer, ‘can you put it down for a second? I want to talk to you.’

‘So talk, or better yet; get the fuck out of our tent,’ Daryl grouses. ‘I can do this with my eyes closed.’

Shane scratches at his cheek. ‘Okay. I’m sorry about what I said about Will.’

‘Don’t give a damn.’

‘Of course you do,’ the cop ducks his head a little so he can catch Daryl’s eye. ‘He’s your dad. I shouldn’t have said that about him. It’s just… Will can be a nasty piece of work when he wants to be. He can be great too, I’m sure,’ Shane adds quickly when the boy glares at him, ‘but Rick was right. He doesn’t work and play well with others. Rick’s a good guy. He wouldn’t have done it without a good reason. And he got Glenn out of that nasty situation, right? You like Glenn.’

Daryl finally puts the bolt and rig aside. He stares at the cop. ‘Don’t think that any of you stupid city slickers can replace my dad. He’s blood. Y’all are…’

‘What?’ Shane edges when he doesn’t continue. ‘We’re all what?’

‘Nothin’. Forget about it. My dad told me to play nice while he were gone, is all. Don’t mean nothin’. I don’t give a damn about you.’

‘Now, you see,’ Shane says, ‘I don’t believe that.’

‘I don’t care about what ya believe!’ Daryl snaps as he put his bolts back into his quiver.

‘Is that why you stopped raging when you saw that it made Sophia cry, huh? Or why you follow Glenn around like a lost pup?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I’m not being mean, Daryl,’ Shane tries. ‘You’re a good kid.’

Daryl grinds his teeth together. He shrugs his bow onto his back and gets up, crouching low in the tent. Blue eyes pin Shane down. ‘I ain’t. And I ain’t your buddy, not your sport, I’m nothin’ to you. And you, sure as fuck, are nothin’ to _me_. My dad told me to play nice while he was out because he wants you to give a damn about me. You know why?’

Shane gives a soft sigh, ‘no. Why?’

‘’cause you’ll be bait. One day it’s gonna be you or us and it’s always gonna be _you_ , no matter what. I gotta kick your heels? You best believe you’ll bite the dust. You. And Lori. Fuck, Carl, I don’t give a shit. It’s _not_ gonna be _us_!’

‘Daryl, that’s sick. And it’s not like you.’

Daryl laughs softly, ‘you don’t know me, pig.’

‘I do.’

‘Then you’d know I fuckin’ mean what I say,’ Daryl snarls as he moves towards the exit of the tent.

‘Where are you going?’ Shane asks. ‘It’s already dark out, Daryl, you can’t go out hunting now. Stop!’

But Daryl ignores him and slips out of the tent. He walks through the camp and ignores all the stares he gets. Glenn is sitting with Rick and his family around the fire. The cop is hugging his son and his wife is leaning against his shoulder. Rick looks so goddamn happy that it makes Daryl nauseous. ‘I felt like I’ve been ripped out of my life,’ he says. ‘And put somewhere else.’

Daryl knows that feeling. He’s feeling the exact same thing.

‘Sweetie?’ Amy gets up and moves towards him. ‘Are you okay?’

People he doesn’t know are pretending to give a fuck about his sorry ass, but he knows that’s not true. They’re not blood. They don’t care. ‘Fuck off,’ he tells the young woman as he tugs his bow strap higher onto his shoulder. He feels torn for a second. Then he glances at Glenn. ‘Gonna go out.’

‘It’s dark, Daryl,’ Glenn says like the boy hadn’t noticed. ‘Stay inside the borders.’

He’s not telling him to stay close to the camp, or not leave at all. The border is just a rig of rope and tin cans, about half a mile out.

‘I do what I want, y’all ain’t the boss of me.’

‘Then why’re you telling me you’re going out?’ Glenn asks.

‘Last time I came out them woods, y’all were pointing a shotgun at my face! Best not do it again, or pull the damn trigger already. Do what ya want, I don’t care. I’m going out. My dad best be here when I get back,’ he says to Rick, ‘or you’re gettin’ an arrow in the ass.’

 

 

The next morning, at dawn, Rick, T-dog and Glenn jump into a white van to go and get Will. Daryl is sitting in one of the trees at the edge of camp and carves a small figure out of a branch. None of the group members has spotted him yet, because they’re all stupid and worthless. He swings his legs as Rick kisses Lori and Carl goodbye. He goes still when Glenn’s gaze first sweeps over camp and then lands on him up in the tree without a moment of confusion or hesitation.

The Korean raises his hand in a wave.

Daryl flicks him off.

The morning passes slowly. He goes out to hunt but only catches two squirrels because he doesn’t feel like sharing his skills today. It doesn’t matter anyway because Andrea and Amy go out to fish and come back with a haul that makes the boy’s mouth water. He’s too proud to join them for dinner however. He hates them. All of them. So instead of sitting by the fire, he hoists himself back up in the tree and gnaws on his fingernails.

Glenn’s been gone for too long. They should have been back hours ago. The city is not that far and Glenn knows his way around, so it shouldn’t have taken this long to get Will.

Maybe his dad has been raising hell again. Sounds like him.

Daryl can’t even blame him. He doesn’t know how he would react to seeing the people who'd locked him up on the roof coming to his rescue. He’ll probably try to treat Rick to some vengeance.

Daryl hopes he manages to behave, however, or else he might never come back.

The boy closes his eyes for a second and lets his head rest against the bark of the tree. That’s when he hears Amy scream. That blood-chilling scream that causes Daryl to jump out of the tree and land on the ground with a smack. His feet hurt, his knees hurt too, but he sprints away, dashing between the trees to get back to the camp. More screams. Maybe Andrea, or Lori, he can hear Shane’s booming voice and then there are gunshots ringing out. Daryl ducks under a branch and then slides down a small hill. His feet pound the earth in time with the gunshots.

He reaches the camp. First, he passes Carol’s tent and sees a geek feasting on Ed’s corpse. He stumbles, eyes wide and heart pounding in his chest, but then continues to head towards Shane’s frantic screams.

‘Morales! Make your way up to the RV! Carol!’

For a second, Daryl stands on the edge and watches how Shane tries to keep Lori and Carl safe. Carol is making her way to them with Sophia. They’ll make it and Shane will keep them safe. Daryl’s eye falls on Andrea, who is sitting with her sister. Blood is gushing out of the bite on Amy’s neck.

‘Goddamn,’ Daryl curses softly because he’d liked Amy. The older sister isn’t paying any attention to the battle raging around her. She’s stroking her sister’s hair lovingly. Tears are streaming down her pale cheeks. She never even sees the geek coming from her right.

Daryl does, of course. He loads his bow quickly, takes aim and then hesitates for a second. It’s never mattered before whether he’d hit his target. Sure, he’d might get a smack for missing it from his dad, or Merle would taunt him for days, or he might be hungry for a little while, but it hadn’t _really_ mattered. Now it does. He focusses on his breathing, readjusts his aim and lets the bolt fly.

The geek goes down next to Andrea.

Daryl quickly reloads.

‘Daryl!’ Shane has spotted him. ‘Daryl, make your way up here! Get to the RV!’

But Morales hasn’t made it yet and he’s not even trying to get to Shane, so Daryl can’t either. For a second, he wonders why the stupid guy isn’t listening to Shane but then he notices something.

Where are the kids? The wife is screaming, the man is alone, but where are the damn kids?

Daryl fires his bolt at a geek that walks by, almost without thinking while he tries to focus on the kids. Presumably, they had been with Morales when the attack began, but now they’re nowhere to be seen so – oh. Daryl knows where they went. He throws his bow onto his back because it’s getting heavy and he needs to be fast. So he draws his knife and vaults one of the cars before running towards the tents. Left, right, left again, jumping over one of the lines until he sees Morales’ tent. It’s zipped up and two geeks are tearing at the fabric. One has its arm inside the tent already.

Daryl can hear the little girl scream. He doesn’t have time to load his bow so instead he runs up and jumps on the first one. They go down in a flurry of limbs and snarls. Knife to the eye, no problem, but the second one is way quicker than he had expected. A hand grabs his shoulder, yanks him forward until teeth are dangerously close to his face.

‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,’ Daryl screams as he kicks and flails. One of his kicks lands on the geek’s knee. It knocks him off balance. When they go down, Daryl already knows he has won the fight. The knife slips into the room between the skull and the neck. The geek goes still atop of him. Blood trickles on him and he pushes the body away with a disgusted moan.

Jumping to his feet again, he reaches inside the tent. ‘Come on, ya can’t stay here, come with me!’

The little girl is crying too hard to listen to him, but the boy looks at his bloody face and knife and nods.

‘Make her stop,’ Daryl orders as he gestures to the girl. ‘She’s goin’ to draw every geek down here. We need to get to your dad. And Shane.’

‘Dad always said to go home when there was trouble.’

‘Your tent ain’t no fuckin’ brick house, ya dumbass, now get up,’ Daryl snarls because he can’t believe that these people are too stupid to even save themselves. ‘Girl, quit your damn crying!’

‘Shut up,’ her brother yells. ‘Don’t talk to her like that!’

‘Ya wanna die? Fine. Be my fuckin’ guest. Oh, nah? _Nah_? Then _stop_ it. Come here,’ He grabs the girl and hoists her to his hip. She’s heavy but he manages. ‘You, get up,’ he gestures to the boy. ‘Follow me.’ He doesn’t wait to check whether the boy is listening to him. Instead he wraps his arms around the girl and ducks back towards the RV and their parents.

There’s a sudden burst of gunshots. Handguns, Daryl thinks vaguely, rifles, it’s not just Shane shooting anymore.

He runs past cars and heads over the RV. His ears are ringing. He hopes no one mistakes him for some dead dude.

‘Daryl!’ Shane is still screaming his name. ‘Where the fuck are you? _Dare_!’

A geek suddenly shows up on his left. He veers to the side and stumbles, holding on to the girl. ‘Shane!’ He screams before he can stop himself. ‘Shane _help_!’

A gunshot. The geek falls down with half of its skull missing.

He looks up. Rick holds out his hand to help him to his feet again.

Daryl ignores the hand and gets up, hitching the girl higher onto his hip. He frowns a little, glances at the cop, ‘thanks.’

‘Get to the RV,’ Rick pants as he shoves at Daryl’s shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ the boy answers before he dashes away again. The gunshots are dying out around him. When he finally reaches Morales, he’s drenched in sweat. ‘I’ve got her,’ he pants. ‘Here. Girl, let go of me!’ He shakes her off of him.

She cries until she realizes he dumped her in front of her father. The man scoops his daughter up and then reels his son in for a tight hug. ‘Thank you,’ he tells Daryl.

‘Yeah….’ The boy sways a little on the spot. His gaze glides over the many bodies littering the camp. Geeks. But their own people too.

‘Daryl…’

Glenn is walking towards him. That’s where the extra gunshots came from, Daryl realizes. The group made it back with the bag of guns.

‘Where’s my dad?’ Daryl asks because his hands are shaking but he’s too old to admit that he was scared just now. So, so scared, and now he just wants his dad and –

‘I’m _so_ sorry,’ Glenn says.

The earth shatters beneath his feet. Daryl stares at the young man. He reaches up to wipe the blood from his own face. ‘No,’ he manages to say because none of this makes sense. ‘You said you’d get him back.’

‘I said we’d _try_. And we did.’

‘No.’ His gaze glides over the dead people he used to know. The useless, stupid city slickers who were nothing but bait. He should have run, he realizes. He shouldn’t have bothered to save their kids, shouldn’t have saved Andrea. He should have climbed up in his tree, should have watched how this whole place burned to the ground. And all the people with it. ‘Y’all had this comin’.’

‘Daryl, your dad… he… We went back for him and we would have gotten him, if he’d only waited.’

‘What?’ Shane steps forward when Rick engulfs his family in a tight hug. He walks over to Daryl but seems to have learned his lesson. He doesn’t try to touch the boy. ‘What are you talking about? What happened?’

‘He wasn’t there anymore,’ Glenn explains.

‘You chained his ass to a piece of metal,’ Shane says as he looks at Rick. ‘How can he get away?’

‘There was a saw. Small, made for metal,’ Rick answers. ‘Wasn’t any good for the pipe or the handcuffs, but….’ The man shivers. ‘He’d cut off his own hand.’

Daryl can hear someone scream. A heartbreaking, soul-tearing scream.

He doesn’t realize he’s the one making the noise until Shane pulls him into a rough hug and it's muffled by the broad chest.


	12. Left behind

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl lets his muddy boots rest on the dashboard of the car. He slouches in his seat, plucks at the hole in his jeans and pretends that he can’t hear the other people in the camp. Some people are still packing up their tents. He knows that Lori and Rick are struggling to get theirs all packed up but he refuses to lend them a hand.

There’s a ringing in his ears.

He can’t quite think straight. It’s too hot, too much has happened, he wants it all to stop.

He’s been here for a long time. He’d gone back to their tent only to grab some stuff before heading over to the car. He’d locked himself in, away from the prying eyes and concerned glances, away from the dead people. From behind the dirty windows he’d watched how everyone had argued about what to do with the bodies. The pile and the row. Geeks and their people. Glenn’s voice cutting through the smoke and ashes, _we don’t burn them_ , the chaos of Jim’s bite, the argument about whether or not they should be heading to the CDC. He’d watched how Carol lifted the pick-axe and drove it through Ed’s skull with a vengeance. He’d heard the gunshot that finally ended Amy for good.

He hadn’t helped to dig the final graves. Hadn’t buried any bodies, hadn’t joined the group meeting about where they would be going.

He’d just sat there.

The day passed and he never got out of the car. The others forgot about him in their own sorrow. Shane was busy with the plan and dealing with Rick, Glenn was burying bodies. That suited him just fine. When it got dark, he’d rummaged through his pockets to find the package of cigarettes Will had hidden in his stuff. The smoke had made his eyes sting and water.

The car smelled like his old life. Sweat, cigarettes and motor oil.

He’d kept thinking about what his dad had done. Cut off his own hand. Left. Glenn had told him later that the van had been gone, that’s why it had taken them so long to get back. They’d been scared that Will would have gone back to camp, looking for Rick and T-dog, for all of them, for revenge. But Will hadn’t come back.

Not for vengeance.

And not for Daryl either.

It had taken hours for that message to sink in, but now Daryl can’t stop thinking about it.

Will has left him behind.

His dad has left him behind.

He could have come back. He could have come to camp, could have told Daryl to pack their shit up and be gone before anyone could have stopped them. They could have gone into the woods together, could have gone further south, could have gone back home where Merle’s bike is still waiting for them and they know the area. They could have gone.

But his dad has left him behind.

Dawn broke when he was on his last cigarette. His lungs were burning, his mouth felt like something was rotting inside of it but his hands were still shaking and it wasn’t so much the smoke that was making him cry.

He ended the cigarette on the back of his hand to shock himself out his sadness. Pain flared and that is always better because that passes and fades. The rest doesn’t. Or at least not as quickly.

He’d packed up before anyone was awake. After a couple of minutes of liberation, he’d sorted through his dad’s stuff. He took his bolts, the spare parts for the bow, all the equipment he’d need to fix his up. He took some cans of food Will had stashed away. The lighter. There hadn’t been much else he can use.

He’d thrown his dad’s clothes on still-smoldering pile of bodies and had gone back to the car after packing their tent up and throwing it in the back.

That’s where he’s sitting now.

He watches how Rick and Lori struggle. He watches how Glenn just sits there, staring at the ground. Later, he watches how Morales decides not to join them. He doesn’t care.

After about an hour, Glenn is walking over to Will’s car. He throws a bag in the back and wrenches the door open. He falls into the seat and closes the door with a bang. Pale hands on the steering wheel. He’s staring at the horizon. ‘I’m driving this car,’ he says. ‘We’re going to the CDC.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl mutters.

Glenn rolls the window down, ‘have you been smoking in here?’

‘Yeah. What, gonna call the cops on me?’

‘I could,’ Glenn points out with a faint smile. ‘I thought you’d said those were for Will.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘Yeah, well, he ain’t around no more thanks to you, so…’

‘I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.’

‘You didn’t give a damn about him.’

Glenn nods in agreement. ‘No, I didn’t. But you did. And we made a deal, remember? I’m in your corner.’

‘Weren’t no deal.’

The Korean sighs. His grip on the steering wheel tightens. ‘You make it very difficult to be in your corner sometimes, has anyone ever told you that?’

‘No.’ Daryl bites on his fingernail and glances at the man. ‘No one ever tried, I guess.’

‘Well,’ Glenn shifts gears before letting the car roll onto the road, ‘I’m not giving up on you just yet.’

Daryl hides his smile by looking out of the window. There are no people anywhere. That might be the weirdest thing about it. Nothing has really changed but there’s no one around anymore. Daryl watches how the field glide by, the empty homes, abandoned towns and stores. He wonders how many people got lucky first, just like them, and then got smart. How many people survived this?

He doesn’t really understand what the CDC is. A safe place according to Rick, that’s all he knows. He doesn’t trust Rick, but everyone else goes along with it, even Shane, so he supposes that it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Never did before, either. Nothing new there.

‘This is a pretty good car,’ Glenn says optimistically. ‘It looks like it won’t even start but… Who took care of it?’

‘My dad.’

‘Oh.’

‘What, you think he’d let a twelve year old tinker on his ride?’ Daryl snorts. ‘Pssh. Wouldn’t want it all messed up. Had to clean it sometimes, is all.’

‘My dad would make me clean our car every Sunday,’ Glenn says with a small laugh. ‘While I still lived with them, of course. I moved to Atlanta to go to college, got a job at a pizza place downtown. Paid better than cleaning the car, that’s for sure.’

‘My dad wouldn’t pay me,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Just something I had to do.’ He’s quiet for a minute. ‘Your parents live in Washington right? Ya told me once,’ he reminds the Korean when Glenn shoots him a surprised look. ‘Think they’re still around?’

‘I don’t know. I hope so, but… They’re old. My dad’s sixty-five, my mother’s three years younger. The last thing I heard from them was that they were being evacuated to another part of the city. Maybe if the army held up there… I don’t know,’ Glenn sighs.

Daryl nods. He rubs at his nose and tries to act casual. ‘What about my dad? Think he made it out of there?’

Glenn bites on his lower lip. ‘I think so. After he… with his hand? There was a trail of, like, blood. We followed it for a while. He’d managed to cauterize the wound by a stove but he had lost a lot of blood. Took out two geeks to get to a window, busted through and made his way out. We lost track of him though.’

‘Why?’

‘Got held hostage by a group of people in an elderly house,’ Glenn waves a vague hand, ‘long story, they turned out not to be so bad. We couldn’t find your dad after that.’

‘But he stole your van.’

‘Or someone else did. We don’t know.’

‘Because he never came back to camp. If he’d been the one who stole the van, he’d have come back to get his stuff, right?’

Glenn looks at him for a second before focusing on the road again. ‘You mean he would have come back for you.’

Daryl shrugs. ‘If he’d been getting his stuff, he would have taken me with him.’

‘Of course he would have. I mean – he would have come back for you, Dare. I’m sure it wasn’t him who took the van.’

‘Hmm.’ The boy curls up tighter in his seat and scratches at his jeans. ‘Remember how you said it would be nice if Will weren’t around for couple of days?’

Glenn shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean like this.’

‘Thought you were right,’ Daryl mutters. ‘That night? Hmm. Thought it’d be nice if he were away a couple of days. No one was bustin’ my balls. He kept changin’ them rules on me. Play nice, then ignore y’all and never help out, then I had to help out but not be friends, then I had to play with the kids but he told me not to get weak. Kept messing up, ya know? Shane’s rules were easier.’

‘Shane gave you a set of rules?’

‘Yeah. Had to have my bow on me when I went out, and my knife. And I had to holler if I were in trouble. Simple. They made sense to me, a bit. Don’t know why he would give a damn, but… Don’t matter.’ Daryl gnaws on his nail. ‘I thought it was kinda nice without him for a while. And then he goes and never comes back.’

‘That isn’t your fault.’

‘It’s Rick’s,’ Daryl mutters, ‘but that don’t make me feel better.’

‘It’s not on Rick either,’ Glenn says with a shake of his head. ‘Will did something stupid. _He_ messed up.’ He leans forward a bit so he can check on the side mirrors and then falls into his seat again. A dark look mars his face. ‘Some would say he deserved a whole lot worse for what he’s done.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Daryl…’

‘I’m done talkin’ to ya,’ Daryl grouses. He pointedly turns his back on the Korean. ‘Don’t know why I bothered anyway. I don’t give a fuck about what you think.’

‘Try to get some sleep while you’re ignoring me,’ Glenn advises. ‘It’s still a long way to the CDC.’

‘Shut up, Korea.’ He watches how the landscape flashes by and listens to the familiar hum of the car. Glenn’s fingertips tap out the rhythm of a song that sounds vaguely familiar. He falls asleep while trying to figure out where he’d heard that tune before.

 

 

Jim doesn’t make it.

Daryl didn’t think they would either. The moment Glenn parks the car in front of the CDC, a little ways away because of all the dead bodies littering the road, Daryl thinks that they, too, will be dead shortly. The shutters are down. It doesn’t stop Rick, who plows on and leads them to the closed-up building, screaming and banging on the doors.

‘Walker!’

There are so many bodies surrounding them that Daryl can’t help but feel fear starting to claw its way up inside his body. His feet tingle with it, his stomach feels weird, his hands shake, and it finally spills over his lips in an angry snarl. ‘You led us into a graveyard!’ he screams at the cop after he takes the first walker down with one of his bolts.

‘He made a call!’ Dale protests, always sticking his nose in.

‘ _It was the wrong damn call_ ,’ Daryl screams as he tries to get to Rick, but Shane appears in front of him and pushes him back before cupping his cheeks, making Daryl focus on him instead of his partner.

‘Keep it together, bud. Watch my back for me now.’ Then Shane turns back to his friend. ‘Rick, this is a dead end.’

There’s a discussion, hushed shouting. Voices are starting to crack, panic boiling inside veins as people are shoved aside and away. Daryl turns his back on them and watches the perimeter.

Walkers slowly make their way over, faster now that the group is starting to shout and move back towards the vehicles. They won’t make it, Daryl knows. He grips his bow tightly. The tips of his fingers turn white.

‘You’re killing us,’ Rick shouts at the camera which no one else saw move. ‘You’re _killing_ us.’

Daryl watches as Shane tries to drag his friend away. They should leave him, he thinks. It’s not some nameless person inside the CDC who’s done this to them. It’s Rick. First Will. Then Amy, Jim too, and now all of them.

White light spills out of the CDC as the shutters go up.

There’s not a whole lot Daryl knows about Rick Grimes but he knows one thing for sure; the guy gets lucky a lot.

Everyone watches in awe as they’re bathed in light. Someone screams something, people start to move and Daryl dashes forward to yank his bolt out of a walker. Rick calls them that. Daryl hates it that he likes that name better than Glenn’s _geeks_.

‘Daryl!’ Lori is calling for him, one arm tugging Carl to her side and the other reaching out for him. ‘Get in here!’

He clicks the bolt back into his quiver and races towards her, ducking beneath the shutters but avoiding her touch as he slinks between people to claim his place at Glenn’s elbow again.

There’s a guy standing there. He’s holding a big gun.

They’re being led into an elevator.

Daryl rubs at his nose and looks at the stranger. ‘Doctors always go around packing heat like that?’

He makes a joke and Daryl’s glad it isn’t aimed at him because he can’t be bothered to lift even a corner of his mouth into a smile.

Jenner is all that’s left.

The place is a lie, they risked everything for nothing. They should have never listened to Rick. They should have gone to Fort Benning, like Shane had said. And that makes Daryl a bit mad too, because he doesn’t _want_ to agree with Shane, not with any pig. They are all guilty, in his eyes. Even though Will never came back for him.

The doctor takes his blood and Daryl hugs his crossbow tightly when it’s his turn.

‘Just a little prick, bud,’ Shane tells him.

‘Ain’t scared of needles.’

Shane nods tiredly and looks at Jenner. ‘Try not to hold onto him, Doc.’

‘Ain’t scared of nobody neither!’

‘Got some spunk in you,’ Jenner jabs the needle in, ‘I like that,’ he smiles as he quickly draws blood. ‘Next.’

Sophia is next. She passes the boy and reaches out to hold his hand, keeping him in place near the doctor. He doesn’t yank his hand back. Instead, he just sets his jaw and stares at the wall and holds on until she’s ready to let go.

 

 

Later, there’s food and lots of wine. Everyone is drinking, including Glenn.

Daryl watches how the bottles get passed around, how eyes dull and movements get more sloppy, voices louder. The stuff isn’t anything like the moonshine from back home, but after so long without, it seems to have the same effect on everyone. The party dies down when Shane pulls the trigger on a question they all have on their minds.

The outbreak. People left to be with their families. Others opted out. The word _suicides_ makes Daryl’s head spin. He wonders how many, who they were, where the bodies are now. Maybe they were the people outside. Maybe Jenner locked them into a room somewhere.

He doesn’t ask.

People are already mad that Shane asked a hard question, and now wine is flowing again and he doesn’t want to collect the punches. He’s learned when to shut up.

Later still, there are hot showers. Daryl snags a spot as one of the first to go and he scrubs his skin pink. Clean jeans, clean shirt, hell, he miraculously finds some cleans socks in his pack too. He pads into the makeshift living room and climbs onto a couch, sitting on the back of it. Carol invites him to join in a game but he just shakes his head. He watches how Lori breezes in, how the kids are being send to bed and told to say their prayers.

‘Night, Daryl,’ Sophia waves at him and Carl follows her example suit.

‘Later,’ Daryl mutters as he gnaws on his fingernail.

A few seconds later, Glenn comes in. ‘Come on Dare, let’s get you to bed, huh?’

‘The fuck?’ Daryl frowns. ‘Ain’t no damn kid.’

‘We’ve talked about this,’ Lori reminds him as she browses through the books and plucks one off the shelve. ‘You’re _twelve_.’

‘Y’all ain’t the boss of me.’

‘We’re not bossing you around,’ Glenn says with a soft moan of exasperation. ‘I am going to bed too! There’s an extra couch in my room. We can share.’

‘We got a problem here?’ Shane is leaning against the doorpost. There’s a bottle in his hand, almost empty. When he pushes himself away from the door, he staggers a bit. The eyes are hazy.

Daryl knows that look. ‘No,’ he says quickly as he slides off the couch. ‘I’m going to bed. Later.’

‘What?’ Shane drawls, ‘already? Thought we were gonna have a fun night, y’all. Play some games, huh?’ He kicks at the board game set up on the table but misjudges the distance and kicks the wood instead.

Daryl flinches.

Lori puts her wine glass down. With a gentle touch to the back of his head, she steers the boy towards the door. ‘Go on, Daryl. Glenn is waiting. Say your prayers, okay?’

Daryl nods even though he never says his prayers unless he thinks he might be dying but he just wants to get out of there. He slips past Shane and follows Glenn back to their room.

 

 

In the darkness, both Daryl and Glenn stare at the ceiling.

Glenn is the first to talk but that’s no surprise. ‘Want to say your prayers now?’

‘No.’

‘I can feel the whole world spin.’

‘It does,’ Daryl points out.

‘I know,’ Glenn whispers, ‘but it’s – sometimes you know something, and it’s – like – you read about it sometime. You know it, but you don’t _know_ it. It’s like blinking, sometimes, the things you know. You do it without thinking about it. Sometimes you know things without thinking about them, too. In your bones, you know it.’

Daryl frowns. ‘You’re so fuckin’ drunk.’

‘Yeah.’ Glenn moans pathetically. ‘But it’s still true. I know the world spins. I _know_ it.’

‘In your bones?’ Daryl asks with a soft laugh.

‘What? No. Other things. I know other things in my bones.’

‘Like what?’

Even in the darkness, Daryl can feel that Glenn is looking at him.

‘I’ll tell you another time,’ Glenn sighs, ‘when I – when I can think, okay? You want to sleep somewhere else? You can, I think – I think Dale might have a … or that room, with the games? Had a couch.’

‘I’m fine here,’ Daryl mutters into his pillow.

‘ _Sure_?’ the word sounds all drawn out and wrong and Glenn moans again. ‘I mean; sure?’

‘Gonna move if ya don’t shut the fuck up soon.’

Glenn snorts. ‘Okay, just… you looked – you looked freaked out. A bit. Just now, with Shane? He was pretty drunk too. I know you don’t like that, ‘cause Will used to mess you up when he -’

‘Shut the fuck up, will ya? Ya don’t know shit.’

‘Do,’ Glenn objects as he gets comfortable and curls up on the bed. ‘Know it in my bones, too.’

‘Stupid chink,’ Daryl curses but it sounds more affectionate than angry.

 

 


	13. Road trips

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl knows that the world is going to hell, again, when the power starts to go out inside the CDC. He knows that look on Jenner’s face, the helplessness, the hidden contempt for himself, the way he reaches for a bottle of strong liquor like it will save him from anything. The clock is ticking down.

All the guys rush down to check on the barrels but Daryl doesn’t go with them. He stays near Carol, who looks as scared as he’s feeling. He knows they won’t find anything and doesn’t understand what they’re expecting. A forgotten barrel, filled to the brim? A way to override a system none of them understand?

They won’t find any of that down there.

Jenner might be stupid, but he’s not that stupid. And he could have blown his own brains out but he’s waiting on the clock that’s ticking down. He has a finish line he wants to reach but after that…

The air goes off. The lights too.

Daryl makes his way to the main hall where the consoles are, where VI is watching over them.

Rick emerges with Shane, T-dog and Glenn. They round on Jenner, trying to get information out of him.

It was the French who held out when others opted out. The world runs on fossil fuel.

Daryl has to agree that that sounds pretty stupid, even though he’d never thought about it before.

Thirty minutes to decontamination and no one knows what that means. Or perhaps they do because Jacqui starts to cry and Rick screams at Jenner and then Lori to get their stuff. They’re getting out of there. Now.

Shane enforces Rick’s ruling, they are getting out of there and everyone should grab their stuff. Daryl backs away towards the doors to run and do as he’s told but then the steel doors glide up.

They clang shut.

‘Did you just lock us in?’ Glenn asks in a tone that’s breaking into the chaos of panic. ‘ _He just locked us in_!’

Daryl watches how Jenner sits down in front of one of the consoles and starts to record a message. He doesn’t bother to listen. A rage is starting to blind him. He lunges for Jenner, ‘you son of bitch!’

‘Shane!’ Rick screams.

And just when his hand curls around Jenner’s shoulder to wield him around in order to sucker punch him on the mouth, Shane yanks him back. An arm around his waist and he’s thrown backwards, his path blocked by the large cop and then T-dog too. ‘Let us handle it,’ Shane tells him while Rick tries to talk to Jenner. ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

Jenner is screaming at Rick now. Weaponized small pocks. Nasty stuff you don’t want getting out. Terrorist attacks.

Then VI speaks again. And sentences them to death.

Shane and T-dog try to beat the doors down with a couple of axes. Glenn watches helplessly.

Daryl just stands there. He looks at Sophia and Carl who are curled up in their mother’s laps.

This is their extinction event.

Shane grabs a gun and almost pulls the trigger on the doctor. Rick is by his side, talking him down in a quiet but urgent tone. ‘Brother,’ he says, ‘brother, this is not the way. You do this and we’ll never get out of here.’

‘Shane,’ Lori chimes in, ‘you listen to him.’

‘You do this, we all die. We _all_ die.’

Shane screams and then shoots the consoles behind Jenner in a fit of rage.

Daryl backs away, hiding as he sees the anger in the older man’s eyes. He jumps over a set of computers and curls in on himself. A smack, metal on skin, someone falling down. He peeks around the corner.

Rick is looming over Shane. ‘Are you done now?’ he asks. ‘Are you done?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane answers. ‘I guess we all are.’

Shane has given up. But Rick hasn’t. He talks to Jenner, calls him a liar and then learns about his wife who could have done something about this. Test subject 19. She took a bullet for the cause. Daryl listens how Rick twists words until Jenner tells him that the topside is still locked down. The doctor gets up.

He gives them the chance Rick asked for.

The doors open.

They run for it. Not all of them. There’s some screaming, some pleading and then Jacqui gets left behind. Andrea too.

The glass won’t break until Glenn pulls Daryl to the ground and an explosion almost throws Rick across the room.

Walkers are drawn to the building by the noise. They run across the lawn. Shane up front with Rick. Carl and Sophia have trouble keeping up but Daryl zips ahead to the two men. His bow bops on his back, he doesn’t have time to load it.

‘Daryl,’ Glenn screams. ‘your right, on your right!’

He’s already seen the walker, too close for comfort to the group. He grabs his knife, runs and then jumps on it, taking it down before burying the blade in the skull. Hands grab him and he’s almost scared that he’d missed somehow or that it didn’t work this time, but it’s only T-dog who hauls him to his feet before pushing him towards the cars.

‘You damn crazy, boy,’ the man pants, ‘run!’

They do run. The Grimes’ hide in the RV with Carol and Sophia, T-dog ducks into the first car and Shane dives for his. Daryl and Glenn run to Will’s pick-up. There’s not enough time to actually get into the damn car, but Daryl hops over the side and lands hard on the back of it. Glenn jumps up to one of the tires and then over the side too. He almost lands on Daryl, but that seems to be his intention, as he shields the boy with his own body.

‘Stay down,’ he hisses into Daryl’s ear.

‘Fuck yeah, what the fuck else am I supposed to do,’ Daryl hisses back, ‘get off of me.’

‘No, shut up.’

‘What the fuck do ya think is going to ha-‘

The heat washes over them seconds later. It prickles on Daryl’s arm. He quickly draws it close to his chest, then grabs Glenn’s jacket and tugs the man close, hiding in his chest. He feels how Glenn wraps his arms around him, one broad hand on his hair.

‘I got you,’ Glenn rasps.

Daryl whimpers and tucks him even closer until the heat finally dies down. Then he pushes against Glenn’s shoulder. ‘Get the fuck off, man,’ he grouses to try and reclaim some of his dignity. ‘Go hug a walker!’

Glenn’s laughing by the time he rolls onto his back. The kind of sad, relieved and panicked laughter they have all gotten used to over the last couple of weeks. ‘You’re welcome. Damn. Come on, we’ve got to go.’

By the time they slide into their respective seats, they see how Andrea and Dale finally make it to the RV. Stumbling, coughing and crying, but they make it.

Engines rev, some tires screech and then they are on their way again.

After a couple of miles, Daryl puts his feet back on the dashboard and slouches in his seat.

Glenn glances at him. ‘Do you want to…’ He clears his throat, ‘do you want to talk?’

‘About what?’

‘Anything. That was pretty crazy. We… we lost Jacqui.’

‘She made her choice.’

‘Yeah, but… we still lost her, you know? It’s okay to be sad.’

‘Ain’t sad.’

‘No, I know, I mean – I can see that, but I don’t…’Glenn sighs. ‘Fine. We don’t have to talk.’

Daryl shrugs and reties his boots. With his fingernails, he scrapes some dried blood off of them. Probably from some walker, he wouldn’t know where else he got it from. He grabs a piece of cloth that’s always sticking out of his back pocket and spits on it. He uses it to clean his knife. When he’s done, he lets his head thud back against the chair and looks at Glenn. ‘Shane gave up, huh?’

‘What?’

‘He lost his shit, started to shoot the place up? Said we were done for.’

‘Everyone lost their shit, Daryl.’

‘Ain’t blamin’ him, just… Rick got us out.’

Glenn nods. He’s staring at T-dog’s car but Daryl wonders whether he’s really seeing it at all. ‘You don’t like Rick.’

‘’course not. He left my dad for dead.’

‘We all did, Daryl. Me, T-dog, Andrea, Jacqui, everyone. Rick decided we’d go back for him. You don’t hate me.’

‘Says who?’

‘I do,’ Glenn scoffs with a small smile. ‘You even call me Korea now instead of China. Progress. Come on. You like me.’

‘Hmm,’ Daryl looks out of the window again. ‘Got some balls for a Chinaman, that’s for sure.’

Glenn reaches out to clip him over the back of his head.

‘Jack-ass,’ Daryl grins as he rubs over the sore spot.

‘Yeah, well, you deserved it. Did your dad keep any maps in here?’

‘’course.’ The boy rummages through the glove compartment until he finds the right maps. He takes a pen and searches for the CDC. He crosses it out. ‘Which road did we take?’

Glenn glances at the map a couple of times. ‘That one,’ he points at one. ‘Destination; Fort Benning.’

‘’s over a hundred miles.’

‘We’ll make it.’ Glenn grips the steering wheel tightly. His knuckles turn white. ‘You just worry about keeping us on track, okay?’

Daryl nods and concentrates on the road. He almost manages to forget that they’re not on a road trip. He’s never been on one before, has never even left the state, but he’s seen them in a couple of movies. A bunch of friends, lots of food and drinks, racing towards any horizon. ‘You got any water?’ he asks.

‘No, sorry. We’ll… we’ll find some, are you okay for now?’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl lets his head thud against the window and thinks about how this is the most fucked-up road trip he’s ever heard of.

 

 

Hours later, they hit a traffic jam. Glenn lets the car roll to a stop and Daryl hoists himself up and out of the window so he can sit on the frame and lean with his arms on the top of the pickup. He stares out over the cars. Rows and rows and rows of empty cars. It doesn’t seem to end. The sight reminds him of the traffic jam leading to Atlanta. There’s no big city anywhere near here, he’d checked on the map to be sure to avoid them, but there are a lot of small villages connected to this highway so maybe they had all been emptying at the same time. Everyone hitting the road to get to one of the cities and it all just came crashing down around them.

‘Can you see a way through?’ Glenn asks as he peers through the window.

‘Nah, man,’ Daryl glides back into his seat and looks at the map. ‘We can go back. There’s an interstate bypass a little way back.’

‘We can’t spare the fuel and-‘

At that moment the RV breaks down. Smoke rises from the engine and seconds later Dale comes out of the vehicle to pop the hood and check what the problem is. Daryl watches how he talks about how’d already said this would happen, that it’s dead in the water because they never got the hose from the cube van. Daryl frowns and wipes his hair out of his eyes. ‘The fuck is the old man moanin’ about? There’s thousands of fucking cars over there. Don’t go tellin’ me there ain’t no damn hose in one of them.’

Glenn blinks, ‘you’re right. Come on, let’s get out and check what the plan is.’

The boy nods and hops out of the car. His boots hit the concrete with a thud. He leans back into the vehicle for a second to grab his bow. He swings it onto his back and holds on to the strap as he makes his way over to where Shane is talking to Dale about the car.

‘I’ve told you a _million_ times,’ Dale is saying. ‘We need that hose!’

‘Damn scrapyard in front of ya,’ Daryl snaps as he passes, ‘could have already gone and grabbed one if y’all weren’t so busy bitchin’ about how ya ain’t got no hose, man.’

Shane bites back a smile as he watches how the boy clambers onto the RV so he can look out over the traffic jam. ‘He’s got a point.’

‘That’s not how I would have formulated it, but yes,’ Dale nods, ‘he’s right.’

‘’course I am,’ Daryl shields his eyes with his hand. ‘There’s a whole bunch of things we can find.’

‘I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start,’ T-dog chimes in.

‘Maybe some water?’ Sophia asks hopefully.

‘Food?’ Glenn adds.

‘This is a graveyard,’ Lori says as she looks out over the cars. Some windows are bloodied. There are bodies still strapped into their seats. Maybe someone showed them mercy because none of them seem to be moving. ‘I don’t know how I feel about this.’

Daryl scoffs from his perch up on the RV and then starts to climb down again, jumping to skip the last couple of sports of the ladder. ‘Come on, y’all,’ he says because the whole world is a graveyard now and there’s no reason for them to die of thirst and hunger just because it makes one of them uncomfortable.

Shane seems to agree. ‘Just have a look around,’ he says. ‘Gather what you can.’

Daryl watches how Glenn moves over to help Dale with the car repairs. Rick is laying out the guns on the hood of a car while Shane moves to a truck nearby. Then his eye lands on T-dog who is trying to figure out how he can get to the gas tanks.

‘Hold up,’ Daryl jumps over a couple of backpacks and other stuff littering the concrete in order to reach the man. ‘It’s an easy trick, lemme do it,’ He grabs the oldest bolt he has and wriggles it between the small gap. With a grunt, he pops the tank open.

‘Thanks kid,’ T-dog rumbles as he puts the hose in. ‘Grab me another canister? They’re in the RV.’

Daryl runs off to get them. On his way over, he passes Shane who is opening up a truck right next to where Glenn is ripping a part they need out of an engine. He stops dead in his tracks when he hears water rain down.

Shane lets it run over his head and laughs, ‘it’s like being baptized, man.’

‘’s that water?’ Daryl asks hopefully. He realizes his mistake too late. He’s within grabbing distance of the tall man. The cop grabs him by the nape and yanks him close, but instead of yelling or slapping him around like Daryl is used to, water hits him in the face. Luke-warm and a blessing.

‘Why don’t you find out, huh,’ Shane laughs as he shifts the container and empties it over Daryl. ‘Open up now.’

Daryl opens his mouth and takes a couple of large gups before ducking out from under the stream, ‘’s like fuckin’ waterboardin', man. Didn’t know ya pigs did that too.’

Shane laughs one last time and stumbles away from the truck, ‘yeah, well, we don’t usually, but we make exceptions for twelve year olds.’ His gaze falls on the RV and his whole body goes rigid for a second.

‘Ain’t I lucky,’ Daryl grouses but then Shane is on him again. There’s no playfulness in the way he grabs hold of him now, Daryl realizes. Broad hands on his shoulders, pushing him towards a nearby truck. He lets himself be moved.

‘Glenn,’ Shane hisses and he grabs the Korean too. ‘Get down, get down!’

They roll under the truck. Daryl can feel how his skin prickles. He’s sure that sweat is already mixing with the water that’s still streaming down his neck. And then he hears it. The moans. The groaning, the shuffling feet. Ten, twenty, maybe more and he wonders how nobody saw them coming.

Shane is staring at the feet. Glenn is too. Their eyes are wide.

Daryl hopes that everyone has managed to get under the car all right. He can see someone else in a white shirt under a car further ahead. He knows that’s Rick. He must have ran for his wife and kid the moment he’d seen the walkers. That means Carl and Lori will be fine too. Carol and Sophia won’t have strayed too far from them so he ticks them off too.

That leaves Andrea, Dale and T-dog. One of them would have been on top of the RV. Dale, probably.

Andrea and T-dog left.

No one warned them.

He knows where T-dog is, at which car, but he doubts there was one nearby that’s high enough to harbor a grown-up man beneath it. In a spit-second, he makes a decision. ‘What the – _Daryl_!’ Glenn hisses and Shane reaches for him but Daryl is already gone. He rolls out from under the car, gets to his feet and runs towards the last place he’d seen T-dog. He weaves between the cars, making sure the walkers don’t see or hear him. He arrives just in time to leap onto a car and then on the back of a walker, jab a knife into the base of its skull before falling to his feet again.

T-dog stares at him. The striped shirt he’s wearing is drenched in blood.

Daryl spots a nasty wound on the man’s arm. It doesn’t look like a bite. They don’t have time to find a good car to hide beneath so Daryl just drags the walker on top of the man and then yanks another walker, luckily already dead for good, out of a car so they’re both covered by corpses.

It fools the walkers.

When it’s quiet and Daryl can hear Shane’s running footsteps approaching, he throws the corpse off of him and gasps for clean air. Sweat is causing the shirt to stick to his skin. He helps T-dog up by removing the walker from him. He stumbles towards the safeguard, coughing and almost gagging because the smell had been so bad.

‘ _Daryl_!’ Shane hisses.

‘Over here,’ Daryl mutters as he sits down on the metal.

The running footsteps change direction immediately. The cop appears in front of him, ‘are you okay?’ Hands on his shoulders again, he’s getting real tired of everyone grabbing him. Shane shakes him roughly.

‘I’m fine!’

A hand now grabs hold of his chin, squeezing until the fingers turn white and his skin red. ‘Are you out of your damn mind, boy?’

Daryl stares up at Shane, who looks angry and spooked. ‘Let go of me,’ his hand moves towards the knife on his belt. It’s still wet with blood from the walker. Pain is starting to pulse through his jaw, where Shane is holding on to his face. Nails dig into his skin.

‘You could have _died_!’ Shane snarls.

 _‘You’re hurtin’ me_!’

That seems to shock the cop right out of his own anger and fear. He withdraws his hand as if he’s been burned and takes a step back.

They stare at each other.

Sophia’s screaming breaks the moment. Their heads swivel just in time to see the little girl running towards the woods, two walkers hot on her heels.

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Daryl curses as he swings his legs over the safeguard to follow her.

‘No,’ Shane grabs hold of his arm again and yanks him back over the metal boundary. ‘You stay here. _Stay here_. Rick’s on it, look!’ He points at a figure disappearing into the woods after the walkers. ‘He’ll get her, okay? There’s no point in going after them, you’ll just be in the way.’

‘I can help her!’ Daryl objects, ‘he can’t shoot them, I’ve got my bow, it’s-‘

‘Daryl, let Rick handle it,’ Shane stresses. ‘If he mistakes you for a walker, you might be on the receiving end of his knife, okay? Just stay put.’

‘He ain’t carryin’ a knife!’

‘He’ll find a way,’ the cop assures the boy. He slowly lets go of the arm. ‘Trust me, okay? Rick will handle it.’

 

 


	14. Think ya were

 

* * *

 

 

Water is soaking his boots and the bottom of his jeans, but Daryl doesn’t really care. He’s peering at a spot at one of the banks, a little hide-out that’s almost overgrown. There are no tracks he can see here. The water is too high.

He looks back at Rick, who is pacing around nervously. ‘You sure this is the spot?’

‘I left her right here,’ Rick assures him while pointing at the hide-out. Water sloshes around their feet as he moves. ’I drew the walker way off in that direction up the creek,’ the cop now points into another direction.

‘Without a paddle – seems where we’ve landed,’ Daryl murmurs because he doesn’t want to shout at Rick that it’s all his fault. The man has blood on his shirt, sweat running down his neck. Daryl had watched how he’d come back out of the woods, obviously expecting to find Sophia there, safely back in her mom’s arms. He could almost hear the cop’s breath catch when he realized the girl had gone missing.

‘She was gone by the time I got back here,’ Rick continues. ’I figured she just took off and ran back to the group. I told her to go that way,’ he points back to where Glenn is standing guard now, ‘and keep the sun on her left shoulder.’

Daryl wades over to where Rick had pointed and examines the bank. He looks up at Glenn, ‘hey, short round, why don’t you step off to one side? You’re mucking up the trail.’

Glenn does step to the side but he frowns a little at the boy who’s now looking at the mud.

The two cops bicker about whether Sophia had actually understood what Rick had been telling her. Daryl rolls his eyes. He knows Sophia knew her left from her right and ends the discussion with a simple announcement when he finds what he’s looking for. ‘Got clear prints right here,’ he says. ‘She did like you said, headed back to the highway.’

The bank is a bit steep and slippery.

‘Let’s spread out,’ Shane suggests as he moves over to the boy. He sticks his hand out, ‘come on, let me help you up.’ Daryl grabs hold of the man’s hand and gets hauled back up to the side. He feels a little better about it when Rick needs a hand too. Shane turns to Rick, ‘hey, we gonna find her. She’ll be tuckered out hiding in a bush somewhere.’

 

 

Following the trail is not that hard. Daryl stays low to the ground, crossbow on his back as he slowly retraces Sophia’s steps. Her prints are faint but he could spot them in the dark. The three men just follow him silently.

After a while, Daryl kneels down. He frowns. ‘She was doing just fine till right here.’

Shane squads down beside him.

‘All she had to do was keep going,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘She veered off that way,’ he points to his right and Shane looks that way. They don’t see anything but more trees and bushes.

‘Why would she do that?’ Glenn asks.

‘Maybe she saw something that spooked her, made her run off,’ Shane suggests.

‘A walker?’

Daryl shakes his head. ‘Don’t see any other footprints. Just hers.’

‘So what do we do? All of us press on?’

‘No,’ Rick says, ‘better if you and Glenn get back up to the highway. People are gonna start panicking. Let them know we’re on her trail doing everything we can. But most of all, keep everybody calm.’

Shane nods and tells his friend that they’ll keep the group occupied. Daryl is almost glad that he’s not part of the group right now because he likes tracking better than doing some sort of chore Shane will eventually come up with. This way, he’s actually doing some good.

He watches how both Glenn and Shane walk away, back towards the group.

He glances at Rick.

The cop is looking at him with a mix of expectance and worry. ‘Lead the way,’ he rasps.

And Daryl does. He lopes through the woods, careful of where he puts his feet so he doesn’t erase the tracks he’s following. Rick is two steps behind him. The older man is breathing hard now, probably not used to the uneven terrain and Georgia heat. Neither bothers Daryl.

‘Track are gone,’ Rick suddenly rumbles behind him.

Daryl feels his heart skip a beat as he ducks down to look at the ground again. ‘No,’ he answers, ‘they’re faint, but they ain’t gone. She came through here.’ Sweat is making the palms of his hands feel sticky. He feels a little sick when Rick steps closer to him to check the ground where Daryl had pointed at.

‘How can you tell?’ the cop asks, ‘I don’t see anything. Dirt, grass.’

Relief washes through Daryl, enough to make him shudder for a second. Then he bites the inside of his cheek.

Rick isn’t Will. Daryl is so used to his dad walking just behind him while tracking, just waiting for him to mess up and only speaking up when he has. To bitch about how Daryl had messed up the trail, how they’d veered off to the wrong side, how he’d missed some other important clue as to what they were following. One time they’d followed a trail for a couple of miles before Will had pointed out that they were going the wrong way.

That had earned him a lashing, of course. Sometimes Will liked to have an excuse. A reason why he’d deserved it this time.

But Rick isn’t trying to trip him up. He genuinely has no idea what they’re following. He looks at the ground and sees dirt and grass.

He’s trusting Daryl to see the echo of a scared little girl.

‘You want a lesson in tracking?’ Daryl throws over his shoulder. ‘Or you want to find that girl and get our ass off that interstate?’

Rick doesn’t answer and just follows him.

Daryl likes that.

 

 

They come across a walker.

Daryl expects Rick to tell him to hang back or even run back to the interstate while he deals with it, but when they both duck to the ground as the leaves rustle, Rick doesn’t say anything.

Daryl gestures that they should round on the walker, Rick to the left, he’ll take the right. He throws in a wink at the end because he’s not sure how to ask if that’s a good plan without words.

Rick winks back at him.

The walker is taken down without a hitch. The bolt buries itself in its skull. Rick nods his thanks at the boy before he examines the body. There’s flesh between its teeth. Daryl is almost impressed when Rick rolls the body over again and exposes the stomach, drawing his knife. ‘Only one way to know for sure.’

Daryl watches how he clumsily bares the knife. He’s about to go at it the wrong way.

‘Here,’ Daryl steps over the body and takes out his own hunting knife. It’s far longer than Rick’s. ‘I’ll do it,’ he tells the man. ‘How many kills have you skinned and gutted in your life? Anyway, mine’s sharper.’

The stench is unbelievable.

The cop breathes through his mouth as he stares at the horizon. He’s trying very hard not to throw up.

Daryl’s never thrown up over gutting anything before. He’s never been disgusted by blood and organs, can’t even remember the first time he had to clean a kill. Some people act like it’s some sort of rite of passage. He’s even heard of kids eating the still-warm hearts of the first deer they ever took down on their own. It wasn’t like that with him. Vaguely he can remember Will clapping him on the shoulder, something that could have been pride causing his eyes to shimmer, and the simple announcement; _dinner_.

Hunting has been a source of income for them. To either keep themselves from starving or by earning a couple of extra bucks from their left-overs. The hides, the antlers sometimes, even a couple of strips of meat.

‘Here comes the bad part,’ Daryl announces and Rick just looks at him. The boy smirks a bit as he digs around in the stomach, pulling out a couple of organs that are in the way. Rick presses the back of his hand to his lips and nose. He tries to keep himself from throwing up for real this time.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says as he’s up to his elbow into the walker, ‘hoss had a big meal not long ago. I feel it in there.’ Another pull and he drops something at Rick’s feet. ‘Here’s the gut bag.’

‘I got it,’ Rick mutters.

Daryl rocks back to his heels and watches how he opens the bag up and roots around the content with his knife. Something catches Daryl’s eye and he jabs his knife in, fishing a small skull out. ‘This gross bastard had himself a woodchuck for lunch.’

‘At least we know.’

‘At least we know,’ Daryl echoes before taking off again.

‘Daryl,’ Rick rises too but doesn’t move. ‘It’s getting dark.’

‘What?’ the boy throws over his shoulder as he hops onto a boulder. ‘Ya scared, pig?’

‘I am,’ Rick nods and puts his hands on his hips. ‘We need to get back to the group before it gets dark. We can’t be out here with these… things.’

‘ _She’s_ out here with these things,’ Daryl argues as he turns and glares down at the grown man.

‘I know, I know,’ Rick tries to calm him down, ‘but it’s not safe and-‘

‘To hell with that!’

Rick shift his weight before walking over to him, his stride full of confidence and authority. ‘Can you track in the dark, son?’

‘Ain’t your son.’

‘Can you track in the dark, _Daryl_?’

‘’course not.’

‘You’ve been so careful not to mess up the tracks, what if we stumbled over it in the dark? Muck it up? What if _that’s_ the reason why we won’t be able to find her? We have to go back to the camp. You need to rest. Have some water.’

‘I’m fine.’ Daryl glances up at the sky, ‘just a little while more. She might be just over that ridge.’

‘No. We’re going back.’ Rick turns around and starts to make his way over to the interstate.

Daryl bites on his lip and looks out over the woods. He can see the trail, faint but there. He looks up the sky. It’s clear now but there’s no way to predict what the night brings and if it’s rain, they’ll be completely fucked.

The trail will be gone, along with Sophia.

He’d lasted for nine days out in the woods. Lost and scared and hungry but very much alive.

‘ _Sophia_!’ He screams.

There is no answer.

A countdown starts to tick in the back of his head.

Just eight more days to find her now.

 

 

The look on Carol’s face makes him feel guilty. He grabs hold of the strap of his bow and follows Rick. The cop clambers over the safety guard to comfort the woman. The group crowds around them, anxious to hear what they have to say.

‘Out in the dark’s no good,’ Daryl mutters. He forces himself to meet Carol’s eyes. ‘We’d just be trippin’ over ourselves. More people get lost.’

The woman starts to cry as the cop tries to reason with her.

‘We tracked her for a while,’ Daryl supplies as he sits down on the metal guard and swings his legs over. His boots hit the concrete with a thud. He’s tired. There’s sweat running down his back and he looks longingly at the supplies the group has gathered around the RV. He’s too proud to ask for any of it.

‘We have to make this an organized effort,’ Rick tells the group. ‘Daryl knows the woods better than anybody. He’ll come with us in the morning to continue tracking her down. He did good today.’

Daryl hunches his shoulder and rubs at a stain on his jeans.

The movement draws Carol’s gaze to it. ‘Is that – is that blood?’ she asks.

Daryl bites on his lip and looks at Rick for answers.

‘We took down a walker,’ Rick starts.

‘Walker? Oh, my god!’

‘There was no sign it was ever anywhere near Sophia.’

Andrea buts in when Lori draws Carol close for a comforting hug. ‘How can you know that?’

Daryl scrapes his boots over the concrete and feels Rick’s gaze rest on him. He looks up at the woman through his fringe. ‘We cut the son of a bitch open, made sure.’

Carol blames Rick. She cries while Rick tries to defend himself.

‘My little girl got left in the woods,’ Carol sobs quietly.

Daryl watches. He imagines what it will be like when Sophia returns. When they find her in a farmhouse somewhere, when Rick carries her back to camp and she runs the last few steps to jump into her mother’s arms. He wonders whether Carol will cry, whether she’ll pepper her child’s face with kisses, whether they will hug and refuse to let go for a long, long time.

He wonder what that’s like.

When he got back, there wasn’t anyone home. He’d made himself a sandwich. And when Will came home from work later that day, it was clear that he hadn’t been missed. He got a clip around the back of his head for mucking up the house with his dirty boots and for eating the last strips of bacon.

And that had been it.

He hopes Sophia will get a warmer welcome.

He looks at Carol and knows that her daughter is very lucky.

He can’t imagine that Will would have shed a single tear for him.

‘Hey bud,’ Shane sinks down beside him on the safe guard. They both watch how Rick walks off, his hand coming up to his eyes. Perhaps to wipe away some tears, or just the sweat from his brow, Daryl can’t be sure. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl answers with a shrug.

‘Rick said you did good out there.’

‘Rick don’t know shit.’

Shane shifts so he’s facing the boy. ‘He’s a good man.’

‘Never said he weren’t.’

The second cop ducks his head to make Daryl look at him. ‘You know he tried to do the right thing, right? With leaving Sophia there.’

Daryl nods because he does know. It only makes sense. He would have left Sophia alone too, he supposes. The girl had understood him fine, she just ran into something they now couldn’t trace. Something had spooked her enough to veer off the track he’d set out for her, that wasn’t on him. That’s just the world now. They run, and sometimes it goes right and sometimes it doesn’t.

‘Glenn told me you hate him.’

The boy glares at the general direction of where Glenn was a couple of moments ago and sets his jaw stubbornly.

‘He’s sorry about what happened to Will.’

‘He ain’t.’

‘He’s a father too, of course he feels bad about what happened.’

‘Don’t give a damn.’

‘Daryl,’ Shane sighs as he rubs the back of his head.

‘I did my part,’ Daryl tells him. ‘Y’all left me with him and I took him into the woods, showed him where the girl had gone. Don’t crawl up my ass now.’

‘I know and we’re grateful but-‘

‘Stop,’ Daryl stands and stretches. ‘Ain’t some damn kid no more, okay? Don’t have to baby me. I did my part,’ he repeats, ‘and I ain’t doin’ it for _Rick_ , so I don’t have to like him none.’

‘Give him a chance,’ Shane asks softly.

‘Did,’ Daryl nods, ‘and he came back without my dad.’

The cop lets his head hang for a second. He sighs again and then stands up too. ‘Okay, let’s get some food in you, okay? Did you drink anything today?’

‘Not after the waterboardin’.’

Shane cracks a smile and puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s go find Glenn then, he’s got a water bottle for you.’

Daryl nods and lets himself be led over to where Glenn and T-dog are. He doesn’t shrug the hand off.

 

 

There’s a tent and they let him go first.

Daryl creeps forward, the knife in his steady hand. He tries to listen but there’s no sound coming from the tent. There’s a small gap where one of the poles is. It’s no use. He can’t see anything but shadows. There’s something in the middle of the tent. A chair, maybe, or something else, he can’t be sure.

So he crawls back to the entrance and gestures to Rick that he’s not sure what to do.

The cop lets Carol come forward and call out for her daughter.

When there’s no answer, Daryl grips his knife tighter. He only moves the zipper down when he hears Rick come up behind him for some back-up.

The stench coming out of the tent hits them hard, but just like with the walker before, it leaves Rick gagging while Daryl can ignore it. He just wrinkles his nose a little as he steps inside the tent.

It’s a body. He’d known that by the stench, but he’s grateful when it turns out to just be some dude who’d opted out. There’s a gun in his hand still.

Daryl takes it.

‘Ain’t her,’ he mutters as he crawls out of the tent again. He clambers to his feet and wipes some sweat from his brow. ‘’s just some guy. Opted out. Ain’t that what Jenner called it?’

He never gets an answer. Or perhaps he does because at that moment the bells start to ring.

They run for the church.

When they hit the doors, Rick waits for Daryl to step up with his bow in hand, then Shane with his shotgun. He opens the doors after a curt nod from both of them.

Three walkers and none of them Sophia.

Lori hands Rick a machete.

Glenn wants to protest when Daryl pushes the bow into his hands but a snarl from a walker silences him and then the boy is already slinking down the side of the church. He watches how Rick bashes in a guy’s skull. Shane easily takes out another.

Daryl jumps onto one of the pews and creeps forward. The woman is left. He makes a kissing noise and she turns to him. With one powerful stroke, he ends her for good.

There’s no pride when he watches her go down. Just an empty feeling and sweat running down his back. He glances at the statue of Jesus Christ. ‘Yo, JC,’ he mutters, ‘you takin’ requests?’

The bells ring again and Glenn rips out the battery, stuffing it into his pocket before walking away again. Carol goes back into the church but Daryl stays outside. He walks around the church, looks for tracks or any sign that the girl came across this place at all. He halts when he hears Shane and Lori’s voices drift back to him.

‘I’m just trying to be the good guy here,’ Shane tells her. ‘Even if you don’t see it. None of this was intended. I hope you know that. Don’t matter. As long as I said it.’

‘You’re just going to disappear? You’re not even going to tell Rick?’

‘He’d only try to stop me,’ Shane counters, ‘no, that’s on you. You tell him what you want, or tell him nothing at all. You’re his wife.’

‘What about Daryl?’ Lori demands to know, ‘you’re just going to leave him behind too?’

Shane scoffs at that.

‘He’s just a _kid_ ,’ Lori hisses. ‘A twelve year old boy who lost his dad and he’s looking at you, Shane! He’s looking at you and Glenn, and you’re just going to leave him behind?’

‘You think that damn kid means anything compared to-‘

Daryl turns on his heels and runs off, into the woods. Anger swirls inside of his veins, causing him to run faster. He jumps over graves and then reaches the edge of the woods. There, he zigzags between the trees until the church is barely visible anymore. He falls to his knees and curses himself. He’s panting, sweat stings his eyes as he tilts his head back to look at the clear blue sky above them.

‘Stupid pig,’ he mutters but his shoulders curl inwards. It takes him a while to realize he feels betrayed. ‘Dumb fuck,’ he tells himself because it turns out that Will was right and he does have shit for brains. He tries to breathe through his nose but it doesn’t work. Panic wells up inside him, his breathing is all wrong, too fast and shallow. It feels like he’s drowning.

‘The fuck were ya thinkin’, boy,’ Will asks him. He’s leaning against a tree to Daryl’s right. ‘That a bunch of city slickers would ever give a fuck about us Dixon’s? You were startin’ to trust a damn pig to hold your hand? Wanted that Chinaman to tuck you in at night, sing ya a sweet song now?’

Daryl gasps for breath as he shakes his head.

‘Think ya were,’ Will leers. He folds his arms and in a flash, Daryl can see that he still has both of his hands. ‘Look at you. Cryin’ like some pathetic bitch.’

‘Ain’t,’ Daryl rasps.

‘Show me then,’ Will demands and his voice cracks like a whip. ‘Get up. Dixon’s never kneel.’

Daryl puts his hands on the soft earth and swallows thickly before pushing himself to his feet. He sways a little on the spot.

‘Wipe them tears.’

Daryl wipes them away with angry fists. He hadn’t even realized he’d been crying.

‘Now,’ Will pushes himself away from the tree and saunters over. He’s smiling, that cruel smile that sometimes meant that there would be blood on the walls later. ‘You a Dixon, boy?’

‘Yeah.’ The boy lifts his chin a little higher.

‘That right, hmm?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl repeats. He rolls his shoulders back.

‘And what does that mean?’ Will breathes into his face. He smells like peppermint, a smell Daryl hates because it means that he’s been drinking the green liquor. He hates that even more than the moonshine.

‘That I’m tough as nails.’

‘Sure,’ Will smirks.

Behind them, Daryl can hear Glenn and Rick calling his name.

‘What else?’ his dad challenges.

‘Nobody kills us but us.’

‘And them city slickers?’

‘Bait,’ Daryl bites out. ‘They’re walker bait. Ain’t nothin’ to me.’

‘That’s right,’ Will reaches out with both hands to cup the boy’s face. One hand feels deadly cold. ‘Run along now,’ his dad grins. ‘And when Rick ain’t lookin’? You best shoot him in the face for me.’

 

 

 


	15. Ain't upset

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t give a damn that they’re splitting up, or that he’s send back with the group to the highway while Carl gets to come with Rick and Shane. He just spits on the ground and swings his bow onto his back while glaring daggers at the two cops. If they don’t want him tracking no more, that’s fine by him.

Rick kisses his wife goodbye and Shane turns to Glenn, ‘you look after him?’ He asks with a nod at Daryl.

‘Sure,’ Glenn agrees but the boy just scoffs.

‘I’m not leaving you unarmed,’ Lori tells Rick with a small smile as they part and Rick wants to hand his gun to her.

‘Here,’ Daryl holds out the gun he took from the guy in the tent. ‘I got one too. You take it.’

‘Where did you get that?’ Shane steps forward with a frown on his face.

‘What?’ Daryl snaps back. ‘Think I stole it or something? Weren’t yours, weren’t anybody’s no more!’

Shane looks surprised at his hostility for a second, ‘I know you didn’t steal it, bud, but we have a system, all right? Rick and I are carrying. Do you even know how to shoot?’

‘What’s so hard about pullin’ a damn trigger?’

The two cops shift their weight uneasily. Shane glances at his partner before saying, ‘pulling it is easy. It’s what comes after that’s hard. Where did you get it?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Daryl grouses when everyone looks at him, ‘from that guy in the tent, how the fuck else could he have blown his own brains out?’

‘You never said he blew his brains out,’ Rick points out, ‘you just said he opted out.’

‘Whatever, man, just because all y’all were too pussy to go in and check for yourself! Lettin’ a _damn kid_ do the heavy liftin’ now? Have a nice stroll,’ he makes a throw-away gestures, ‘I already checked that side for tracks, she never set foot there, but whatever helps y’all sleep at night.'

Shane looks annoyed, 'what crawled up your butt and died, kid? Everyone's trying here.'

'Tryin' to get me killed,' Daryl mutters as he aims a kick at a small rock and then saunters away, back the way they came. He doesn't stop to check whether the rest is following him. He doesn't really need to because when he'd walked about half a mile, he can hear them arguing. With a frustrated sigh he plops down on a tree trunk while Lori says what's bugging her.

About how they should stop looking at Rick like they're all blaming him. That he had no other choice. And she's right, he knows that, but one right decision doesn't erase the consequences and it sure as hell doesn't erase the earlier wrong that was leaving Will behind on a damn rooftop.

Glenn is looking at him warily as if he's trying to figure out what happened that turned Daryl's mood so sour in a couple of minutes.

Daryl refuses to look at him. He rubs at his brow and hunches his shoulders. He feels angry because he hates these people and doesn't want them to look at him like that. Not with any sort of emotion that shows that they actually do care about what is happening to him, how he's feeling or how he's doing.

But most of all he hates that he likes that. He _likes_ the fact that Glenn is watching his back and always tries to get him to be involved with the group. That the young man lets him tag along and doesn't treat him like he's just someone else's kid they got stuck with.

Worse still; he likes Glenn.

That makes him feel guilty because he knows that Will wouldn't have approved. It's not like he's replacing Will, because no one could replace his blood, and he could never fill Merle's shoes either, but Daryl still feels guilty for liking the Asiain.

It shouldn't matter. Will is long gone now and Daryl is still here. He doesn't believe in ghosts and knows that the appearance of Will today was nothing but a sick trick of his own mind, but he feels torn nevertheless.

Blood is the only thing that matters, he tells himself bitterly. He's not sure who he is trying to convince.

Eventually he lashes out at Carol, sounding far meaner than he had intended when he snaps; 'I'll tell ya what's worth; not a damn thing. It's a waste of time, all this hopin' 'nd prayin'. We're going to locate that little girl and she's going to be just _fine_. Am I the only one zen around here? Good Lord.'

From the corner of his eye, he can see how both Andrea and Glenn give him a small smile. It almost looks fond. He curses under his breath before continuing to lead the group back to the highway.

He sort of enjoys the walk through the woods. He jumps on top of boulders, walks over fallen trees while trying to keep his balance and picks up a large stick to slap it against every tree he passes. When he gets bored with that, he throws it into a bush to scare some birds hiding between the leaves.

Every once in while he glances over his shoulder to see if the group is keeping up. They are all walking in formation, one after the other. Lori is closest to him.

When he loses his balance on yet another tree trunk, he jumps down beside her.

She smiles at him and reaches over to wipe his hair from his forehead. 'Careful now,'  she says softly. 'Don't want you getting hurt.'

He ducks away from her touch.

It doesn't seem to bother her. 'Don't forget to drink enough water, okay?' She asks.

'I'm fine, lady.'

'Yeah?' She doesn't sound too sure. 'You looked pretty upset back there.'

'Aint _upset_.'

'No?' She stops walking and he automatically does the same. A warm hand caresses his cheek for a moment. 'Sure? You know you can come to me if there's something wrong, right? If you want to talk, or you just need somebody to listen for a moment.'

He bites his lip and squints up at her. 'Done told ya; I'm fine.'

'Okay, I won't keep bugging you,' Lori smiles as she tugs playfully at his leather vest. 'Just promise me you'll come and find me if you need someone. Or that you'll go to Shane or Glenn.'  She must spot the grimace on his face at the mention of Shane's name because the playfulness melts away. 'Daryl-' she starts but she's cut off by a gunshot.

Just the one.

The boy goes rigid and then twirls around to where the sound seemed to have come from. ‘What was that?’

Lori puts a hand on his shoulder and draws the boy into her frame, ‘a gunshot.’

‘Why?’ Daryl looks up at her, ‘think it was Rick? He took down a walker?’

The woman shakes her head. ‘No. Rick wouldn’t risk a gunshot to put down one walker, or Shane. They’d do it quietly, like in the church, remember?’

Of course he remembers.

‘I could run back and check on them,’ Daryl offers. ‘I can find my own way back to the interstate, ain’t no trouble. Can track ‘em down easy too.’

‘No,’ Lori tightens her hold on him for a second, ‘don’t be silly.’ She smiles down at him, ‘you’re staying right here, with us. Where we can keep an eye on you, okay? Don’t want you running around the woods when there are guns going off.’

‘Ain’t scared.’

‘Nope,’ Glenn comments as he walks by, ‘you ain’t scared of nothing,’ he says a he mimics the boy’s accent. ‘We know, Dare.’

Anger flashes in Daryl’s eyes as he pushes himself away from the woman. ‘Fuck ya,’ he spits out as he shoulders his bow. ‘Shouldn’t have even offered! Pssh. They ain’t nothing to me.’ He ducks away from both of them and resumes their walk back to the interstate.

Because his back is to both of them, he misses how Glen and Lori exchange worried glances.

 

The girl comes out of nowhere.

He doesn’t hear a thing she’s saying. He just watches as Lori dumps her backpack on the ground and climbs behind her on the horse with easy grace. Black hair flowing down her back, her skin sickly pale now she knows what the gunshot was for. For whom.

The corpse reanimates beside him.

It growls.

‘Shut up,’ Daryl murmurs as he fires off the shot almost absent-mindedly. He moves over to help Andrea up.

For a second he thinks about calling her some names or telling her that she’s got a death wish by wandering so far from the group and then stumbling on a walker, but she looks terrified and he doesn’t have the heart for it. So instead he helps her up and then grabs his bolt from the body before stomping back towards the highway where Dale is waiting for them, eyebrows raised in surprise when he hears that Lori rode off.

He looks at Daryl when he asks, ‘and you let her?’

The boy bristles. ‘Climbed down out of my asshole, man,’ because he doesn’t know what he should have done differently. He’d objected a bit but Lori had dismissed him easily before climbing on that horse and riding off with the girl, so there’s nothing he could have done, really. ‘Rick sent her,’ he adds as he stalks towards the RV to grab something to drink. ‘She knew Lori’s name and Carl’s.’

He sits down in the shade of the RV and gulps down some water before letting his head rest against the metal. Through hooded eyes he watches the group talk about what happened and what they’re supposed to do now.

Of course Carol wants to stay in case Sophia makes her way back.

‘Could rig up a sign,’ Daryl says as he shields his eyes from the sun. ‘We leave tomorrow for that place, would give us enough time to make something in case she finds her way here. Leave her some supplies. I’ll hold here tonight, stay with the RV.’

‘If the RV is staying, then I am too,’ Dale nods.

‘I’m in,’ Andrea adds.

‘Well, if you’re all staying then I’m…’ Glenn starts but Dale cuts him off.

‘No, not you Glenn. You’re going. Take Carol’s Cherokee.’

‘Me?’ Glenn sounds offended. ‘Why is it always me? Besides, if Daryl’s staying then I’m staying too! You can’t-‘

‘Done told ya,’ Daryl snaps, ‘don’t need a goddamn babysitter, ya stupid chink.’

Everyone ignores him.

‘You have to find this farm,’ Dale tells the young man, ‘reconnect with our people and see what’s going on. But most importantly; you have to get T-dog there. This is not an option. That cut has gone from bad to worse. He has a very serious blood infection. Get him to that farm. See if they have any antibiotics. Because if not, T-dog will die, no joke.’

Daryl rolls his eyes and gets up. He walks over to Will’s truck and grabs his pack. ‘Why’d ya wait till now to say anything?’ He asks as he rummages through the contents until he can pulls a clear plastic bag out. There are several bottles with pills in there. ‘Grabbed my brother’s stash from the cabin ‘fore we headed out. Got some meds. Crystal, X, don’t need that,’ he murmurs as he searches for the right bottle. ‘Got some kickass painkillers.’ He throws a bottle at Glenn. ‘Don’t know what the other names mean,’ he holds out the bag to Dale, ‘but there must be some antibiotics or something in there. Not generic stuff neither. First class. Merle, my brother, he got the clap on occasion.’

Dale is laughing when Daryl walks away.

 

It’s dark in the RV. He’s stretched out on the floor, his bow safely stashed on the table near his head and the knife still on his belt. He listens to Andrea’s movements, the clicking sound of bullets being pushed into their magazines, of guns being assembled. She’s getting better at it.

The methodical sound of it is more soothing than Carol’s crying.

That’s getting on his nerve.

It makes him feel guilty because what kind of tracker can’t find a little girl in the woods of Georgia? And he did find her trail but they swerved off it when they ran for the church. They wasted time today and the clock is already ticking so fast.

He’s worried about Carl too.

He’s pissed that he’s worried. It’s a vicious cycle. He’s starting to care about these people while he knows he shouldn’t. City slickers. Walker bait, all of them. He didn’t need the image of his dad in the middle of a near panic attack to tell him that. They are going to die first.

He just doesn’t want to end up alone.

When he pushes himself up to his elbows, he can see how Carol is curled up on the couch near the window. She’s staring out, hoping that Sophia will come running out of the woods.

In the end, he grabs his bow and a flashlight to go look for her. Andrea comes with. It’s not for his benefit. She’s the worst babysitter out of them all, so he doesn’t mind that she tags along.

He makes her laugh with the story about how he’d wipes his ass with poison oak.

He wastes an arrow for her.

They don’t find Sophia, but when they walk back, she lets her hand rest between his shoulder blades, on the leather, between the wings, and it doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as he thought it would. When she looks at him these days, it’s with kinder eyes. He shouldn’t like that.

 

The next morning, after they’d rigged up a sign for Sophia, they left for the Greene farm. Andrea and Daryl in the first car, the RV just behind them.

Daryl has his feet on the dashboard again. He stares out over the fields. It seems so empty now. He used to dream of a place like this. He figured that someday he might work on one of those farms, taking care of the animals and doing heavy labor. He wouldn’t have minded that, would probably have loved it, even. With his brains and his family, he knows he wouldn’t have gone off to college or any sort of higher education. Hell, he doesn’t think he’d ever even finished high school even if he’d gotten the chance.

Maybe he’d roam the country side for the odds jobs. Building fences, keeping an eye on the cattle, dig some wells. That would have been fine by him.

Andrea waits patiently as he jumps out of the car as soon as they hit the fence. He unlocks it and lets the group in before locking it up tight again.

The house is big. It’s also very beautiful. There’s history in those wooden floorboards, love in the paintjob. He wonders how many generations have stood on that porch, looking out over their own land.

The group meets them outside.

Rick looks terrible. He’s still wearing his cop uniform, stained with his son’s blood, and his skin is so pale that he looks ready to fall over if the wind gets too strong. Lori is at his side, hair a mess but a hesitant smile on her face.

‘He’ll pull through,’ she nods when Dale asks after her son. ‘Thanks to Hershel and his people.’

‘And Shane,’ Rick adds. ‘We’d have lost Carl if not for him.’

Shane looks different. It’s not just the clothes or the lack of hair, but his whole body language has changed since Daryl last saw him. He looks almost shy.

Nobody seems to notice as Dale embraces Rick and Carol hugs Lori.

‘Hunting accident,’ Rick says, ‘that’s all. Just a stupid accident.’

Daryl bites on his lip and holds on to the strap of his bow as every one of the group greets each other. Andrea darts forward to carefully hug T-dog. Glenn is smiling at the sight before him, glad to have the group together again.

Shane seems to shake his mood off a little as he makes his way over to the boy. He hobbles a bit. There’s something wrong with his ankle. ‘Hey, bud,’ he says as he puts his hands on Daryl’s shoulders, ‘you all right?’

Daryl nods. He squints up at the man. ‘We didn’t find Sophia.’

‘I know,’ the man draws him in for a tight hug. One hand comes up and buries itself in Daryl’s dark hair. ‘We’ll find her.’

Daryl allows the hug but grits his teeth.

‘Am I glad to see you,’ Shane murmurs into his hair. ‘Did Glenn look after you all right? Didn’t run into any trouble?’

‘I'm fine,’ Daryl says. He gets tired of having to say that. He puts his hands on the softness of Shane’s belly and pushes him away.

 

 

It’s afternoon when the group splits up again. Rick talks big game about getting the search for Sophia properly organized but Hershel won’t let him off the property and Shane’s ankle is bust so they decide that they’ll just go out tomorrow then, like that girl being on her own for a whole day more in the woods won’t even matter.

Daryl listens to their talk from the top of Will’s car. He’s looking down at the map, trying to figure out where they are now and how he can get back to the creek. Nobody pays any attention to him. The old man, Hershel, sometimes glances up at him but Daryl just glares back and the man doesn’t ask any questions.

Glenn heads off with Maggie towards town. Daryl watches them go. He’s never seen anyone look more uncomfortable on a horse and smirks at the Korean’s back.

Then he hops down from his spot on the car, passes Shane who is teaching Andrea how to clean her gun instead of just disassembling it. He tries to slink off but Rick catches him by the house.

‘Daryl,’ he calls out, ‘where are you going?’

‘None of your damn business,’ the boy tells him.

‘Are you heading out?’ Rick gets up from the porch and walks over to meet him.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl tilts his chin higher. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back before dark and I know them three rules.’ He head towards the woods.

‘ _Hey_!’ Rick calls out sharply. ‘We got a base. We can get this search properly organized now.’

‘Ya got a point?’ Daryl asks, ‘or we just chattin’?’

‘My point is; it lets you off the hook. You don’t need to be out there now. We don’t need to track her down if we can get the grid set up. We’ll find her. Shane and I.’

Daryl scoffs at that.

‘Daryl, I’m serious,’ Rick tells him. ‘You stay here. In camp! I don’t want you out there on your own, you’re just as old as Carl is and look what happened!’

He wants to tell the cop that he’s not some dirty city slicker who can’t even tell if there’s a gun trained on him, or that he’s not so stupid as to try and pet a buck that could have been dinner for all of them, but he swallows his words and just flicks the cop off before continuing his way.

He’s lucky that Rick is too weak to follow him.

 

 

He’s not there to see Glenn climb down the well and almost get himself killed.

Instead, he finds an abandoned farmhouse.

He’s glad that it’s not dark yet because the house itself is creepy enough. The windows are broken. Everything creaks as he moves through the many rooms. Dust dances in the sunrays as he brushes past the old curtains.

For a second, he’s too scared to go up the stairs. The whole house moans and groans around him.

‘Come on,’ he mutters to himself. ‘Tough as nails, yeah right. Scared of a pile of bricks now. Up we go.’ He sets foot on the first sport, ‘stop being a damn pussy about it, could have been outside by now, huh?’ He nods as he quickly runs up the stairs, bow at the ready, ‘taking your sweet ass time, Darleena.’

He imagines it’s his dad that’s talking to him. Or Merle.

It keeps him moving. In and out of the rooms. There’s nothing there, just a bunch of old furniture and dust. He’s glad when he slinks back downstairs and ducks into the final room. It used to be the kitchen. There’s a can of tuna in the garbage. It’s still wet. Fresh.

A door is open too.

He frowns and kick it open even further so he can see inside. It’s just a closet, tiny and dank. There are couple of shelves with some stuff, most of it has gone bad. Underneath the shelves, someone created a little bed. Pillow, blanket.

He knows it was Sophia.

He knows it in his bones.

There’s no sign of her inside the house. He curses and wishes the girl hadn’t been so stupid to run off. He knows the rules about getting lost. If someone’s out there looking for you, you sit tight where you are and you wait. He thinks his mom might have taught him that, a long, long time ago. He remembers it now and knows how valuable that lessons would have been for Sophia.

He screams for her outside.

There’s no answer.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots the Cherokee rose.

 

 

‘A flower?’ Carol asks when he brings it to her.

‘It’s a Cherokee rose,’ Daryl defends himself, plucking a piece of straw from between his lips as he speaks. It’s clear that it doesn’t mean anything to the woman, however. She doesn’t know the story behind it. So he tells it. About the Indians on the Trail of Tears, about the mothers and their lost little ones. About the elders and their prayer, the tears and growing flowers.

He ducks his head a little, ‘I’m not fool enough to think there’s any flowers blooming for my dad. But I believe, this one? It bloomed for your little girl.’

Carol is crying when she reaches for him. He lets himself be dragged into a tight hug. She kisses the side of his head and wipes her tears away as she lets go again.

Daryl nods and walks towards the door. ‘She’s gonna really like it in here,’ he tells the mother.

‘Thank you, Daryl.’

 

 

The rest of the group is not quite so grateful when they find out that Daryl has been out in the woods on his own all day.

Daryl watches how the group rounds on him, all with wide eyes and sharp tongues. They talk about how he should have stayed here, with them, how he shouldn’t go out by himself like that, how he could have gotten hurt. It particulary hurts when Glenn steps in to have his say, scolding the boy for not listening to Rick and leaving the camp while he himself had been off all day to chase after the skirt of that farmer's daughter who is now looming in the background.

They don’t even listen properly when he tells them that he found a sign of Sophia.

‘You can’t be so irresponsible,’ Dale tries but Daryl gapes at him.

‘I almost found her!’

‘But you _didn’t_ ,’ Rick accuses.

Daryl takes a step away from him, ‘no, she was gone but she were there! I know she were. Tomorrow I can start there and find her trail, but it was getting dark and I- Fuck you!’ he shouts when he realizes that he’s defending himself. ‘I ain’t nothing to you! Mind your own damn business, ya stupid pig!’

He storms off and goes to set up his own tent at the edge of the land, near a couple of trees where he can hang his clothes and kills to dry.

The manual labor is enough to calm him down. He only glares when Shane hobbles over and doesn’t say anything.

The cop plops down in front of his tent. He rubs at the back of his head and sighs. ‘You’ve got to start giving me some clues, bud, because I just don’t know anymore.’

‘Clues ‘bout what?’ Daryl frowns as he throws his sleeping bag into the tent.

‘Why you’re acting like this. One second you’re all game, ready to get on with things, with people, and the next second you’re just off on your own, pretending not to give a shit about anybody? What’s that all about? Puberty hitting you hard or something? Twelve years old and already an angry teen?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Daryl mutters as he drags a log over to where he plans to have his campfire.

‘Daryl,’ Shane lets his head hang, ‘throw me a bone here. Is this about Rick? Man, he did what he thought was right for Sophia, it’s not on him. You can’t keep blaming him for this mess.’

Daryl doesn’t answer. He sits down on the log and sets his jaw stubbornly.

‘What? Did Glenn do something? Are you mad because he’s hanging out with Maggie now?’ Shane tries to catch his eye. ‘Did I do something wrong? Come on, kid, give me something here.’

The boy stares at his own boots and keeps his lips pressed together.

‘I can’t help if I don’t know what the problem is, Daryl.’

The boy sucks on his teeth.

‘Fine,’ Shane pushes himself up again and starts to head back to the RV. After a couple of steps, he changes his mind and turns back to the boy who’d been glaring at his retreating back. ‘You know how you talk big game about how you’re not a kid anymore?’ He scoffs. ‘Then why are you throwing a tantrum just now? Carl’s dying inside that house, Sophia is lost, the group is splitting apart and you’re being a sulky little shit. I don’t have time for this. Either you man up and tell me what the problem is, or you stay out of our way.’ He puts his hands on his hips and glares at the boy. ‘Well? What’s it gonna be, sport?’

Daryl slowly meets his eye. And then, just as slowly, he raises his middle finger at the cop.

‘Yeah,’ Shane nods, ‘fuck you too.’

 

 

The next morning, he steals one of the horses. And takes a tumble.

 

 


	16. The boy and the skeleton

 

* * *

 

 

I needed a folklore story. I found it here;

[The boy and the skeleton](http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2011/07/the_skeleton.html)

 I used it and hope nobody minds.

 

* * *

 

 

Merle was fifteen years older than Daryl, which had been both the best and worst thing about their relationship.

The best thing was that Merle seemed to know everything already by the time that Daryl was able to walk. He would tell him about legends, about myths and histories and he would tell it in such a detailed manner that Daryl had always thought that Merle must have been right there. On the Trail of Tears, on the battlefields, on heaving ships on their way to the new and old worlds.

He would help Daryl with his homework, teaching him easy ways to solve his assignments as well as the best ways to cheat on some of the tests. It was him who discovered that Daryl was very good at drawing, seeing the talent even when Daryl was still scratching at the paper awkwardly, his hands not quite used to holding a thin pencil instead of the thick crayons.

He remembers his mother’s funeral. He doesn’t remember her or the church or the service or any of that, but he remembers Merle on that day. He’d never seen his brother cry before.

Merle was different after that. More volatile.

Some days he would let Daryl tag along to parties and his friends, claiming that the little boy was a girl-magnet and therefor a perfect wingman, never mind that he was only eight years old. He would make sure that Daryl got to school all right and would sometimes even pick him up on his motorcycle. He’d bought a helmet just for Daryl.

Other days he would shout at Daryl to get out of his space, to leave him alone because he didn’t have time to waste on someone who didn’t even know how to properly tie their own shoes or do their homework.

Just like their dad, Merle started drinking and smoking.

Daryl had hated that. But unlike their old man, Merle never raised a hand to him. Sure, he bitched and moaned and cursed up a storm whenever Daryl messed something up, but he never hit him or took his belt out of the loops to teach him a lesson.

Instead he would smash his bottle against the wall and storm out.

Daryl remembers the day Merle had joined the army.

At school they’d learned about bad people living overseas who’d attack their nation. On the television, he’d seen torn flags being raised above rubble. And now Merle had joined the army to get shipped off to a desert and fight the men who’d come for them first.

Of course, it never came to that. Merle got thrown into prison for punching some officer instead of being send overseas but that didn’t matter to Daryl.

He’d still left.

But now he’s back. He’s looming over Daryl with that grin that never seemed to be able to melt from his weathered face, those familiar blue eyes. A family trait. The only one Daryl might be proud of.

His brother’s face is hazy. Daryl can’t be sure whether that’s because he doesn’t quite remember him after such a long time, or because he has hit his head really hard. He remembers spotting that stupid doll in the water, the horse that got spooked by something, and his tumble down the cliff until he landed hard in the water. Pain is throbbing through his body. There’s fire in his head, but in his side too.

He tries to look down but can’t manage. His mouth feels dry. The world spins around him when Merle leans down to get in his face.

‘Why don’t you pull that arrow out, dummy?’

Right. Daryl groans softly and blinks. He feels sleepy, numb but also on fire because now he remembers why his side hurts. He’d shot himself with his bolt by accident. It’s still inside of him, piercing his skin, his muscle. He’d tried to climb out of the pit.

He’d never reached the top.

‘You can bind your wound better.’

Daryl almost laughs because Dixon’s never give out advice without hiding it in an insult. ‘Merle,’ he moans.

Merle laughs at him. That fond smile he used to have when he’d watched Daryl come skipping out of the school towards the waiting bike. Dirt on his face and a sketchbook under his arm. ‘Hmm,’ his brother lets his gaze travel over the boy’s body. ‘What’s going on here? You takin’ a siesta or something?’

‘A shitty day, bro,’ Daryl murmurs because that’s exactly what is has been so far.

‘Like me to get you a pillow? Maybe rub your feet?’

Daryl closes his eyes and thinks about the summer nights he’d spent on Merle’s back, his front plastered to those muscles, chin on his brothers shoulder as they read a comic book together in the backyard. Sometimes he’d wake up in a heap on the lawn when his brother had shook him off roughly, but others times he’d wake up in his bed the next day, tucked in and the comic on his nightstand.

‘Screw you,’ Daryl whispers. He knows those times are long gone.

Merle laughs again. That deep, weird chuckle that always manages to catch the youngest Dixon off guard. ‘You're the one screwed from the looks of it. All them years I spent trying to make a man of you, this is what I get? Look at you. Lying in the dirt like a used rubber. You're gonna die out here, little brother. And for what?’

Daryl remembers that too. He opens his eyes again. ‘Girl,’ he whispers. ‘They lost a little girl.’

‘So you got a thing for girls now?’ Merle asks as he tilt his head slightly. ‘Never thought I’d live to see the day, baby boy. Proud of you. Thought you were a pillow biter for sure.’

‘Shut up.’

‘No, no,’ Merle tuts. ‘You’re gonna listen to me now, little brother. Hey,’ he snaps his fingers right in front of Daryl’s nose. ‘You’re gonna die like this.’

‘Ain’t,’ Daryl protests weakly.

‘No? What’re ya gonna do then?’

Tears are stinging in Daryl’s eyes. There’s dirt on his lips, on his chin. Something trickles on the side of his face, he hopes it is water but fears that it might be blood instead. It’s too warm to be water.

‘Gonna get back,’ he mutters.

‘That right, hmm? And how’re ya gonna do that? By bein’ a little bitch?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl groans pathetically. ‘Gonna –‘ his eyes roll for a moment and the world spins again. ‘Gonna climb up, ‘nd… gonna get to... Glenn. Shane.’

‘Hmm hmm,’ Merle nods and leans in. Three fingers on Daryl’s small cheek. He taps, almost lovingly. ‘Come on,’ the big brother smiles, ‘before I have to kick your teeth in.’

Daryl watches how Merle gets up. The sunlight looks strange behind him, like a halo, or like Merle isn’t really there. He looks wrong. He’s wearing the same clothes he was when Daryl last saw him. The same leather vest, just like their dad’s but without the wings which always made it less cool in Daryl’s opinion. That leather strap around his wrist, the baggy jeans. The heavy boots which he now uses to kick Daryl’s legs.

‘Come on,’ his brother urges.

Daryl knows he’s not real. He wonders whether he’s finally losing his mind. First his dad, now Merle. In a haze of pain he wonders whether he’ll get to see his mom too, before this is all over.

His brother kicks him again.

It takes Daryl a couple of seconds to realize that his brother is growling. He frowns against the sunlight filtering through the trees and then looks down his body to where Merle is now pulling at his foot.

Except it’s not Merle. It’s a walker.

Daryl whimpers and scrambles back, kicking his feet to shake the walker. Small, panicked noises slip over his lips as his back hits the stone wall behind him and then the walker is on him. A punch, and then Daryl throws his weight against the walker, forcing it onto its back. His hand finds the stick he’d been using as a crutch.

He tries to smash the skull in but lacks the strength. Then he scrambles to his feet, twirls the stick so its vertical and drives it into the walker’s eye socket instead.

He falls onto his knees but his head whips up at the sound of another approaching walker. Daryl grabs his bow but realizes that he must have lost his bolts when he fell down the first time. He’d fished the weapon out of the water, but the bolts are not in the quiver anymore.

Without thinking about it, he reaches for the bolt that’s piercing his side.

With a horrid squelching sound, he yanks it out.

Tears are rolling down his cheek, it hurts so much, but he ignores it. Adrenaline makes him move. Bolt between his teeth, he can taste his own blood, foot in the stirrup and then he pulls the string back. It takes all his strength.

After what seems like years, the string clicks into place.

He loads it, fingers shaking but sure, and rolls onto his back so he has more time to aim.

The bolt buries itself neatly in the skull.

Daryl lets the bow fall onto his chest as he stares at the walker, who falls down beside him. Face planted in the sand, the bolt sticking out of his brain. Empty eyes stare at the water.

The boy hugs his weapon close and cries.

 

 

It’s noon when Daryl wakes up again.

He sits up slowly and stares at the two walkers. One with the bolt in its head, the other speared by the stick.

He slowly clambers to his feet and stumbles away from them, towards a log where he can sit. Slowly, he shrugs out of his shirt and makes a pad out of it. He binds his wound better. For a second he squints at the sky, so blue above him, ‘son of a bitch was right.’

Before, he’d caught two squirrels. One of them is missing in action, but the other is still dangling from the string that’s attached to his jeans. He wets his knife, cuts it open and eats it raw. It tastes kind of bad, all slimy and squishy, but he swallow quickly because he knows he needs the food in order to get some strength back.

He sucks the blood from his fingers.

When he’s done, he finds Sophia’s doll - the only damn reason why he ever went this close to the ridge - and stuffs it under his belt.

Then he starts to climb.

It’s a steep climb. He tries to use the stick first but it’s no use. He takes a deep breath, grits his teeth and swings himself upwards by grabbing hold of the roots above him.

He’s drenched in sweat. There’s blood and dirt all over him and blood is trickling down his side. The wound hurts something awful.

He looks up at the sun and thinks that he might die after all.

‘Remember the story, little brother?’ Merle asks as he sits down on the top of the ledge, looking down at Daryl. ‘About the boy and the skeleton?’

Daryl closes his eyes for a second. He does remember the story, he just doesn’t care about it at the moment. He has more important things to think about, like the fact that he’s bleeding out and seeing things which aren’t there.

‘What’s the matter, Darleena? That all you got in you?’ Merle leers. ‘Throw away that purse and climb.’

‘I liked it better when you were locked up,’ Daryl grouses as he tries to climb again. ‘Who the fuck let ya out?’

‘Come on,’ Merle laughs, ‘don’t be like that. I’m on your side.’

‘Yeah? Since when?’

‘Hell, since the day you were born, baby brother.’

Daryl knows that’s true. There used to be pictures in their house of Merle, fifteen years old and beaming while he held a crying baby in his arms. Merle, twenty, with a five year old boy on his shoulders, both sticking their tongues out at the camera. Merle, twenty five and leanings against his pick-up with a cigarette between his lips and sulky look on his face as his girlfriend snapped a candid photograph. Right next to him, on the hood of his precious ride, Daryl sat with a grin on his face, leaning on the strong shoulders of his older brother and ten years old.

Those pictures were taken on good days though. There were bad ones too. When they would rile each other up until Merle would thunder that he would murder Daryl in his sleep, days when Merle ignored him in favor of booze and drugs, or pawned him off to shady girlfriends who had to baby sit him but were too high to even make him a sandwich. Days when Daryl wouldn’t understand that not everyone had time to draw and play and do silly things and threw a tantrum when Merle left for work or training.

‘Tell me the story, Daryl. About the skeleton and the boy.’

The boy gazes up at his older brother through a haze of sweat and exhaustion. ‘Ain’t you supposed to be tellin’ me stories? ‘sides,’ he grunts as he hoists himself higher, ‘kinda busy right now.’

Merle laughs again and hums. ‘Fine. You kick off them damn high heels and climb, and I’ll tell ya a story. Best shut the fuck up though and quit your whining while I do it. You listen now.’

Daryl takes a break and breathes in deeply, gathering strength. He nods.

‘Was this boy out in them woods, right? He’d been out huntin’ all day, had wandered too far so when night came, hmmm. He was out in the dark. Luckily, he found an old farmhouse somewhere. Hung his hat there.’

Daryl looks up at his brother but holds his tongue. The story changes every time Merle tells it. Sometimes it’s a boy, sometimes a girl. They’re out hunting, they’re out looking for a job, they’re running from something else, they’re trying to find a new home after their old one burned.

It doesn’t matter. The plot never changes.

‘At night, the boy woke up because he heard something. A thump,’ Merle stomps his foot down and grins, ‘and a voice calling out; _I’m fallin’ down_!’ And what do ya know, hmm? A skeleton came crashing through the roof. It had this dead-man’s grin right? Well, the boy grinned right back ‘cause he weren’t no little bitch.’

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter and climbs.

‘But the skeleton got balls too,’ Merle nods like he approves of that. ‘So he challenges the boy. Says he will wrestle him since he’s so brave and all.’

‘Doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense,’ Daryl complains.

‘Shut the fuck up, will ya?’ Merle shouts down at him. He kicks some dirt and leaves off the ledge so it rains down on his brother. ‘Just fuckin’ climb, I’ll do the damn talkin’.’

‘Fine,’ Daryl mutters, soft enough so his blood doesn’t hear him.

‘Good. Where was I? Ah, yeah, so they wrestle, right? Boy’s pissing his pants, hell, everyone would be when they were wrestling with a damn skeleton, but he did it. Up and down the room. But ya see, this boy, he had a fine older brother who’d taught him how to fight. Made a man out of him. So the boy managed to throw the skeleton on the ground.

‘Skeleton promises the boy a treasure for his courage. In order to get it, the boy had to carry the skeleton and grab his candle – oh, yeah, he had a fuckin’ candle all right? To see shit ‘cause … whatever man, he just had a damn candle he needed to bring.’

Daryl snorts but doesn’t say anything. He just keeps on climbing mindlessly while he listens to the botched up story his brother is trying to tell.

‘Now the skeleton wasn’t playin’ ball. He kept blowing the candle out, giggling like a little shit. The boy told him he’d drop the skeleton on his ass if he did it again. He did it again. So the boy dropped him and told the sack of shit that he’d break all them bones for bein’ such a pain in his ass.

‘The skeleton was mighty impressed and gave the boy the damn treasure. Gold. Diamonds. Lots of it,’ Merle slowly gets to his feet as Daryl starts to reach the top of the ridge.

The boy is clawing at the earth, gritting his teeth, but he manages somehow.

‘A reward,’ Merle says, ‘for being so strong and brave.’

‘Weren’t free though, right?’ Daryl groans as he digs his nails into the soft earth. He’s almost there, so close to making it.

‘No,’ Merle agrees. ‘Nothing ever is, baby brother. He had to share it with all the poor people he could find.’ Merle watches how Daryl crawls over the edge to safety. ‘And he did.’

Daryl drags himself a couple of feet forward until he’s not so dangerously close to the edge anymore and then rolls onto his back. He stares up at the blue sky, the trees, and breathes heavily. Then he turns his head and looks at his older brother, who is looking right back. ‘He got to keep some, right?’

Merle nods. ‘Yeah. He kept his promise and got to keep whatever was left over. They lived in comfort for the rest of their sorry lives.’

Daryl laughs and closes his eyes. ‘That’s a fucked up story, man. Ya sure that’s how it goes?’

When Merle doesn’t answer, the boy opens his eyes again.

His brother is gone.

 

 

The walk back is long. When he clears the tree line and sees the farm and RV, he drops the bow to drag it after him. It’s too heavy to carry anymore. He’s limping, dragging himself forward now that his whole side is cramping up with pain.

He almost fall to his knees with relief when he sees that the guys are running over to meet him half-way. T-dog, Glenn, Rick with Shane hobbling after them due to his busted ankle.

When they’re close, Rick lifts his gun to aim it at his head.

Daryl frowns and staggers forward.

‘Is that Daryl?’ he hears Glenn asks.

‘What the fuck are ya pointin’ that thing at my head for?’ Daryl asks Rick.

He feels the gunshot before he even hears it.

It slams him to the ground. He can hear Rick shouting frantically while two bodies land in the grass beside him. A hand strokes over the wound on the side of his head. He knows he’s been grazed by a bullet but doesn’t understand where it came from. Rick had lowered his gun as soon as he’d spoken.

‘What the fuck, man,’ he groans.

‘You’re all right,’ Shane shushes as he grabs hold of the boy’s arm to help him to his feet. Another pair of hands helps him and Daryl let himself be hoisted to his feet. He sways on the spot. Dark spots dance in his vision.

‘I got him,’ Shane says. ‘Shit, he can’t walk. We’re losing him.’

Daryl feels how his knees buckle and groans.

‘Let me carry him for you, brother,’ Rick says, ‘watch your ankle.’

‘No, I can-‘ Shane starts to object but Daryl feels how another body comes up behind him. A lean arm around his waist, another one catching him around his knees before he’s lifted off the ground.

‘I got him,’ Glenn says. ‘Let’s get him to Hershel. Oh, shit,’ the hand on Daryl’s waist shifts, ‘check his side, I can feel blood there.’

His shirt is lifted slightly.

‘He got stabbed by something,’ Shane says, ‘through and through. Shit. Here, keep pressure on it,’ the pad is shoved between Glenn’s hand and the wound.

Daryl moans when a new flash of pain washes through him.

‘I know, Dare,’ Glenn shushes as he starts walking back towards the farm. ‘Just hang in there.’

 

He wakes up and is almost sick. There’s someone prodding at his side. A sharp sting, left side of the wound then the right side. He breathes in sharply and opens his eyes.

He’s in a bedroom, on top of what used to be clean sheets. They’re now smeared with blood and dirt. He whimpers and twists so he can see his side.

Hershel is looming over him. He’s pulling a needle through Daryl’s skin to stitch the wound.

The boy shivers and tries to crawl away from the man. He kicks his legs, ‘let go of me! Fuck off! That hurts, you son of a bitch!’

Hershel glances up at someone else, ‘keep him still while I finish this.’

Strong hands curl around Daryl’s shoulders. To his horror, the boy realizes that he’s no longer wearing a shirt. Even under the grime, blood and dirt, the lashes are still clearly visible. The one over his collar bone, over his left breast, the ones on his belly. And with him on his side, Hershel has a clear view of the ones on his back.

With huge, scared eyes, Daryl looks up at the person who’s pinning him to the bed.

It’s Shane. The cop makes a shushing sound, ‘it’s all right. You’re all right, buddy. Don’t try to look at it, okay? Just keep your eyes on me.’

Daryl swallows thickly and stares at the cop.

‘I know you’re scared, okay? Just a little while longer.’

‘Ain’t scared,’ Daryl whispers out of reflex.

Shane smiles as he slowly lets go of the boy. He scoots onto the bed, laying down beside him. A hand comes up to cup Daryl’s cheek. It prevents him from looking at his side, where Hershel is still busy stitching him up.

‘I know,’ Shane whispers back, ‘you’re doing good.’

Something moves behind Shane. Daryl glances up. It’s Rick. The cop is sitting in the window sill and he’s leaning on his knees now, hands folded as if in prayer. He looks worried.

‘Just keep looking at me,’ Shane urges as he strokes the boy’s cheek to get his attention.

Daryl bites on his lip when the needle drives into his skin again. ‘Hurts.’

‘I know, bud. A little while longer. He’s almost done with your side. Then…’ Shane gives him a sad smile, ‘then he’s gonna have a look at your head, okay? It’s split open, might need some stitches too.’

‘No doubt about that,’ Hershel rumbles as he finishes up and snaps the thread. ‘Daryl? Shift down a bit so I can reach, son. Towards the edge.’

Shane eventually moves him over, pushing at his limbs until Daryl reluctantly finds a comfortable spot on the edge of the bed. Fingers prod at his head now.

‘Keep him still,’ Hershel says again.

‘Wait,’ Shane scoots closer too. He throws his legs over the boy’s to keep him in place and moves his hand from the cheek to the neck. ‘Okay, I got him.’

It hurts but Daryl is too proud to buck again. He stays as still as he can, grits his teeth and stares at a spot on Shane’s shoulder. After a couple of minutes, his vision goes blurry.

The cop wipes the tears from his cheeks.

 

 


	17. Kicking heels

 

* * *

 

 

When Daryl wakes up again, he’s mortified.

Not because of what happened yesterday or even that he’d cried in front of Shane, Rick and Hershel because he’d been grazed by a bullet and everyone knows that hurts like a motherfucker so that doesn’t bother him none. He’s pretty sure that even Will would have given him a pass on that. He’s mortified because when he wakes up, he’s not wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The shirt is gone still, but he’s not wearing his jeans anymore, nor his socks and boots. He wriggles his toes so they brush against the soft blankets.

He lifts the blankets so he can pull them up to his shoulders and snuggle down in their warmth. He stares at his body.

‘Fuckin’ perverts,’ he groans when he realizes that he’s wearing clean underwear.

‘Good morning to you too.’

Daryl goes rigid for a second. There’s no point in ignoring that gruff voice however, so he lets his gaze wander to Hershel who is sitting in a stuffed armchair near the window. His hands rest on a book in his lap. The Bible, Daryl guesses. Hershel is what his dad would have called a proper God-fearing man. The Dixon are that too, but only when it suits them.

‘I would like to ask you to refrain from using such language in this house.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl mumbles. He carefully sits up and slides back so his back hits the headrest and he relaxes into his pillows. His gaze sweeps over the rest of the room. It’s empty.

‘I’ve send your friends downstairs for some breakfast. Yours is on the nightstand. Beth made it for you. My youngest daughter,’ Hershel adds when Daryl frowns a little.

‘Thanks.’ The boy reaches for the glass of water that’s on a tray next to him and sips from it.

Hershel observes his movements. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Peachy,’ Daryl mumbles into his glass. Then he winces a little. ‘All right, I mean.’

‘That’s good.’

The boy glances up. ‘Thanks for,’ he waves at his head, ‘them stitches ‘nd everything.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Hershel puts the book on the nightstand. ‘Any idea what happened to my horse?’

‘The one that almost killed me?’ Daryl asks. ‘If it’s smart, it left the country.’

‘We call that one Nelly. As in Nervous Nelly. I could have told you she would throw you, if you’d bothered to ask.’

The boy traces the rim of his glass with his finger before glancing up through his fringe. The messy dirty-blond hair is getting longer now his dad is no longer around to give him a buzz cut. It’s bleached by the sun, with streaks of blond mingling with the dark brown he normally has during winter. Daryl doesn’t quite meet Hershel’s eye. He works his jaw for a second and then mutters; ‘I’m sorry ‘bout your horse.’

Hershel seems surprised for a split second. ‘She will find her way back, eventually. She always does.’

Daryl bites on his lower lip and shrugs a little like he doesn’t know what to say to that.

‘Son,’ Hershel leans forward on his knees, ‘There seems to be a problem in your group. A problem between you and Rick.’

The boy scoffs. ‘Ain’t got no problem with no one.’

‘No? Rick told you to stay in camp yesterday. You disobeyed him.’

‘He ain’t the boss of me.’

The older man nods. ‘No, he isn’t. He’s the boss of your group. Someone needs to take charge in these kinds of situations. These people, they’re like shepherds. They guard the ones who cannot do it themselves. But if some stray from the group, if one sheep wanders _on purpose_ ….’ Hershel shakes his head. ‘The shepherds can no longer do their job.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Ya callin’ me a sheep, old man?’

‘I am.’

The boy is a bit flustered by the frank confession. He blinks and scrunches up his nose, rubbing at it with the back of his hand when it itches a little. ‘Don’t need some _shepherd_ lookin’ after my ass,’ he grumbles to save face.

‘Clearly.’ Hershel looks pointedly at the bandages.

‘That was an accident!’

‘Which wouldn’t have happened if you’d listened to Rick.’

‘Why does it have to be _Rick_?’ Daryl snarls viciously. ‘Son of a bitch never did anyone ever any good. Who died and made him king, huh?’

Hershel is watching him closely. ‘Rick told me what happened to your father.’

‘Yeah? He tell ya how it was all his damn fault in the first place?’

‘He did.’

Daryl works his jaw for a second. Pain is throbbing in his head and his side, the medicine is starting to wear off. He glances at the tray with breakfast. There are a couple of pills on a napkin right next to his plate. He knows he won’t take them. ‘It’s all his fault,’ he mutters.

‘You know that’s not true,’ Hershel says gently. ‘Rick blames himself, just like you blame him, but you’re both wrong. It was… it was just an awful situation. But it’s behind you all now. There’s nothing you can do about it. And the way you’re dealing with it? It got you hurt and it’s going to get you killed.’

Daryl fidgets with the edge of his blanket and scowls at his fingers.

‘They care about you. Rick, Glenn and Shane, they care about you.’

Daryl scoffs at that. ‘They’s just feelin’ guilty or sorry. I’m just somebody else’s kid they got stuck with.’

Hershel rises and grabs his Bible before heading towards the door. ‘You don’t strike me as an ignorant person,’ he tells Daryl, ‘or a stupid little boy who doesn’t know what he wants and feels. But what’s coming out of your mouth is giving me great pause.’

Daryl blinks and doesn’t know what to say.

‘I’ll tell your friends that you have woken up. Take the painkillers, Daryl.’

 

Shane fusses over him. It makes Daryl a little uncomfortable because he’s never had anyone who kept checking his temperature or monitor how much he was drinking whenever he wasn’t feeling well but he takes it in stride. He suffers through another lecture about why what he’d done was stupid and far too risky.

Glenn is now sitting in the armchair. There’s a small smile lingering around the corners of his mouth as he listens to Shane’s ranting. Every once in a while, he’ll catch Daryl’s gaze and they will both roll their eyes when the cop turns his back on the pair of them.

‘Are you even listening to me?’ Shane asks as Daryl sniggers softly because of the face Glenn pulls.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl answers immediately. ‘Was stupid to take the horse.’

‘It’s not about the horse, Daryl, it’s-‘ Shane starts, sounding exasperated, but then the door opens again and Rick walks in.

Everyone seems to hold their breath. Glenn sits up, the smile fading from his face as he looks at Daryl. Shane stills and slowly lets his gaze wander to the boy.

Rick has a map in his left hand. He looks a bit nervous, but also tired and wary. ‘Good morning,’ he nods at the two men and then he looks at the boy in the bed. ‘Hershel said you’d woken up.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl draws his knees up so he can rest his hands on them and have yet another barrier between him and the second cop.

‘Good, that’s real good…’ Rick trails off. He looks at Shane’s face, then at Glenn, ‘I can come back later, I know it’s-‘

‘How’s Carl,’ Daryl asks. He rubs at his nose with the back of his hand.

Rick looks surprised. ‘He’s doing better. I mean, he’s sleeping a lot but he’s going to be fine, according to Hershel. Lori is with him now, so…’

There’s a brief moment of awkward silence.

Glenn jumps to his feet, ‘okay, I’m going to get out of here, help Maggie out with some chores. Dare, will you be okay?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Daryl mutter just as Shane answers, ‘I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t worry about it.’ The cop takes Glenn’s seat.

Daryl looks at the map in Rick’s hand while Glenn leaves the room. ‘That the search grid? Lemme see it so I can how ya where I found Sophia’s doll. She must have dropped it when passing the creek or something.’

Rick doesn’t answer but crosses the room and squats down next to Daryl’s bed to lay the map out next to the boy. He watches how Daryl carefully slides down and then rolls to his side so he can see properly. He traces a couple of paths with his fingers.

‘Got a pen?’

Rick gives him a marker.

‘Found it right here,’ Daryl marks the spot with a small black X. ‘I went out this way,’ he lets his finger glide from the farm to the ridge, ‘and then up here, paused here a little bit ‘cause it was hot as hell up there, but went down there after. Stupid horse threw me there, it ran off but Hershel says she might make her way back.’ The boy glances up at Rick through his fringe. ‘You got that?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick smiles, ‘I got that. South and then up and down the ridge.’

‘Yeah. Pretty much. Didn’t see no sign of her there.’

‘Okay, this is great, Daryl, thank you for the information.’

Daryl nods and curls up, pulling the blanket over his shoulders again and snuggling down. ‘Yeah, all right. You goin’ out there, lookin’ for her tomorrow?’

Rick nods.

‘Good,’ Daryl yawns. He glances at the cop. ‘Thanks.’

‘You got what you needed, brother?’ Shane asks as he gets up.

‘Yeah,’ Rick rolls the map up again and takes his leave. Shane locks the door behind him and walks back to the bed, sliding onto it with an easy move.

‘What?’ he asks when Daryl frowns, ‘been watching over you all night and this is a comfortable bed. Share, man. You’re not the only one in need of a beauty sleep,’ the cop yawns.

The boy snorts but scoots over to make some room for the large man. He curls up again and bites on his thumb while Shane settles down. After a while, Daryl has gathered enough courage.

‘Heard what ya said to Lori.’

Shane looks at him with raised eyebrows, ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Heard what ya said to Lori,’ Daryl repeats softly. ‘About me.’ The cop winces before he rolls onto his side so he can properly look at the kid who now refuses to meet his eye. ‘’s why I was mad, back in them woods, when we were at the church.’

‘And that’s why you decided to not listen to what anyone was saying.’

Daryl shrugs, ‘Will told me not to get attached. He said you’d all die first.’

Shane sighs and rubs at his forehead, ‘that son of a bitch.’

Daryl kicks him but not as hard as he could have.

‘Listen,’ the cop tells him. ‘Sometimes I say stupid things, okay? I don’t mean it. I didn’t mean what I said, that you’re just some random kid. It’s just… I get that it’s hard for you to accept that there are people watching over you, poking their noses into your business and all, but it’s hard for me too. I never had a – I mean…. Shit. Look,’ Shane tries, ‘I had a goldfish once and it died because I forgot about it. I don’t… When I first saw you? Yeah, you were just Will’s kid who had a big mouth and an attitude but we warmed up to each other, right? And I like you, and I want you to be okay. If that makes me the big bad pig who keep bugging you, then so be it, I don’t care. But I’m keeping my eye on you.’

‘Okay.’

Shane looks surprised. He gapes at the boy, ‘ _okay_?’

Daryl frowns a little, ‘yeah…. I.. whatever man.’

‘Did you just give me permission to watch over Daryl I’m-fine Dixon?’

That makes the boy laugh a little, he aims another kick at the cop but his foot just brushes past Shane’s leg. ‘Stop.’

Shane laughs too. ‘Okay. Okay. We just… We care about you, you know? Me and Glenn, Carol too, and Lori. I know Andrea is really sorry that she shot you, kid.’

Daryl nods. His fingers twist into the blanket so he can’t gnaw on his thumb anymore. He looks at Shane, who is staring up at the ceiling now. When the laughter has faded, he bites on his lip for a second. ‘I saw my dad.’

Shane turns his head to him but doesn’t say anything.

‘I know he weren’t really there, but I saw him. At the church, I was just… I freaked out a bit, ran, and I just… He were there. Kept bitchin’ about me, askin’ me what it meant to be a Dixon.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Nobody kills us but us,’ Daryl whispers. ‘And that you’re all walker bait. If it’s us, runnin’, I’d just have to kick one of your heels so the walkers would get you and not me.’ He’s not sure why he’s telling Shane this, and by the way that the cop closes his eyes and sighs, he knows that’s it’s the wrong thing to tell anyone but he can’t take it back now. He watches Shane’s face carefully for any signs of anger.

‘Will wasn’t thinking straight,’ Shane say after a while. ‘And he was an asshole. I’m sorry but it’s true. I get why he said it,’ the cop turns to him now, rolling onto his side. ‘He loved you. In his own twisted, fucked-up way, he loved you. But when it’s two people running and you kick their heels and that’s the reason why you make it out….’ He shakes his head a little, ‘you have to live with that, you know? And every time you close your eyes, you’re going to see their face. It’s going to haunt you, forever.’

Daryl nods. ‘I know.’

‘You don’t. You won’t know until it’s happened and by then it will be too late and you can’t ever make it right again. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, or that others are more important, but sometimes…’ Shane swallows with some difficulty, ‘sometimes it’s not worth it, man.’

Daryl bites the bullet. ‘You ever kicked someone’s heels?’

Shane doesn’t look away. He nods. ‘Yeah…. I’ve pulled the trigger on a lot of scum, only killed a couple of them, but they were scum. They were a danger to my partner, or someone else and I didn’t even think about it. Didn’t feel sorry afterwards either, I just switched everything off. Like there was a switch in my brain somewhere and I flipped it. I don’t see their faces, ever. But I’ve kicked someone’s heels too. When it was him or me and I… I just wanted to get back here so bad that I put myself above them.’ He reaches out carefully and brushes Daryl’s hair out of his face. The boy lets him. ‘It was selfish of me.’

‘You regret doin’ it?’

‘I’m sorry they died. I’m _so_ sorry,’ Shane whispers as he runs his fingers lightly through the boy’s hair. ‘But I… I’m just glad I’m still here, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl answers softly. ‘I’m glad you are, too.’

Shane gives him a sad smile. ‘Try to get some sleep now, bud. It’s been a long morning already.’

Daryl closes his eyes on command and falls asleep within minutes. The last thing he feels are Shane’s nails which gently rake over his scalp in a soothing rhythm.

 

The next day, Hershel allows him to shuffle around the house before officially releasing him. Glenn guides him back to his tent where he’s supposed to rest up some more. His side still hurts and he feels a bit dizzy by the time they make it back to the camp, so he doesn’t mind the fact that the Korean helps him back into the bed.

It’s hot here, though, and there’s not much to do when Glenn finally leaves him alone, so he just pokes holes in his tent with his bolt.

He thinks about Carol, who’d brought him dinner last night and had kissed his temple while telling him that he’d done more for Sophia than her own daddy had ever done. That he’s a good man, every bit as good as Rick or Shane. He doesn’t believe that, but still appreciates the sentiment.

It’s noon when Andrea comes by. She looks very sorry. She gives him a book.

‘What, no pictures?’ Daryl frowns as he thumbs through the pages.

‘I’m so sorry, I feel like shit.’

‘Yeah, you and me both,’ he grouses.

‘I don’t expect you to forgive me, but if there’s anything I can do….’

‘You were protecting the group. We’re good,’ he nods and she gives him a small smile before ducking out of his tent again. ‘But hey,’ he calls after her, ‘you shoot me again? You best pray I’m dead.’

She scoffs a bit but still smiles at him, a little wider this time.

‘Hey,’ he looks at the book again and sits up a bit, wincing when the wound on his side pulls. ‘Is this yours?’

Andrea shrugs, ‘I found it in Dale’s RV. He likes to read, I guess.’

Daryl squints up at her. ‘You think he’d mind if I…’ He bites on his lip for a second, ‘I don’t read much but do you think he’d mind if I used the empty pages to draw a bit? And like, in the margins and shit?’

That earns him another smile. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, Daryl.’

‘All right,’ Daryl lets himself fall back onto the bed and stares up at the ceiling of his tent. ‘Now leave me be, woman.’

 

 


	18. Monsters and Maggie

* * *

 

 

 

There’s an argument in camp about whether Carl should learn how to use a gun. Daryl is sitting on one of the logs, keeping one arm pressed to the healing wounds on his side to make them hurt a little less. He hasn’t taken the painkillers. The pain is not even that bad anymore. It’s just an annoying itch when he sits still. It does hurt a little when he moves, but he’s used to pain like that.

He listens to the argument. Shane is clearly backing out of it, not wanting to intervene with Carl’s upbringing or step on anyone’s toes with his opinion. The boy makes a case for himself, which is a pretty poor case since he’d just been caught with a stolen gun, but Rick seems to be on board.

‘Shane is the best instructor I know,’ Rick argues. ‘I’ve seen him teach kids younger than Carl.’

Lori is thinking about it. She doesn’t look too happy when she finally glances at Shane. ‘Are you going to teach Daryl? Are you going to allow him to have a gun?’

Shane looks surprised by the question. ‘I- I guess… If he wants to learn then…’ he trails off with a tiny shrug.

Lori gapes at him and then scoffs. ‘You _guess_? Have you talked to Glenn about it?’

‘Glenn?’ Shane echoes, ‘no, what – why would I?’

‘ _Excuse me_?’ The woman bounces back. ‘You’re just going to make a decision like that on your own, without consulting Glenn? I get that this is new for you, Shane, but Rick doesn’t make decisions about Carl without consulting me.’

‘Don’t act like that’s _remotely_ the same thing,’ Shane scoffs. ‘If Daryl wants to learn how to use a gun, I’ll teach him, but if he doesn’t then that’s _his_ choice. Besides,’ the cop looks over at the boy, ‘he’s still healing up so he won’t be able to come today. If he wants a raincheck, that’s fine by me. Right bud?’ He calls out, a little louder.

Daryl looks over at the small group. He doesn’t even pretend that he’d hadn’t been listening in on the conversation. ‘Yeah. Raincheck.’ He gets to his feet and wanders over towards the stables. After a couple of steps he turns around and calls out to Shane, ‘I’m going to check on the horses, saw Hershel there.’

‘Okay, I’m heading out in a little while. Glenn’s around.’

Daryl nods and continues on his walk.

‘Thanks for letting me know, bud.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl mumbles but he still raises his hand in acknowledgement. He does find Hershel in the stables, brushing down one of the horses. Daryl makes sure to make some noise as he comes up to the old man and slips past him to rub a hand over the side of the horse’s neck. It’s the same horse that almost got him killed. Nervous Nelly.

He beams at Hershel, ‘she made her way back here?’

‘Just like you,’ the old man nods, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘Yeah, good girl,’ Daryl praises as he strokes the horse. It looks at him with large brown eyes. ‘Hey again. Sorry ya got spooked, huh? We friends,’ Daryl grins when the horse bumps her nose into his chest, looking to reach for his pockets in the hopes of finding a treat.

‘Here,’ Hershel holds the brush out to him. ‘Can you do the rest? I’m a bit tired.’

‘Yeah, all right,’ he pats the horse on the side to let her know that he’s still there before brushing her down. The old man moves to sit on a chair nearby, watching him carefully and giving him some pointers.

‘Where did you learn how to ride?’ Hershel asks.

‘A friend of my mom had a ranch,’ Daryl answers. ‘Went there on a summer camp once when I was real small. After she died, they knew we were… They offered me some lessons, took them up on it a couple of times, is all. That guy taught me. Were good people.’

‘Sounds like it.’ Hershel is picking at a piece of straw with his fingernails. ‘What happened to your mom?’

‘Nothing good.’ Daryl throws a look over his shoulder. ‘She burned.’

Hershel isn’t looking at him. ‘I’m sorry.’

The boy shrugs and continues with his chore.

‘You said you went a couple of times. Why not more often?’

Daryl hesitates for a second. He doesn’t like it when people poke their noses into his business but he figures that he owes the old man. ‘My dad didn’t like it none when he found out I were hidin’ out there, gettin’ those lessons. Said it were charity. Dixon’s earn their keep.’

‘That sounds like something my dad could have said, too.’

Daryl throws another look over his shoulder. He scrunches up his nose a little as he brushes Nelly. Sometimes, with people as old as Hershel, he forgets that they too must have had a mom and dad. It’s difficult for him to imagine Hershel any younger than he is now, but now he finds himself wondering what Hershel’s dad would have been like. The boy wobbles on the balls of his feet and then stands on his tiptoes to reach the back of the horse. ‘He was pretty mad, though,’ he mutters.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What happened when your dad got mad at you?’

Daryl freezes. He knows these questions. They’re all meant to lure him into a conversation he doesn’t want to have. It doesn’t matter that Hershel has seen the scars on his body because that doesn’t prove anything. He knows that. Those lines have been photographed and documented a thousand times by so many different people that he’d stopped asking why they even bothered. The doctor who came by their school, child protective services, the police, the hospital. None of that mattered because just the lines on his skin didn’t make Will guilty.

Daryl’s words could have done that.

‘Nothin’,’ he says when his muscles obey again. ‘He just told me to stop goin’ there.’

'Is that right?’

‘You callin’ me a liar now?’

Hershel sighs and gets to his feet. He takes the brush from the boy and does the horse’s back, hitting all the spots Daryl can’t reach before passing the brush back so he can do the other side. His gaze lingers on the boy.

Daryl ignores him, or tries to, at least.

‘My father used to get angry too,’ Hershel says.

The boy snorts because every parent gets angry, even the most patient ones. Kids always screw up eventually, either by accident or on purpose. He supposes that even Carol has gotten angry with Sophia on occasion, and she seems to be the most patient person Daryl’s ever met. He winces at the thought of the girl.

‘He used to drink a lot too. That always made it worse,’ Hershel continues. ‘He would drink and then get mad for no real reason. He would teach me my lessons the hard way.’

Daryl glances up at the older man and wonders whether their dads both had the same ideas when it came to parenting. That the hard way for Hershel had meant the same thing for him; the command to brace himself, the question whether he was ready, the sting of a belt hitting his back or chest. He hardly remembers earning the stripes on his chest, he was too young when he got them, but he remembers every welt on his back.

The ones he’d deserved because he’d behaved badly or had gotten poor grades.

The ones he’d received when Will had just wanted something to lash out at, when he’d had trouble standing and walking in a straight line, when he’d reeked of alcohol.

‘I think your dad and mine were cut from the same wood.’

Daryl shrugs because he doesn’t want to admit to anything. He glances up at the man through his bangs. ‘What happened to yours?’

‘I ran away from home when I was fifteen years old. I only came back when he was long dead,’ Hershel tells him. ‘I don’t regret that. Sometimes we make excuses for other people. We tell ourselves that they didn’t mean to do it, that they were sorry afterwards, that it was our own fault even. It took me years to realize that none of it had been my fault.’ Daryl is done with this side of the horse and just strokes her neck, feeling the heartbeat thunder under his palm. ‘My dad was a mean drunk who didn’t deserve the family he had been given,’ Hershel says. ‘They tell me your dad was the same.’

Daryl snarls and whirls around to face the man, baring his teeth in anger. ‘Talk shit about dad again and y’all be sorry,’ he warns. ‘Ya don’t know jack shit about him, or us!’

‘I’ve seen it.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘Just ‘cause we grew up in the wrong part of town, don’t mean nothing.’

That makes Hershel smile a little. It’s a sad smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘I had a step-son. He got into a lot of fights when he was your age. His body didn’t bear the same scars as yours does. Why are you still defending him?’

‘Because he’s my _dad_.’

‘Did you hope it would get better someday?’

Daryl stares at the man. He backs away slowly.

‘Did you think that he would stop, one day?’ Hershel presses. ‘Maybe when he went back to church? Maybe when he stopped drinking, hmm? Did you think he would stop and everything would be better?’

‘No,’ Daryl whispers even though he had thought that. Exactly that.

‘Did he drink?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘A lot?’

‘Mind your own damn business, old man.’

Hershel nods and strokes his horse lovingly. ‘We think that alcohol changes people. That it’s moonshine that makes them volatile, or angry, or violent, but it’s not. Those traits? They’re already inside of them. It’s who they are, Daryl. My dad was a mean, violent man. And he was a drunk. Sometimes alcohol speeds things up. It makes them angry faster, or reach for their belt sooner, but it doesn’t make them angry. It doesn’t make them monsters. It just brings the monster to light sooner.’

‘My dad ain’t no monster,’ Daryl breathes.

‘We can agree to disagree on that point.’

‘You don’t know him!’

‘No, I don’t, but I know what kind of man-‘

Daryl pushes past the man and flinches when Hershel grabs his arm to prevent him from leaving. The old man looks sorry almost immediately. Hesitant fingers glide off of Daryl’s skin. The boy does turn around again to face him, but the blue eyes are dark in the dim light of the barn. ‘You don’t know shit about us Dixon’s,’ the boy growls. ‘Yeah, my dad showed me good a couple of times. _That’s how we learn_. You grab a hot plate? Ya won’t be grabbing it again when it burns ya good. And yeah, he drank an awful lot and it _did_ change him, but ya know the best thing about the goddamn apocalypse?’

‘What?’ Hershel asks but he sounds almost fearful of the answer.

‘There wouldn’t have been a drop left by the end of winter,’ Daryl answers. ‘No more moonshine, no more of that fuckin’ green stuff, none of it! It would have been gone. And it would have been better. Just had to tough it out but then all y’all messed it up good for us and he’s _gone_!’

‘He died, Daryl,’ Hershel says softly. ‘If he’s sawn off his own hand, there’s no way he survive-‘

Daryl shakes his head. ‘He stole the van. I know he did. He stole it and he ran and left me behind with you sorry folks!’

‘If he did that,’ Hershel answers, ‘he might not have been the monster I imagined. Then he did right by you in the end.’

The boy gapes at the man. He takes a wobbly step backwards before something hardens in his face. With one hand pressed against the wounds on his side, he runs out of the barn and back into the light.

 

‘How’s my swing?’ Glenn smirks at Daryl as he lets the axe rest on his shoulder. The baseball shirt has dark patches of sweat and his hat is soaked but the Korean doesn’t seem to mind. ‘Hey,’ he says when the boy doesn’t answer, ‘you okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Okay then,’ Glenn nods as he splices another log. This time, he lets the axe rest on the tree trunk instead of swinging it back onto his shoulder. He sits down next to Daryl. ‘Does your side still hurt? Or your head?’

‘Both.’

‘Hershel said it would take a while.’

‘Hershel’s sayin’ a lot of things,’ Daryl murmurs. He wraps his arms around his legs and lets his head rest on his knees. He closes his eyes.

‘Like what?’ Glenn asks as he reaches out to put a warm hand on Daryl’s neck. The thumb rubs circles into his skin.

The boy shakes his head.

‘Okay,’ Glenn says again. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Did you eat some of the fruit Maggie brought us?’

‘No.’

‘You should, they’re… err.. good. Good stuff.’ Daryl opens one eye to look at the young man. 'Yeah, I don’t know what I’m talking about but, you know… vitamins,’ Glenn laughs a little and bumps his shoulder. ‘They taste good anyway.’ His eye falls on Lori, who approaches fast. She’s wringing her hands nervously. ‘Can you do me a favor, Dare?’

‘What?’ Daryl murmurs as he massages his temple.

‘Eat some peaches and get some extra sleep. You look about ready to keel over.’

The boy doesn’t even have the strength to object. He just nods and doesn’t mind the fact that Glenn puts his hands on his shoulders to steer him toward the RV instead of his tent. He forgets to glare when the Korean pawns him off to Dale and the old man fusses over him while Daryl settles down on the bed at the back of the RV.

              

It’s late in the afternoon when he wakes up again. Glenn is sitting next to him. He’d been watching him sleep.

Daryl groans a little as he sits up, head woozy and a bit disorientated by the nap. He rubs at his eyes and squints at the young man, who hasn’t moved a muscle. Dark eyes are trained on him, the young man’s face unusually pale.

‘Ya all right?’ the boy asks.

‘I’m fine.’

Daryl yawns and then blinks a couple of times to clear his head a little. ‘Ya sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay.’

It’s unusually quiet in the RV. Daryl leans back against his pillow and takes out his knife to clean his fingernails. Glenn doesn’t tell him to stop. He doesn’t do anything. The young man just sits there, almost frozen on the spot, muscles taunt and breathing shallow. It takes him a long time to relax. Eventually he shakes himself out of it. His gaze refocuses on Daryl.

‘Stop doing that, you’ll hurt yourself.’

Daryl glances up at him. He puts the knife away.

‘Come on, let’s get some food or something,’ Glenn mutters. The boy nods and gets up, following his friend towards the door. Just before they reach it however, Glenn turns around and draws a surprised Daryl into a tight hug. He kisses the brown hair before releasing him again. ‘I’m sorry,’ Glenn says, ‘I just… sorry.’

Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand and looks up at the young man. ‘’s okay.’

‘I – I want to introduce you to someone, okay?’

The boy frowns, ‘who?’

‘Maggie.’

‘I know Maggie,’ Daryl tells him because of course he knows who the farmer’s daughter is. The feisty one with the dark hair and angry eyes, the one who came to Andrea’s rescue like Zorro on a horse.

‘Yeah, but, I just want to introduce you, okay? Properly. It’s important to me.’

‘Ya hit your head or something?’

‘No,’ Glenn laughs, ‘just… come on.’

 

By the time they find Maggie, she has changed shirts and the walker blood is nowhere to be seen. All the evidence of the incident with the walker in the town has been washed away. There’s a nervousness in her smile when she meets Daryl and Glenn half-way on her lawn.

Daryl frowns as he shakes hands with the girl.

‘So, you’re Daryl, hmm?’

The boy nods and looks away, squirming on the spot. He steps a little bit to the side so he’s closer to Glenn.

‘Glenn told me you like to hunt.’

Daryl shrugs.

‘And you know how to ride. Did you live on a farm, before?’

‘No.’

Maggie looks at Glenn, a bit desperate.

The Korean smiles reassuringly.

The boy wobbles on the balls of his feet. His gaze snaps up when a green car comes racing up to the farm. It slides to a stop next to the RV and Shane clambers out with a smile on his face, Andrea in the passenger seat. The cop slams the door closed and lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, scanning the grounds. 'Shane's back.'

‘Yeah, go and say hi,’ the young man nods. ‘ _Dare_ ,’ he says sharply as the boy move to run away. He looks pointedly at Maggie.

‘Err,’ Daryl looks up at her. ‘Nice meetin’ ya, ma’am?’ He looks back at Glenn as if he’s not quite sure whether that was the desired message.

‘Nice meeting you too, Daryl,’ Maggie smiles at him.

‘Yeah… okay…’ Daryl takes a few slow steps in case Glenn calls him back again, but he doesn’t so Daryl runs towards the cop, who’d been looking for him.

‘Hey bud,’ Shane laughs, ‘I see you met your stepmom?’

Daryl’s eyes grow huge. ‘What the fuck?’

 

 

 


	19. Sophia

 

* * *

 

 

There are walkers in the barn. That’s what he learns the next morning. There are walkers in the barn and there have always been walkers in the barn and the barn is _right there_.

Daryl is currently hiding behind a guilty-looking Glenn while Shane peers between the boards into the barn. He can hear the growling from over here. A glance to his side tells him that Carl is clinging to Lori so he doesn’t feel too bad when he takes a tiny step forward so his elbow brushes against Glenn.

‘We’re guests here,’ Rick tells Shane when the cop stalks past his partner. ‘This isn’t our land.’

It’s Hershel’s land and the group knows that the farmer wants to deal with the walkers himself. Now they know why and how he does that. Shane’s all angry energy as he paces around. He hardly listens to Glenn who hisses that he should keep his voice down. The walkers bang against the wood.

Make it right or Fort Benning, the cop says while laying out their options.

‘We can’t go,’ Rick snarls back.

‘Why, Rick? Why?’

Carol voices what Daryl is thinking. Sophia is still out there somewhere. It might have been four days, but that just means that he still has five days to find her. And maybe even longer, just because he’d accidentally found his way back after nine days doesn’t mean that he would have died on the tenth. They have time.

Shane doesn’t seem convinced. He thinks she might be dead already, which makes Daryl angry. He recites some rule out of his policing days, the first 48 hours or some bullshit like that, but this isn’t a child abduction. She’s missing. She’s just lost somewhere and 48 hours in all of Georgia isn’t that long. They could have missed a sign Shane had been hoping for. Georgia is a big place. And Sophia one little girl who leaves the lightest of footprints. But Daryl has been putting in all this work and he’s so close that he can feel it in his very bones so he bristles when Shane suggests out loud that they should start thinking about the possibility that Sophia is dead or worse.

‘I’m close to findin’ this girl,’ he objects as he steps out of Glenn’s shadow and glares at the large cop. ‘I just found her damn doll two days ago.’

‘You found a doll, Daryl,’ Shane says with a hint of desperation clinging to his words. ‘That’s what you did. You found a _doll_.’

‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about!’

The cop folds a broad hand over his eyes for a second, breathing in deeply to calm himself. The rest of the group watches their interaction, Glenn warily and Rick with a frown on his face, both ready to jump between the two of them should it be necessary. ‘Okay,’ Shane says as he lowers his hand again. ‘I’m sorry, Daryl. You’re right. That was our first solid clue, it cut the search grid in half, I know that. You did so good, but…’ The cop shakes his head.

‘Cut the search grid in half, but who went lookin’?’ Daryl asks as he wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

The two cops share a look. It’s clear that they were partners before all this went down because neither of them says anything but Shane still nods his consent after a couple of seconds.

‘I’ll talk to Hershel,’ Rick tells the group, ‘figure something out.’

Shane passes his partner and claps him on the shoulder before putting a hand on Daryl’s brown hair and steering him back towards the camp. ‘I don’t have to tell you I don’t want you near the barn, right?’ he asks the boy just as Dale tells Rick that Hershel sees the walkers as sick people. That his wife is in there, his stepson. Shane takes a deep breath and glances at Rick. ‘You talk to him, try to figure something out, or we’ll deal with it our way.’ He gently nudges Daryl back towards camp. ‘Come on, bud, let’s get you some painkillers.’

Daryl nods and throws a look over his shoulder at Glenn, who motions that he should stick with Shane before he heads over to where Maggie is tending to the chickens. ‘So Hershel thinks they can get better? The walkers?’ the boy asks when the voices of the rest of the group have faded.

‘Probably. Crazy old fool.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters in agreement. ‘He’s been sayin’ a lot of dumb stuff lately.’

 

 

He makes sure not to pick Nervous Nelly this time.

The saddle is too heavy for him to carry with his wound aching like something awful, but he figures that he should be able to manage without one. The bridle is on a hook next to the door. Just when he grabs it and opens the door to the horses’ box, Carol walks into the barn. ‘You can’t,’ she says when she spots the bridle in his hands.

‘I’m fine,’ he grunts.

‘Hershel said you need to heal.’

‘Yeah, I don’t care,’ Daryl mutters as he approaches the horse, reaching out a hand to touch their nose soothingly.

‘Well, I do,’ Carol argues. ‘Rick’s going out later to follow the trail.’

‘Yeah, well, I ain’t gonna sit around and do nothing,’ the boy says as he tries to get the bridle on. It’s hot in the barn and sweat is pricking in his eyes. He tries not to think about Sophia too much because in the back of his mind their clock is always ticking down to his nine days. He can’t rest up in his tent, knowing that he’s the only one who can spot her footprints in the woods.

‘No, you’re gonna go out there and get yourself hurt even worse.’

He doesn’t dignify that with an answer. That whole mishap had been an accident due to a skittish horse and he had gotten himself out of that mess just fine.

‘We don’t know if we’re going to find her, Daryl. We don’t.’

His hands still on the horse. A coldness settles inside his chest as he slowly turns around to face the mother who is already grieving.

‘I don’t,’ Carol says. She looks close to tears.

‘What?’

She shrugs a little and looks away before meeting his eye again. ‘I can’t lose you too.’

He stares at her for a second before dropping the bridle in a bucket and walking away. Anger starts to claw at his insides. Just when he thought that they were different, that Sophia was lucky enough to have the advantage that there were people out there looking for her, desperate for her to come home… and then her own mom gives up on her. He shoves at the little stand on which the saddle rests. It topples to the ground. The move causes pain to flare in his side and he doubles over, clutching his wounds and hoping that none of the stitches broke.

Carol rushes to his side. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Just leave me be!’ he snarls as he hobbles away from her. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he mutters as he quickly leaves. He’s glad that she doesn’t follow him.

He’s so mad that he just runs back to his own tent and hides there until his blood isn’t thundering in his ears anymore. The pain in his side is slowly draining away again now that he’s getting some rest. He stares at the ceiling of his tent and thinks about that little girl.

It’s hours later when he takes a final calming breath.

Now that he’s not so mad anymore and over the shock of her words, he knows that she didn’t abandon Sophia. Just hope, he guesses. So he stares and thinks and takes his pain medicine until he’s ready to get up again.

Carol looks surprised when he comes to see her and asks her to come along to some place in the woods, but she follows him without a question. Shane and Glenn are not around so Daryl figures that it’s okay to wander off the property as long as Carol is with him. He leaves his bow in his tent because it’s too heavy for him to carry with his side all messed up, but his knife is on his belt. They don’t talk while he leads her to the lake.

‘You see it?’ he asks as they reach it.

‘See what?’

Daryl darts forward and points to something in the high grass. Cherokee roses. ‘I’ll find her,’ he says. He looks at Carol, at his boots and then back up at her. ‘Hey,’ he mumbles, ‘I’m sorry about what happened this morning. Got mad, just… didn’t think…’ he rubs his nose on the back of his hand.

‘You wanted to look for her,’ Carol says. ‘Why? This whole time I’ve wanted to ask you.’

‘’cause I think she’s still out there,’ Daryl says. ‘And,’ he scuffs his boots on the dirt and looks away. ‘It’s important that people are lookin’, ya know? It helps.’

Nobody had noticed that he’d gone missing for nine days. He doesn’t want Sophia to find her own way back and then realize that there hadn’t been anyone out there looking for her while she was gone. He doesn’t want her to have that sinking feeling in her gut, that sickening swirl of betrayal and disappointment in her stomach like he had had.

‘We’ll find her,’ Carol says as she leans forward to stroke the paddle of the white rose. ‘I see it.’

Daryl smiles at his boots and nods.

 

 

When they get back, he finds Maggie and Glenn sitting on the steps of the porch. They’re debating where everyone is. Apparently Rick bailed on the search for Sophia again which makes Daryl mad because the cop had promised him that he’d look for her while he couldn’t, back when Daryl was still confined to Hershel’s spare bedroom.

Shane is missing in action too.

Daryl slinks to Glenn’s side. ‘What the hell?’ he squints at Andrea who looks ready to go. ‘Damn it, isn’t anybody takin’ this seriously?  We got us a damn trail!’ he says but Glenn puts an arm around his shoulders to keep him close.

‘Calm down, Dare,’ the Korean tells him, ‘we don’t know what happened yet.’

Movement out of the corner of his eye attracts the boy’s attention. It’s Shane. He comes stalking over with angry, jerky movements. There’s a nasty scowl on his face and the bag of guns is slung over his shoulder. Some of the riffles stick out of it.

‘There we go,’ Daryl says but Glenn won’t let go when he makes a move to meet the cop half-way. He looks up at Glenn.

‘Go sit beside Maggie,’ the young man orders.

‘What? No way! Shane, what’s all that?’

The cop ignores him. He stalks right past and looks at T-dog. ‘You with me, man?’

‘Yeah,’ the man answers as he’s passed a shotgun.

‘Time to grow up,’ Shane says. ’You already got yours?’ he asks Andrea.

A hand on Daryl’s chest pushes him backwards. Another set of hands curls around his shoulders, a bit hesitant. He looks up and behind him to see that Maggie is holding onto him now so Glenn has his hands free. The girl is watching Shane with narrowed eyes. Daryl doesn’t shrug her off.

‘Look,’ Shane’s voice booms, ‘it’s one thing sitting around here picking daisies when we thought this place was supposed to be safe. But now we know it ain’t. What about you, man?’ He asks Glenn as he holds out another shotgun. ‘You going to protect yours?’

Glenn reluctantly takes the gun.

‘Can you shoot?’ Shane asks Maggie.

‘Can you stop?’ she fires back. ‘You do this, you hand out these guns, my dad will make you leave tonight!’

There’s a whole discussion. Carl says they should stay and Shane kneels down to offer him a gun. Lori intervenes just before the boy reaches out to curl his fingers around the weapon. Daryl isn’t sure what he’s supposed to think. They should stay, of course, because Sophia is still out there but he doesn’t understand what Shane is planning on doing with the guns. They’ve managed so far just fine, the barn is locked up tight and with someone on guard there shouldn’t be a problem with the walkers just staying in there for the time being, until Rick figures out what to do.

‘Oh shit,’ T-dog says.

And then everything goes to hell real quick.

 

 

Rick and Hershel are dragging walkers towards the barn.

They watch it happen from a distance and everyone follows Shane when he runs to get down to the building. He bursts through the fence first and rounds on his partner, avoiding the walker who is now reaching for him instead of Rick.

Rick tells him to back off but Shane won’t listen. He’s mad. ‘What do you wanna talk about, Rick?’ he shouts. ‘These things ain’t sick. They’re not people. They’re _dead_. Ain’t gonna feel nothing for them, ‘cause all they do, they kill! These thing, right here, they’re the things that killed Amy. They killed Otis. They’re gonna kill all of us!’

‘Shane, shut up!’ Rick screams back.

‘Hey, Hershel, man, let me ask you something.’ Shane draws his gun. ‘Could a living, breathing person – could they walk away from this?’ He shoots the walker Hershel is holding onto in the chest. Three rounds. ‘Could someone who’s alive, could they just take that? Why is it still coming?’

Two shots. One in the heart and one in the lungs.

‘ _Why is it still coming_?’

Two more shots. Heart, lungs.

‘ _Shane, enough_!’ Rick shouts.

‘Yeah,’ Shane nods. ‘You’re right, man.’ He calmly walks towards the walker and raises the gun. ‘That is enough.’ He shoots it through the head. It immediately falls to the ground.

Shane stalks towards the barn. ‘Enough risking our lives for a little girl who’s _gone_!’

It feels like a slap to Daryl’s face. He staggers backwards a bit and hears how Carol gasps for air next to him.

‘Enough living next to a barn full of things that are trying to kill us! _Enough_! Rick, it ain’t like it was before. Now if y’all want to live, if you want to survive, you got to fight for it! I’m talking about fighting right here, right now.’ He runs towards the barn.

‘Take the snare pole,’ Rick pleads. ‘Hershel, Hershel, take the snare pole! Hershel, listen to me, man. Please. Take it now. Hershel! _Take it_!’ But the old man doesn’t move. He just sits there and stares at the rotting corpse right next to him. Daryl doesn’t know who she was to him. A neighbor, probably. Someone he knew once.

Shane grabs a pick-axe and starts to smash at the doors of the barn.

‘No, Shane. Do not do this, brother,’ Rick begs him. ‘Please!’

Shane breaks the lock.

‘Don’t do it,’ Glenn screams just as Lori pushes Carl back and yells her husband’s name, but it’s too late.

The doors open just as Shane walks backwards and takes his gun in his hand once more. Andrea walks forward to take her spot at his right hand. Everyone seems to hold their breath for a second as they watch how the doors get pushed open. And then the first walker drags itself out of the barn. Growling and snarling, dead hands reaching for whoever is closest to them. The first one is a man in blue overalls. It reminds Daryl of the pair Shane had worn when the group had arrived at the farm.

And then the shooting starts.

Shot after shot after shot.

It makes Daryl’s ears ring. He stumbles back a bit and finds himself reaching for the safety of his bow, but the weapon is still back in his tent. He feels helpless without it. Scared, too. His hands shake. He watches how T-dog steps up next to Shane. His aim isn’t that good. The rounds riddle the chest of a young man, beating him back a couple of paces. It takes him a while to get him in the head.

‘Maggie,’ Glenn says, looking utterly torn.

‘It’s okay,’ she answers as she holds on to her dad.

‘Daryl,’ Glenn turns on his heels, ‘stay back and stay down!’

Daryl sinks to his knees without thinking about it and nods. His eyes are huge as he watches how Glenn runs towards the rest of the group and starts to fire too. Every gunshot makes him flinch.

Suddenly Shane turns around and relieves Rick of the walker he’d been holding on to by shooting it in the head.

When it finally stops, when everything is quiet, there are at least a dozen bodies in front of the barn. Blood mixes with dust.

Daryl can feel his heart thunder in his chest.

It nearly skips a beat when there’s a soft growl coming from inside the barn. One last walker shuffles towards the doors. Tiny fingers curl around the wood and then seem to shield the eyes for a second when the walker steps into the bright sunlight.

It’s Sophia.

Her clothes are dirty, hair a mess, skin breaking on her cheek, rotting on her arms but it’s Sophia. With her blue shirt and rolled up pants, with her small shoes and red socks. She’s been dead for a while now. At first she just staggers out of the barn, seemingly confused, but then she pots the group and lets out a soft snarl.

Daryl is on his feet before he realizes what he’s doing. Just like Carol, he runs towards her. ‘Sophia!’ they breathe at the same time.

T-dog moves to intercept the mother while Glenn whirls around and throws his gun aside just in time to catch Daryl. Strong arms wrap around the boy, holding on tightly. Fingers dig into Daryl’s brown hair as Glenn hugs him close so he can’t see the girl anymore.

Daryl is crying. Hot tears on his cheek as he clutches onto the Korean. ‘Please,’ he begs even though he’s not sure what he’s asking for. ‘Please, please, _no_ …’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Glenn whispers into his ear. ‘Dare, I’m so sorry. Don’t look.’

He hears how someone walks past them. Long, determined strides.

A silence.

A gunshot.

A body falling into the dust.

‘ _No_!’ Daryl screams. He tries to get away from Glenn but the young man holds onto him.

‘She died, Dare, I’m so sorry. Dare, look at me,’ Glenn wraps his slim fingers around the boy’s chin and forces him to meet his eye. ‘I’m so sorry, but she was already gone.’

Daryl glances at the barn.

Rick is standing there, his gun still raised. Sophia at his feet.

Tears drip down Daryl’s filthy cheeks as he watches how Carol cries into T-dog’s chest. ‘I was going to find her,’ he says, his voice breaking on the words. ‘I was goin’ to bring her back.’

‘I know,’ Glenn nods. ‘I know, Dare.’

‘I found her doll.’

‘I know,’ the Korean says again. ‘You did so good. You tried.’

It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

He failed her.

‘Daryl.’ Shane looks horrified as he slowly turns towards the boy. ‘I- - I didn’t mean… I didn’t want you to see that. I-‘

‘This is all your fault!’ Daryl screams as he tries to get to the cop. ‘ _This is on you_!’

‘Sssh, ssh,’ Glenn shushes, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying. Calm down, breathe, Daryl.’

But he can’t. He’s crying and he’s so angry and he can’t just breathe right now because Sophia is dead and she has been inside that barn the whole time and everything he thought he knew has been proven wrong.

The Cherokee rose.

He’d been so _sure_.

If Shane hadn’t opened the barn, they wouldn’t have known and maybe Sophia would have been alive somewhere and he would have found her. He knows he would have.

‘Come here.’ Glenn grunts and then hoists the boy up, hugging him close. Daryl wraps his arms around the Korean’s neck and then buries his face into the soft skin, hiding his tears and anger. He’s too big for this, he knows that, but he’s always been small for his age and Glenn doesn’t seem to mind. The young man kisses the side of his head before walking over to Maggie. They are heading back to the farm. ‘Breathe, Dare,’ Glenn says as he rubs the boy’s back soothingly. ‘Breathe.’

Running footsteps behind them. Shane and Rick.

‘We’ve been out there,’ Shane says to Hershel, who is walking beside Beth, one protective arm around her shoulders as the girl cries into his shirt. ‘We’ve been combing the woods looking for her and she was in there all along? You knew!’

‘Leave us alone,’ Maggie snaps.

Suddenly Glenn stops walking. He kneels a bit and lets Daryl slide to his feet. With a gentle push, he moves the boy into Maggie’s arms. The woman runs a hand through the boy’s dark hair and bends down to kiss the crown of his head while they both watch how Glenn turns to Shane.

‘He’s scared.’ Glenn is smaller than Shane but just now, with Rick at his side, it’s hardly noticeable. ‘ _Shane_ ,’ the Korean says to get the man’s attention. ‘Daryl is scared and upset. Beth is crying. Please, leave us alone now.’

Shane’s shoulders slump a little as he looks at the boy. ‘Hey, you know I didn’t mean for that to go down like that. If I’d known-‘

‘You should have listened to Rick,’ Glenn says. ‘You should have let him handle it.’

‘There was no _handling_ that situation…’

There’s screaming and shouting and Shane’s temper flares again. Daryl has seen it a million time in his life. Angry eyes and hands curling into fists just before-

Maggie slaps Shane before he can reach for Hershel. ‘Don’t touch him,’ she snarls. ‘Haven’t you done enough?’

 

 

 


	20. Look after them

 

* * *

 

 

Beth goes into some kind of shock and nobody knows what to do.

Hershel is missing. Eventually Rick and Glenn decide to go after him, suspecting that he’s hiding in a bar downtown somewhere.

Daryl sits on the railing of the porch as the two guys leave. He’s chewing on his fingernail, watching from behind his dark bangs how Glenn says goodbye to Maggie. He can’t hear what they’re saying, he doesn’t even bother to listen in but he watches how Glenn’s form goes rigid at something Maggie says. The Korean wanders to Rick seconds later, a bit dazed, and falls into the passenger’s seat. The shotgun between his knees, the barrel dangerously close to his face, but they’re gone before Daryl can even think about warning the guy.

Maggie hugs herself and turns on her heels, heading back into the house. She pauses on the steps and looks at the boy sitting on the railing. Blue eyes glance in her direction, prompting her to speak. ‘You should come inside.’

‘Don’t wanna.’ He almost winces at how childish that sounds.

The young woman sighs, ‘I could use your help.’

‘With what?’ Daryl asks as he shakes his head a little so his hair is no longer pricking in his eyes. ‘Babysittin’ a girl who ain’t movin’?’

‘I know you’re angry. I know you’re sad, okay?’ Maggie tries. ‘But Glenn would want you to stay here.’

The boy scoffs and slides off the railing, landing on the lawn with natural grace. ‘Didn’t hear him say that.’ He pushes his bow higher onto his shoulder. ‘He didn’t say nothin’ to me,’ he mutters before sauntering away. Maggie calls for him but he ignores her. He roams the grounds. The wound on his side is healing up nicely, it hardly bothers him anymore now. He celebrates that by throwing his bow onto his back, immediately calmed by the comforting weight of it.

At the edge of the land he finds an old building. It used to be a small shed or something, but it has decayed so much that there are now only four walls left. The brickwork crumbles when he climbs onto it, walking over the ridge with his arms outstretched to keep his balance. From there, he can see the farm in the distance, the woods so close on his right hand.

He can also see Lori, who’s running towards him. He spins on the spot and walks back to the beginning of the wall, crouching low before jumping back onto the grass.

The woman reaches him. She’s panting, hair a mess but that’s nothing new these days. ‘Moving to the suburbs?’ She asks, trying to make light of the situation.

The boy looks at her and then spits on the ground.

‘Listen, Beth’s in some kind of catatonic shock. We need Hershel.’

‘Yeah, so what?’ Daryl looks at her through his bangs, not really meeting her eye. He doesn’t understand why she came all this way to tell him that. Glenn and Rick are already out there looking for the farmer.

‘So I need you to run into town real quick and bring him and Rick back.’

That causes Daryl to openly stare at her. What does she expect him to do? Grab one of the horses and race after two grown men with his crossbow and drag them back to the farm? It doesn’t make any sense to him. He opens his mouth to tell her that. That he doesn’t care for the job and if Rick went window shopping and she wants him back so bad, she should fetch him herself. He doesn’t get the chance though.

‘ _Daryl_.’ It’s Shane. He comes stalking over with angry strides, a scowl on his face, and Daryl thinks that he has just gotten himself between a rock and a hard place. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Shane snarls and the boy is almost relieved when it’s aimed at Lori.

‘I was just asking Daryl if he-‘

‘If he’d make a run into town and fetch Rick and Hershel, yeah I heard. Are you out of your mind?’ Shane snarls, getting into her face and posturing. ‘He’s a _kid_. I don’t see you sending Carl out there on his own!’

Lori looks like she’s been slapped in the face. She takes a step backwards. ‘No, but – Daryl knows what it’s like out there. He can handle himself.’

‘He shouldn’t have to! Look, I get that you’re all upset and emotional right now, but you’re not thinking straight. You’re asking a twelve year old boy to go to a walker-infested town. Glenn barely made it out of there last time!’

Daryl frowns and scratches at his cheek. He thinks about the incident a couple of days ago, Glenn keeping watch next to him in the RV, looking shaken and hugging him before dragging him off to meet Maggie before it was too late.

‘You’re not helping,’ Lori breathes as she runs a hand over her face. She looks on the verge of a panic attack.

‘ _I’m_ not helping?’ Shane echoes with disbelief. ‘Lady, you’re something else. Look, things are… different now, okay?’ He glances at the boy and seems to swallow his words and pick others instead. ‘Why the hell didn’t you come and get me? Ask me to go to town and get Rick back?’

‘Because I was afraid you- because…’ She looks at him for a second.

‘Jesus,’ Shane breathes. He steps even closer to her, ‘that’s my _brother_. Let’s lay out some ground rules. Your family is _your_ business now. You, Rick, Carl,’ he hesitates for a second, ‘and your baby, okay?’ Both Daryl and Lori stare at him. Both for different reasons. Shane ignores them as he continues, ‘you worry about yours. And I worry about mine,’ the cop reaches out and puts a warm hand on Daryl’s neck. ‘Come on, bud, let’s go back to the house.’ With a gentle push, he gets Daryl to move.

It feels a bit weird to walk alongside Shane now. They haven’t talked since the incident at the barn. Shane had been moving the bodies with T-dog all morning while Daryl had spent his morning curled up on Maggie’s bed, staring at the wall while trying not to think about Sophia. He’d gotten up for the funeral, feeling angry and betrayed when Carol never showed up. At one point he heard Andrea whisper to Lori that Carol had told her that the little girl wasn’t her daughter anymore, just some monster now. That her daughter had died a long time ago.

Daryl doesn’t know what to believe anymore. The only thing he knows is that it hadn’t been Shane’s fault, not really. Clearing out the barn had been the only thing they could have done, and he regrets screaming at the cop that it was all his fault. He regrets implying that Sophia was dead because of Shane. The boy glance up at the cop and gnaws on his thumb.

Shane looks down at him. ‘Hey,’ he runs a hand through Daryl’s hair, ‘it’s going to be fine.’

‘Lori’s pregnant?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane grimaces, ‘sorry you found out that way. Don’t say anything to Carl yet, okay? I don’t think anyone else knows yet. Besides Rick, of course. Maybe Glenn.’

Daryl isn’t sure why he’s sorry that he found it out like this. This is not the first time he’s found out about a lady being pregnant, of course. There was that one time with Merle and his girlfriend in their living room, with Daryl sitting on the back of the couch and watching the whole ordeal. The girl, all gussied up and batting her eyelashes while handing Merle a small white stick. And his brother, first silenced by shock and then roaring how that could have happened while they’d been using protection before it all ended in accusations of cheating and sabotage. There had been a nasty fight, screams and cries and broken beer bottles as Daryl had fled to the safety of his bedroom. He supposes that’s a worse way to hear that someone is pregnant than an argument with just words.

It turned out to be false alarm, in his brother’s case.

By that time the relationship between Merle and the girl had already been riddled with hate and resentment, so they were both glad for the clean break. Daryl only remembers that part because Merle took him out for milkshakes and didn’t even mind when he ordered the biggest and most expensive one on the menu.

Daryl glances over his shoulder at Lori, who is following them at a slower pace. She’s out of earshot, at least. He looks back up at Shane. ‘The baby, is it yours?’

Shane stops walking abruptly. ‘What?’

Daryl shrugs and gnaws on his thumb while glancing nervously at Lori who is now closing the distance between them. ‘Is it?’

‘Jesus,’ the cop breathes, covering his eyes with his broad hand for a second. ‘You may not talk much, but you sure as hell are observant, right? Fuck me.’

Daryl shrugs again. He knows that Shane and Lori had been a thing because Will kept complaining about the fact that a damn pig was getting more action than him in the middle of the apocalypse when Daryl mentioned that the two of them kept sneaking off.

‘Did anyone ever had, you know, _the talk_ with you anyway?’

That causes the boy to snort in amusement. He grabs hold of the trap of his bow and grins up at the cop. ‘Lived with Will ‘nd Merle, could give ya more synonyms for havin’ sex than a thesaurus ever could.’

‘More colorful ones too, I bet,’ Shane grins back. ‘Don’t go and impress Carl with that, you hear me? You Dixon’s could corrupt a saint, I swear to God…’

‘What are you two laughing about?’ Lori asks as she breezes by. There’s a faint smile around her lips when Daryl immediately stops and looks back at his boots.

‘Nothing,’ Shane slings an arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulls him into his side. ‘Just guys talk.’

‘Oh guys talk, huh?’ Lori laughs, ‘well excuse me for interrupting then.’ She shoots them a smile over her shoulder before walking back to the farm quickly.

Daryl and Shane follow, a little bit slower than her so that she’s out of earshot again before they get back to the house. Just when the woman runs up the porch, Shane pulls at Daryl’s shoulder to make him stop walking.

‘Bud, listen,’ he sinks to one knee so the boy doesn’t have to look up at him. ‘What happened between me and Lori? That was a mistake. It was just…’ He tries to find a way to explain it to the child. ‘We were just happy to be alive, you know? And, we were both so sad about everything that had gone down that we just…’ He rubs at the back of his head. ‘Look, sometimes you do things to forget everything that’s going on, right? It doesn’t make it right. But it happened and we can’t take it back even though I’d do anything to take it back. We thought Rick was dead.’

Daryl scuffs his shoe and brings his thumb back to his mouth because he doesn’t know what to say to that.

‘But that baby?’ Shane ducks his head to make the boy look at him. ‘That’s _Rick’s_ unborn child.’

‘A’right,’ Daryl mutters.

‘I know you and Rick – you had problems, right? With Will and…’ Shane shakes his head, ‘but he needs us now, okay? Rick is my brother, but you’re…’ he puts a hesitant hand on the boy’s cheek. ‘I mean to say, we – you and me – we …’

Daryl meets the cop’s eye. ‘We gonna look after them, right?’

Shane looks like he wanted to say something else, but he falls silent for a second and then nods. ‘Yeah. We’re going to look after them. And we’re going to stick by Rick.’

‘Yeah.’ Of course he’s still not Rick’s number one fan, but he knows that the other cop has been trying hard to keep this group together. He also knows that he hasn’t helped much in that regard in the past. Rick will always be guilty in his eyes, but he knows he himself is no longer innocent either.

‘Okay,’ Shane says slowly, like he can’t quite believe that they’ve reached an agreement on this topic. He rises again. After a second he smiles at the boy and then starts to head over to the farm.

 ‘Hey, Shane?’

The cop turns around. ‘Yeah?’

Daryl drives the nose of his boot into the earth. ‘What I said, you know, after we found Sophia and Rick… Didn’t mean it.’ He scratches at his nose and glances up at the cop through his bangs. ‘Weren’t on you.’

Shane’s shoulders slump a bit. ‘No, it wasn’t. You were mad and sad, I get that. Sometimes we say things when we’re mad, things we don’t really mean. I appreciate you saying that you didnt mean it, though. It’s okay to get mad – well, not _okay_ , but it happens, right? It’s important to set things straight. To know when you were wrong and admit it out loud. That takes guts.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters even though Will hardly ever admitted that he’d been wrong. Sometimes he would apologize if he’d given a whooping too fast or too viciously, but words he would never take back. He’s said a lot of things that had cut deeper than Daryl will ever admit and even if Daryl had objected to them at the time, Will would have never taken them back. Daryl knows that. Will had believed in sweat, bruised knuckles and broken backs. In hard work, physical labor. Words were deemed either inconvenient or inferior, and possibly both.

They’ve never been really talkative at home. He remembers visiting a friend’s place for dinner once and how he had been amazed that the whole family had sat down at the dinner table, without the TV on or even the radio playing in the background, and had discussed their day at length. The mother about her work as a real estate agent, the father about how he’d done some chores around the house. His friend about their day at school, kicking Daryl when it was his turn to share his story.

He remembers muttering that he’d had an okay day, cheeks red and ears burning.

Later, he’d come home to Will and Merle lounging on the lumpy couches. Merle, maybe the most talkative of them all, had raised a hand for a lazy high-five and a mumbled; ‘hey, baby bro, a’right?’ while his eyes never left the TV.

‘A’right,’ he’d echoed before slinking to his bedroom to do his homework.

‘I handled that wrong.’ Shane’s words snap the boy back to the present. ‘It shouldn’t have gone down like that, maybe if I’d given Rick more time… I don’t know. It would have come down to that situation, but I never wanted you to see that.’

‘Seen it before.’

‘No, you haven’t. You’ve seen _strangers_ getting shot down while they were already dead, but this was Sophia. She was your friend. That makes it different. Worse. I didn’t want you to see that. You should have been able to remember her the way she was.’

Daryl thinks about Jerry, who he’d shot in the head with his bolt on his very first encounter with a walker. He’d known Jerry. That is not the difference, according to the boy. It’s the fact that he hadn’t cared about whether jerry lived or died. He’d cared about that with Sophia. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I get it.’

‘Good,’ Shane nods and they trudge up the small steps of the porch before walking into the house. Most of the people have gathered around the dinner table. The cop immediately commands their attention as they enter.

Maggie is leaning against a wall nearby, arms crossed and a light scowl on her face as she looks at the man next to Daryl.

Shane scratches at the back of his head. ‘Do you have a map to get me to town? A flashlight? I’m going after them, see what’s the hold-up, okay? Just to be sure,’ he winks at Carl, who looks pale and nervous.

Lori passes the items to him. ‘Thank you.’

‘Yeah, you’re welcome,’ the cop mutters as he takes the items and stuffs the map into his back pocket before clipping the flashlight to his belt. Then he walks over to Maggie. ‘Look, I know you don’t like me much right now, but… could you keep an eye on him while I go out?’ He throws a look over his shoulder at Daryl.

The boy scoffs because he doesn’t need a babysitter.

The woman stares at Shane.

‘Normally I’d ask Lori or Carol,’ Shane tells her, ‘but they’re both… you know…’

Maggie rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she pushes herself away from the wall. ‘Of course I’ll keep an eye on him. And don’t you run away again,’ she warns the boy, ‘because I won’t be running after you. Beth needs me, so stay where I can see you.’

Daryl sticks his tongue out at her.

‘Do that again and I’ll snip it off,’ she threatens as she walks past, making a clipping gesture with her fingers.

He grins back.

And when she goes up the stairs to check on her sister after Shane has left, he follows her without a word.

 

 

The night is long.

He stays up with Maggie, sitting in a corner of the room while she strokes her sister’s cheek lovingly. At midnight, she tell him that he doesn’t have to be in her sight all the time, that he’s free to go find a place to sleep. Her bed is empty, he can take that spot, but Daryl just shakes his head lightly and sits with her in the dark. At two in the morning, however, he can’t fight sleep off anymore.

When he wakes up, there’s a pillow under his head and a blanket wrapped around him.

‘Thanks,’ he mutters awkwardly as he sits up and rubs at his eyes. ‘How is she?’

‘The same,’ Maggie tells him.

‘Okay,’ Daryl bites on his lips and scratches at the floorboards with his fingernails. Then he glances up at Maggie. ‘Can I go huntin’?’

‘No.’

He bristles a bit, angry that he has allowed the girl to have the illusion that she can tell him what to do. He gets to his feet, hands balled into fists.

‘Can you please check on the horses?’ Maggie asks him with a glance. ‘Their food? Water? If you’ve got time, you might want to take Swifty out for a run. She’s the light one, at the very back. Don’t forget to brush her down when you’re done. It’s going to be hot out.’

Daryl ducks his head. ‘Yes ma’am.’

 

 

He’s leading Swifty out of the barn by the time the two cars roll up to the farm. The green one that Shane took last night and the red truck that belongs to Hershel and his family. The horse whinnies as Daryl tacks her to the gate, stroking down her nose before dashing over to the vehicles just as the rest of their group joins him.

Rick, Glenn, Hershel and Shane get out of the cars. They seem unharmed.

‘Dad!’ Carl flies into his father’s embrace and Lori joins them.

Maggie runs at Glenn and throws her arms around his neck.

Shane’s gaze finds Daryl first. He walks towards the farm, passing the boy. He holds out his hand for a high-five.

Daryl claps their hands together. ‘Ya a’right?’

The cop nods, ‘we hit some trouble underway, but we got out of it. You stayed with Maggie?’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘Good.’

‘She gave me a job to do, though,’ Daryl gestures towards the barn. ‘Wants me to take one of the horses out for a bit.’ He doesn’t phrase it as a question but Shane understands it anyway.

‘Knife, bow and holler, kid,’ he says. ‘Remember the rules.’

‘Sure,’ he runs back to the horse, untacks it before climbing onto her back. She steps nervously as he drives her forwards. ‘What’s up, girly?’ he murmurs and strokes the side of her neck. ‘This ain’t like you, now. Easy, easy.’

There are raised voices at the cars. Daryl glances back and sees how T-dog and Shane drag an unconscious guy from the truck. His feet drag over the ground and leave a trail of blood in their wake.

Daryl holds on to the reins a little tighter, drives his heels into the horse’s flank and is off before she can get spooked again.

 

 

The guy’s name is Randall and he’s nothing but trouble. Hershel patches him up and the group decides that he’ll be dropped off somewhere, 10 miles out with enough food and water to last him two days. It’s not an easy decision to come to. Shane and Rick fight over it, but eventually Shane agrees even though he changes the distance to eighteen miles out and one day of food and water.

That’s fine by Rick.

They leave at dawn and come back at nighttime. With Randall.

It turns out that he knows Maggie and the farm. He could lead his people right to their gates.

Daryl sits in the windowsill and watches the backs of Rick and Shane. The two brothers are sitting on the porch, shoulders brushing as they discuss their problem. The boy catches shards of their conversation. How they’re not sure how many there are in Randall’s group, where they came from, where they’re planning on going.

They’re going to have to interrogate him, but neither really wants to do it. It’s just a kid, really. A couple of years younger than Glenn, maybe.

In the morning, they still haven’t decided.

But Daryl has.

This whole Randall problem has been dragging for a week and now they’re back to square one. It’s driving everyone crazy.

He walks to the barn where they’ve locked the boy up. He doesn’t have the keys so he just climbs the back of the building, hopping in through the landing and then climbing down the ladder to get to the kid, who’s chained up.

‘Hey,’ Randall breathes. ‘What’s your name?

Daryl doesn’t answer. He puts his bow up against the wall.

‘That guy? One of those cops, the big one? Is he your dad?’

‘No.’

‘The other one then? With the curls?’

Daryl takes his jacket off and throws it down next to his bow.

‘What are you going to do?’ Randall asks, voice nearly breaking on the words.

Daryl looks at him. And slowly lets his fingers curl into a fist.

 

 

 


	21. Hardened hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really thought that this story was going to be a quick 5-chapter one, but your positive comments motivated me to just keep going, so that's what I'm going to do. Guess we're in it for the really long haul.  
> It's really fascinating to me to read your takes on these characters; I love reading your thoughts every time. (And do yell if it starts to get boring)
> 
> Thank you. Let's get back to the torture now. ;)

 

* * *

 

 

Randall is bleeding.

Daryl’s fists are hurting something awful. He switches to his knife to save his knuckles.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Randall objects as he watches how the knife slides out of its sheath. There’s blood running over his lips, down his chin. His nose is probably broken. The skin around his left eye is already swelling up and discoloring.

‘How many?’ Daryl snarls as he slams the knife down between the guy’s legs.

‘Thirty! Thirty guys.’

‘Where?’

‘Uhh-‘ Randall looks like he’s trying to come up with a lie.

Daryl rips the bandage off his leg.

The boy howls in pain, ‘I don’t know, I swear! We were never anyplace more than a night.’

‘Scouting?’ Daryl asks. ‘Planning on staying local?’ He listens and threatens and eventually slowly gets to his feet when Randall admits that those guys just took him in. That he’d thought that he’d have a better chance with them. Daryl knows what that’s like. Hell, if he lost this group right now, he wouldn’t even think twice about joining any other group if they’d have him. To face this world on your own? It’s starting to seem more impossible by the day.

‘-and his two daughters. Teenagers, you know? Real young. Real cute.’

Daryl slowly turns around to face the older boy.

‘Their daddy had to watch while these guys, they…. And they didn’t even kill him afterwards! They just – They just made him watch as his daughters… They just left him there.’

Daryl knows what he’s talking about. What those guys had done. He remembers sitting in a shady bar with Merle and his friends. It was late, far too late for an eleven year old to be out, but there he was, sipping the coke the lady behind the bar had given him with a wink and listening to a guy telling a story.

Merle had one arm looped around the back of Daryl’s chair, always protective of him when among his friends, and one arm around his current girlfriend. He was tense while he listened to the story.

About that guy and a different bar in a different town. Some drunk college bitches looking for something rough. How he was going to give it to them but one of those bitches changed her mind at the last second. How that was just not a thing, right? He’d been promised something.

He’d taken it too.

Daryl remembers Merle slowly getting up, asking if he’d really taken it. He remembers the bar going quiet at the tone of his voice. Dark. And unforgiving.

The guy had laughed, a little nervous now that there was no humor in Merle’s eyes anymore. Yeah, he’d taken it all right.

He remembers how Merle had taught the whole bar a lesson about manners. That it’d been okay to call girls every name in the book because hell, they did the same thing about your back, son. That they’d fought long enough for the same rights, so now they should bear the same burdens too. No offering your seat and holding the door anymore, hell, they wanted to go broke by paying for a date? Let ‘em.

But taking something that weren’t ever yours? Justifying it by booze and superior strength, oh no, son. No, no, no, that wouldn’t go with old Merle, now. ‘Cause there’s always someone stronger. And old Merle is plenty strong, you see.

He remembers Merle pushing the guy up against the wall. A hand on his shoulder, directing him to his knees. He remembers Merle grinning, aren’t you looking cute like this? Might as well put that mouth to some good use, huh?

In the end, they’d let the guy go because he’d puked his guts out the moment Merle’s hand had gone to his belt to unbuckle it. Two of their friends threw him in the back of the truck and drove him to the police station.

Merle’s girlfriend had laughed, kissed his cheek and put a hand on his crotch, squeezing gently. ‘Every girl’s hero,’ she’d said.

‘That’s right, sugar tits,’ Merle had grinned before reaching over and ruffling Daryl’s hair.

The memory collapses when Randall takes a ragged breath, ‘no, but – but I didn’t touch those girls. No, I swear I didn’t!’

Daryl lashes out before he can even think about it. His right foot collides with Randall’s stomach and then he jabs his knife back into its sheath before using his knuckles again. That feels better than any blade even though it hurts. Or maybe _because_ it hurts. Voices approach the barn but Daryl can’t stop. Not when Randall is screaming and then whimpering that the boy has to believe him, that he’s not like that. Daryl doesn’t believe him because no one in their right mind would tell such a story unless they were proud of it.

The lock rattles, the chain is removed and then Rick and Shane storm into the barn.

Rick has his gun out, scanning the barn and only experience and muscle memory keeps the motion fluid when he spots Daryl next to Randall. Panting, chest heaving and knuckles covered by blood and bruises.

Shane does stop, gob smacked, before he breathes; ‘Jesus. What have you done?’

Daryl stumbles away from the older boy and wipes sweat from his cheek and forehead. He leaves a blood smear instead.

Rick holsters his weapon when he’s sure that there’s no threat. He checks the shackles on Randall and then inspects the boy’s face, wincing at the damage done. When he straightens again, he move to grab a bottle of water and offers it to their prisoner to rinse his mouth of blood. ‘Get him out of here, brother.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Shane sounds a bit dazed as he curls his fingers around Daryl’s upper arm and yanks him away from the boy and then shoves him out of the barn.

Daryl stumbles a bit before he regains his composure. Outside, he breathes the fresh air in and can feel the sun kiss his exposed skin. The cold sweat on his back causes him to shiver. The pain in his hands is throbbing now. His knuckles have become open wounds, dark against his pale skin. Drops of blood drip down his fingers.

He looks at Shane. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look so disappointed before. Or horrified. That doesn’t make any sense. They’ve all done a lot worse than this - the kid isn’t even dead -and Daryl has seen others do a lot worse to their peers. Bar fights and drunken wagers, that one time when there was a fight in their trailer park and some guys with baseball bats came to get what they were owed from some guy a couple of rows over.

He’d been the kid covered in blood too, a couple of years ago when Merle had been long gone and he had to save his own face. He had of course, because he’s a Dixon and Dixon’s aren’t scared of nothing. By the time someone had dragged him off the other boy, the kid had been a sobbing mess while Daryl had spat one of his teeth into the mud beside their trailer. He’s not afraid of using his strength. He knows that’s the only thing he’s got going for him. For a twelve year old, he’s small but his dad and brother had made sure that he’s got the muscle to prove everyone wrong when they thought that that made him weak.

The door of the barn is slammed shut, the locked reattached before Rick stalks over. The crossbow is slung over his shoulder. He throws Daryl’s jacket and vest at the boy, who barely catches the items. Then the cop turns to his partner, ‘you better talk to him, Shane,’ Rick hisses, turning away from the boy as if trying to keep the conversation between the two of them, but he’s too angry for that to work. ‘He almost _killed_ that kid!’

‘I’ll – I’ll talk to him.’

‘Weren’t that your damn plan all along?’ Daryl asks with a scowl on his face.

Shane glances at him. It had been his plan, a throw-away comment during one of his heated discussions with Rick. ‘We were going to bring him eighteen miles out, you know that!’

‘And that didn’t work!’

Rick whirls around, ‘so you just _torture_ him instead?’

Daryl scoffs. ‘Y’all were pussy-footin’, so I just knocked him about some! We had to know, right? Who he were with and stuff?’ He feels a little less confident when Shane groans and Rick just stares at him. ‘He weren’t goin’ to tell ya nothing. Ya should be thankin’ me.’

‘ _Thanking you_?’ Rick looks so mad that Daryl can’t help but cower a little.

‘He’s got a gang,’ the boy says quickly, ‘thirty men. They got guns and shit, and they ain’t lookin’ to make friends. They roll through here, our boys are dead! And the girls…. Gonna wish they were.’

‘I don’t care what he told you,’ Rick growls. He reaches out to grab the collar of Daryl’s shirt to yank him close. ‘You-‘

‘Let me deal with him, brother,’ Shane says as he steps up beside his partner. A soothing hand on Rick’s shoulder and a quick glance at Daryl, who’s staring up at the smaller cop with wide, frightened eyes. ‘Come on now.’

Rick lets Daryl go. He looks at Shane, ‘you better deal with him.’

‘Said I would, didn’t I?’ Shane shifts his weight. ‘You go and tell the others what we know, okay? We need to come up with a plan. We need to figure something out.’

Rick nods, casts one last angry look at Daryl before walking away.

Daryl watches him. Anger curls around his spine when Rick shifts the bow higher onto his shoulder instead of dropping it somewhere for him to pick up. ‘He best give that back.’

‘Or what?’ Shane asks as he puts his hands on his hips. ‘He’s next in line for some of your justice?’

‘Weren’t about justice,’ Daryl scoffs.

‘No. It wasn’t.’

‘What the fuck, man,’ Daryl explodes because this is just _unfair_. ‘You said we’d look after them, right? And now you’re crawlin’ up my butt because I did it? You were all too pussy to do it, fuckin’ goody two shoes of a pigs, huh? All talk. Pssh. And you’re callin’ _me_ trash.’

‘Nobody is calling you trash, Daryl.’

The boy hates that the cop sounds so calm and collected. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

‘No?’ he taunts, ‘just some stupid kid, right? Ain’t yours, ain’t nobodies no more so why are you getting’ your panties all in a twist now? I ain’t nothing to you.’

Shane looks at the sky for a second and takes a deep breath. ‘We talked about that. I’m not going to apologize again. That’s not even the point of all of this. Stop trying to piss me off. I just want to talk with you.’

Daryl smirks. ‘That’s all ya do; talk. Oh, excuse me, that ain’t all ya do, right? Lori, too.’

The anger is immediate and so gratifying that Daryl almost laughs because this what he knows. The way Shane is suddenly so close and looming over him, the hand grabbing him at his throat, so painful and almost cutting off his air supply. He can practically feel the bruises bloom on his skin already. The scars on his back and belly burn, welcoming their future additions. ‘Go on then,’ he gasps when Shane’s hand curls into a fist and draws back.

Shane freezes. Dark eyes stare at the boy in his grasp. ‘God,’ he breathes back, fingers going slack. ‘You _want_ it.’

Daryl watches how those brown eyes soften with that sickening mixture of pity and sorrow. He hates that look on Shane.

For a couple of seconds, Shane just looks at him. And then the fingers tighten again, almost shocking Daryl. ‘Well, if that’s what it takes,’ Shane growls into his face. ‘Is that how Will taught you? With his knuckles?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl manages to spit out, ‘took his belt and did it. Weren’t no pussy like you.’

‘Shut up,’ Shane jostles the boy a bit. ‘You’re going to listen to me. Didn’t I tell you to stay out of the barn?’

‘What?’ The boy frowns, mind reeling and suddenly disorientated because he’d been expecting a blinding pain in his stomach, his ribs or his eye socket and none of that happened. ‘Yeah, when there were _walkers_ in there!’

‘Did I ask you to go beat a kid twice your size up?’

‘Nah, I just-‘

‘You wanted to help but you _didn’t_ ,’ Shane jostles him again. ‘You just wanted to be all tough and grown-up and you didn’t stop to think about what you were doing. Copycatting your old man and now aching for a beating you’re not going to get. Because that’s easy, right? That’s just bruises and half an hour of pain and then it’s over. You’re not getting away that easily with me, kid.’

Daryl stares at him. Heart pounding in his throat, blood rushing too fast through his veins. ‘Fuck you,’ he whispers even though Shane is right. It is easy. It’s skin deep and over the next morning because either Will didn’t remember after a night of drinking or he had deemed the blood sufficient payment for his sins. But Shane…

Shane isn’t even that mad. The anger is fake, just enough to grab Daryl’s attention; that teasing of a beating in the fingers digging into his throat. And as horribly cliché as it sounds, a thing he’d heard other people talk about because he’d never seen it in Will or Merle, but Shane is _disappointed_. And it hurts more than Will’s anger ever had.

Shane hadn’t expected him to do this. And Will had always just been waiting for him to fuck up. Maybe that’s why he used to change the rules all the time, because he never _wanted_ Daryl to get it right as that would mean that he would lose his punching bag. And when he eventually messed up, Will would be there with that shit-eating grin on his face as his hand would go to his belt buckle and his lips curled around those horrid words; _brace yourself._

The cop had expected him to do good. He had been doing good, hadn’t gotten into trouble for a couple of days now, a week even, no, longer still, Daryl thinks because the last time Shane had been riding his ass was over him running off to find Sophia and getting shot for his troubles.

And now he’s fucked up again.

And Shane is disappointed.

The cop watches patiently as the message sinks in. He slowly lets go of the boy’s throat.

Daryl takes an unsteady step backwards and looks at his bloody fists.

‘You’re not getting your bow back until I think you can be trusted again, okay?’

Daryl doesn’t respond. He watches how the blood dries on his skin.

‘Answer me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘About what?’

Daryl sets his jaw, shrugs and then looks up at the cop. ‘He deserved it though. His group? They… they did something to two girls. Weren’t right.’

‘Two wrongs don’t make a right either. What you did? It was wrong, Daryl. I don’t care about what your intentions were,’ Shane says when the boy opens his mouth again. ‘It was _wrong_.’

‘ _The whole world is wrong_!’ Daryl snarls, ‘nothing is right no more!’

Shane sighs and sinks to one knee. ‘I know,’ he says, softer now. ‘But don’t lose yourself in it. You’re good. No, you _are_ ,’ Shane says forcefully. ‘You’re a good kid, Daryl. Don’t let this new world make you wrong, okay?’

Daryl is not sure how he’s supposed to do that but he nods anyway. It’s difficult to swallow suddenly. He looks at his fists, at the wounds there and can’t image them ever not being there. This is what they do; Dixon’s. They fight and they never, ever stop.

‘What are you thinking right now,’ Shane asks.

Daryl shrugs, a little helpless. He’s sorry and he’s kind of sad but not really sure why and he’s not sorry at all that Randall is hurting back in the barn and he almost can’t bear to look Shane in the eye now and he’s sorry that Rick is mad and Shane disappointed. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispers because he doesn’t anymore. He doesn’t know anything anymore.

‘Come here,’ Shane draws him in a careful hug. He’s not sure whether the boy will appreciate the gesture. They’ve been close in the past, when Daryl was hurt or too tired to fight back, but otherwise a high-five was about the extent of their physical contact. To his surprise, Daryl loops his arm around his neck and holds on tightly.

The boy is biting back tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into the warmth of the cop’s shoulder.

‘I know, bud,’ Shane says. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

Daryl is not so sure. That doesn’t matter much though because Shane hugs him and even lifts him up after a couple of minutes. The boy curls his legs around the cop’s waist and clings to him. He doesn’t care that everyone falls silent when Shane carries him to his tent. He’s grateful that Shane playfully dumps him onto his bed before he sits on the edge of it with a grin on his face.

‘Go on, koala,’ the cop snorts as he reaches over and plucks at the laces of Daryl’s boots to undo them. ‘Get some sleep. You’ve been busy this morning.’

‘Stop,’ Daryl complains but he still kicks his boots off when the laces are undone.

‘Talk to Rick in the afternoon,’ Shane advises. ‘I’m going to check on them now, see what the new plan is, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Daryl nods as he gets comfortable, folding one arm under his head as a pillow. ‘Hey,’ he calls out when Shane gets up. ‘Thanks.’

‘Yeah,’ Shane reaches down and puts a warm hand on his cheek. ‘You’re welcome. You crazy redneck.’

Daryl laughs and bats his hand away, curling up on his side. ‘Leave me be, pig.’

‘Sure, bud. See you in an hour or so.’

‘See ya, Shane.’

 

 

He doesn’t sleep.

He’s haunted by Shane’s words. _Don’t let this world make you wrong_.

And he thinks about that time when Will had been the one kneeling before him, rough hands on his shoulders and blue eyes filled with sorrow and remorse as he’d told him _; don’t lose yourself_.

He hadn’t understood that at the time. One moment they’d been talking about him doing hard things this world now needed and the next second his dad had said that. _Don’t lose yourself, okay?_

If he’s honest, he still doesn’t quite understand it, but it’s starting to make more sense now. He’s never been like Merle or Will. Until a couple of weeks ago, he’d thought –and maybe hoped – that it had just been an age thing. That he was simply too young and that Merle had been softer when he’d been twelve too. He’d hoped that a day would come that he wouldn’t worry so much about what everyone was saying about him behind his back, that he would simply stop caring about such stupid things, just how Will never gave a damn about what other people thought about him and his boys.

That there would be a day when he could just smirk, spit on the ground and flip someone off without wincing inside like Merle always did. That he would stop dreaming about a life beyond Georgia’s borders and just be happy to stay where they were. The same town, the same people, the same last names hounding everyone and dragging them back down until they just stopped trying to get out of the gutters of their small towns.

He’s no fool, though. He’s a Georgia boy through and through. He loves everything about it, would miss it if it were gone, but sometimes he wishes that he would come home to it, instead of always already being there. That he would roam the street of New Orleans, see the sky scrapers of New York, lose all his money in Vegas and then just go _home_.

He’d told his dad that he wanted to be a tattoo-artist because that was something his dad could appreciate. Some of their friends were tattoo-artists, too. Slim Jim who’d owned the joint next to the bar with the neon skull in the window, or the girl who called herself Lolita down Adam’s street whose arms were covered in what looked like the pretties of flowers which turned out to be rotting bodies when you looked close enough.

He doesn’t think he’d have survived the beating if he’d told his dad he just wanted to be an _artist_. A painter, maybe.

Will and Merle never gave a damn about art. There’d been no pictures in their house, no sculptures. The only painting Daryl knows about hangs in their hunting cabin. Those sprawling fields, all those different kinds of green. It must have belonged to their mother, or at least; she must have been the reason why they had it. Maybe she’d been a lover of art, of paintings, and maybe she wouldn’t have minded if her youngest boy had the soft heart of an artist.

And maybe, just maybe, he should stop pretending to have the hardened heart of a Dixon.

 

 

That night, he learns that it’s possible to have both. A hardened heart, and that softer one.

And when Shane does what he does later, Daryl knows that it's possible to have both at the same time.

 

 

Dale is screaming and Daryl is off, running over the fields like a bullet leaving a gun. He’s the fastest of them all and he’s not scared when he dives straight into that walker that’s tearing a member of his group apart. The knife materializes in his hand, plunges into that skull until the walker is truly dead.

He crawls over to where Dale is in the grass. His stomach is torn open, bleeding everywhere. Daryl looks at the wounds, afraid to reach out and touch the man, unsure of what to do now. So he gets to his feet again and yells for Shane and Glenn because he just doesn’t know anymore.

‘Help,’ he screams, ‘ _run_!’

His friends are shimmering lights in the distance. Bobbing flashlights as they get closer.

Daryl drops to his knees beside Dale, ‘hang in there, buddy,’ he says because that’s what Shane calls him sometimes and it helps him so maybe it helps Dale too.

Rick and Shane get there first and Daryl scrambles out of the way.

‘All right, just listen to my voice,’ Rick says softly as he cradles Dale’s face. ‘Just listen to me, all right? Just listen to me.’

Dale is moaning, shaking from the pain.

Hershel arrives with Glenn and the rest of the group.

Rick looks up at him. ‘What can we do?’

There’s nothing they can do. Hershel shakes his head and Rick screams out of frustration and fear, sorrow and anger. The rest of the group is crying. Andrea bowed over Dale’s body, Glenn standing at his feet.

Carl first looks at the walker and then hides in his mother’s lap, sobbing.

‘He is suffering,’ Andrea says.

They all want it to stop.

‘Do something!’

Daryl slowly gets to his feet as Rick pulls his revolver out of the holster. He aims it at Dale’s head.

For a long moment, there’s nothing but Dale’s moans of pain to fill the air.

Daryl looks at Glenn, who’s crying, and then walks over to stand by Shane. He’s not ashamed when he reaches out to hold on to the man’s forearm. The cop looks down at him before shaking him off. Then he curls his arm around Daryl’s chest, hugging him close instead.

Rick can’t do it.

‘Brother,’ Shane says softly. ‘Give it to me, man.’ He holds out his hand for Rick’s gun.

Rick passes it to him.

Without exchanging another word, Shane gently pushes Daryl into Rick’s arms. The smaller cop loops his arm around the boy’s shoulders easily, holding him close. Daryl watches as Shane takes aim this time.

A rough hand folds over his eyes.

In this new darkness, Daryl listens to how Shane kneels.

‘Sorry, brother.’

And a gunshot.

The world emerges again when Rick drops his hand.

Before Daryl can even think about looking at Dale’s body, Shane is right there, bending down a little to scoop Daryl up again, just like he’d done earlier. ‘Come here, bud,’ Shane whispers into his ear, holding on tightly. ‘It’s okay, it’s gonna be all right.’

Daryl knows that. He suspects that Shane is trying to reassure himself instead. So he doesn’t mind that Shane’s hold on him is almost too tight, too desperate. And he doesn’t complain when a broad hand buries itself in his brown hair.

He just lets his forehead rest against Shane’s neck, and holds on.

 

 

 


	22. Raincheck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos; they really help to keep me motivated!
> 
>  
> 
> Here; have a chapter that's way too long!

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next morning, Daryl is sitting on a stack of firewood at the back of Hershel’s farm. He’s found several branches that could make new bolts if he carves them carefully enough. The wooden cores are far from perfect, he prefers those made of carbon fiber because they’re stronger and more accurate but he knows how to make these too. It used to be just for fun, to see if he’d actually be able to make them himself, he’d never really needed them. Money was always tight before the turn but Will had made their gear a priority.

The crossbow had been new when Daryl had gotten it and a bit too heavy for his age. That hadn’t mattered much though. When he was still learning, Will would allow him to use a cocking rope and would sometimes ready the bow himself before passing it back to his son so he could shoot it under his watchful eye. Eventually, Daryl grew into the bow, his arms finally long and strong enough for him to no longer need a rope to pull the string back.

No matter how careful he was, bolts would always break eventually but Will never raised hell when he’d ask for new ones. It’s important to have good enough gear, his dad would say, you never knew what could happen out in them woods.

It had been the only aspect of their lives they’d splurged money on. The bows, their bolts, knives and even their boots. Watertight and warm enough to serve their purpose.

Every weekend, no matter the weather, they would disappear into the woods behind the trailer park to go hunt. Sometimes Merle would join them, sour-faced and sulking because he’d rather hang out with his friends than roam the woods with his father and an excited six year old, but later it would just be Daryl and Will.

Daryl actually liked those trips. Will always seemed happier when he could trail after his youngest son, just keeping an eye on him while Daryl did all the tracking and shooting. Merle had never been much of a hunter. He could read the stars and the ground well enough but he’d always been the more impatient of the Dixon brothers. He was loud and too careless, never bothering to relax his breathing when shooting, always so eager to kill and then just go back home.

Daryl was more quiet. He loves to lose himself in the woods, to place his feet just so that he doesn’t make any sound as he weaves through the trees. The tracks, to him, are easy to spot, but even Will had to sometimes trust him on blind faith whenever Daryl told him that they were tracking a buck when the older man couldn’t see the signs himself.

He’s thankful for the skill now, anyway. Walkers are attracted to sound and Daryl can ghost through the woods whenever he wants.

So now he sits behind the farm, hidden away from the bustle that is going on inside the house and he makes his own bolts. It feels a bit useless because Rick still hasn’t given his bow back after the incident with Randall, but it’s just something to keep himself occupied with while the others are moving into the farm.

Through the open windows, Daryl can hear how everyone claims a spot. Hershel gives his room to Lori and Rick and Glenn refuses to move into Maggie’s while the rest of them split between the living room and the dining area.

It doesn’t matter to Daryl where he sleeps so he stays out of the hassle. Eventually he’ll find out where Glenn is staying and claim the spot next to him, and if Glenn succumbs to Maggie’s amused smirk and moves into her room he’ll find out where Shane is staying and stick to his side. Or maybe he’ll ditch them both and just sleep in a corner somewhere, he really doesn’t care.

The door of the farm swings open and Rick and Shane walk out. They’re heading for the windmill just down the road. Someone had suggested that they might be able to use that as a look-out post so they’re going to build a platform on it. The two men are talking animatedly, Shane using his hands a lot and making large gestures as Rick pushes his hands into his pockets and laughs along.

Their voices drift back to Daryl even though he can’t really understand what they’re talking about. He watches them closely. Before, Daryl wouldn’t have believed Shane if he’d called Rick his brother. The two just didn’t seem as close anymore, their interactions loaded with shame and guilt on Shane’s part and silent disapproval and disdain on Rick’s, but their bond has mended over the past couple of weeks.

Of course, ever since Rick came back, Shane has been by his side to reclaim the role of loyal partner, dropping Lori faster than Merle had any of his girlfriends, but lately, especially after they’d tried to drop Randall 18 miles out, they’d been brothers again. Always leaning on each other and checking in to make sure the other is okay with a simple glance or lifted eyebrow.

Shane doesn’t ignore Lori but he’s overly polite and aware of the distance between them, never stepping closer than necessary to be heard or reaching out to get her attention. His bond with Carl hasn’t changed much, as far as Daryl can tell. Of course, Carl’s attention is now mostly focused on Lori and Rick, but he still seeks out the other cop when there’s something on his mind his parents can’t know.

Carl’s been trying to get Daryl’s attention too. He’d boasted about his gun training when Daryl couldn’t come because of his injuries, telling him exactly how many times he’d managed to hit the tin can and how hard it had been, but also begging the Dixon boy to teach him how to shoot the crossbow because he thought the weapon looked cool.

Daryl won’t teach him though. The crossbow is _his_. And his dad taught him. That’s not something he wants to share.

And besides, Rick probably wouldn’t allow it. He and Carl might be the same age, but they’re not cut from the same wood.

Shane thinks Dixon’s could corrupt a saint. Rick probably thinks Daryl could corrupt his son.

The two cops reach the car that’s been loaded with their supplies but Shane hesitates a moment before getting into the driver’s seat. With a hand shielding his eyes from the sun, he scans the grounds.

He’s looking for him, Daryl knows. They haven’t talked at all today and Shane seems to hate that. He likes to check in on him in the mornings to hear what Daryl’s plans are for the day but by the time the cop had been up, Daryl had already been busy helping T-dog dig Dale’s grave. Shane had taken the place at Rick’s right hand at the funeral while Daryl had leaned against Glenn before allowing Carol to herd him back to the farm while Glenn went to get the RV with Andrea.

And now Daryl is hiding at the back of the farm, sitting on the pile of firewood and almost hidden by the shadows of the trees. He doesn’t call out or raise his hand to attract the cop’s attention. He just watches how Shane hesitates and then lets himself fall into the seat before driving off with Rick.

The door of the farm opens again and this time Glenn comes out on the porch. The Korean braces himself on the railing of the porch, staring out over the land for a couple of seconds before hanging his head. After a deep sigh, he pushes himself away and walks down the small set of stairs.

He heads over to where Daryl is sitting.

It’s eerie how the guy always manages to spot Daryl, even when the boy doesn’t want to be found. He remembers Glenn saluting him before going off to find Will, spotting him among the branches, high up in a tree where he had no business being. It’s like he has a sixth-sense for Daryl’s whereabouts. Or maybe he’s just more observant than Daryl gives him credit for most of the time.

‘Hey, Dare,’ Glenn says as he sinks down on the wood beside the boy. His tone is muted. He’d cried at Dale’s funeral this morning and the sadness still clings to him.

‘Hey.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothin’.’ Daryl focusses on the branch in his hands again. The knife flashes when it reflects the sunlight.

Glenn just sits there for a while. He scratches at the logs between him and the boy. Dirt gathers under his fingernails but he doesn’t seem to care. Eventually he manages to break off a piece of bark, which he flips over and over before tossing it into the bushes behind them.

Daryl glances at his friend.

The black hair is peeking out from under his off-white baseball cap. Small droplets of sweat already cling to the ends and it’s not even noon yet. It’s going to be a hot day. The Korean’s shoulders are hunched as he stares at his sneakers. They used to be a very popular model and Daryl had wanted a pair too but his dad had scoffed before clipping him across the back of his head for asking for something so stupid. There’s a hole on the side of Glenn’s left shoe and Daryl can see that the right sole is splitting near his toes. He’s kind of glad that Will got him new boots instead.

‘Ya okay?’ Daryl asks because it’s not like Glenn to be this quiet.

The man laughs but it sounds bitter and angry. ‘No, I’m not _okay_ , Daryl.’

‘Why?’

Glenn turns his head to look at him.

Daryl squints back, eyes narrowed and the dark bangs framing his face. The blue eyes are so small that they’re barely visible.

Glenn opens his mouth but then closes it again as he changes his mind. He looks at his dirty fingernails for a second. ‘Hershel gave me his pocket watch. He said that his grandfather brought it over from Ireland, and it’s been passed down from father to son. He gave it to me a couple of days ago. That – that means something.’

The boy nods but doesn’t say anything because Glenn looks too upset to be needing his input.

‘He told me that I would understand one day, if I became a dad, that nobody is good enough for their little girl until someone is, right? So that means that he thinks I’m good enough but –‘ The Korean wrings his hands nervously, ‘but I’m _not_.’

Daryl frowns a bit, ‘why not?’

‘Because,’ Glenn starts, sounding exasperated and stressed, ‘I don’t know. I just – I’m messing it all up! First with Maggie. She told me something important and I didn’t say it back, I just stood there like a complete jerk. Then I came back and blamed everything on her like an even bigger jerk and now she asked me to stay in her room and I said I’d rather take the floor of the dining room instead like a dumbass.’

The boy snorts at the rising pitch of Glenn’s voice and kicks his feet so his heels thud against the wood he’s sitting on.

‘But that’s,’ Glenn waves a vague hand, ‘that’s all… it doesn’t matter. That’s _small_ stuff compared to everything else, but it just – I don’t know, it just distracted me and…’ He sighs deeply, ‘I heard what you did to Randall.’

Daryl freezes.

‘What? You think me and Shane don’t talk about you? We’re your….’ He searches for the right word and decides on; ‘friends. I know I haven’t been around much and I’m sorry, Dare.’

‘Ya’re around plenty,’ Daryl mutters as he scratches at his knee. The tiny hole in his jean is getting bigger every day. Maybe he should take Patricia up on her offer and let her fix it.

‘No, I haven’t been. Dale was -  we met on the highway just after Atlanta got bombed and he just – he took us under his wing, you know? We didn’t know each other but he still took me in and then looked after me once we reached the quarry. Me, Andrea and Amy too. He just looked after us, checked in whenever we needed someone to talk to.’ Glenn stares out over the sprawling fields, now bathed in bright sunlight. ‘I didn’t always appreciate it. Who was this guy, sticking his nose into my business, right?’ He laughs softly and shakes his head a little. ‘But he was there when I needed him. I don’t know what we would have done with Randall if he wasn’t around. Or what I would have done back at the quarry if he hadn’t been there to nudge me into the right direction.’

Daryl puts his knife away and runs his fingers over the smooth bark of his new bolt. It still needs some work. He has to put the feathers on and sharpen it before he can even think about using it, but it’s getting there.

He’s not sure what to say to Glenn. He hadn’t known Dale like Andrea or the Korean had. They’d never really talked, apart from the usual stuff like the weather or road they were taking. He’d seemed like good people though, even if it was just for the fact that Glenn had liked him so much.

‘When you and Will came to the quarry? Shane wanted to throw you both out but Dale and Lori convinced him that you guys should stay. I mean, Will was as nasty as they come but you were just a kid hiding behind his legs.’

Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand and kicks his heels some more. There’s no point in denying that.

‘Dale told me that you could use a friend.’

That makes Daryl look up at the Korean.

‘He knew you weren’t a mini-Will.’

Daryl smirk a bit as he looks away. It fades when he thinks about why they’re having this conversation. ‘Am though,’ he mutters. ‘What I did to Randall? Same thing my daddy would have done. And Merle too. Ain’t no doubt about that.’

‘They wouldn’t have been sorry.’

‘No,’ Daryl admits. He doesn’t think that’s a strike against his blood though. His dad and brother had always been a lot tougher than he was.

‘Maybe if I’d been around more, checked in on you more often… maybe that wouldn’t have happened. I was just…. With Maggie and everything? I didn’t forget, I just….’ Glenn shrugs, a little helpless. ‘I’m so sorry, Dare.’

Daryl frowns, ‘God was good enough to give me a damn mouth. If I’d needed your help, I would’ve asked. I know you’re around, even when you’re not, like, _around_. And hell,’ he squints up at the sky to check the time, ‘you’re here now, right? Merle was chasin’ tail all the time too. Forgot about me. Weren’t ever sorry neither. He’d remember after a while,’ Daryl nods, ‘would come bargin’ back in, pretendin’ to be my big brother ‘nd shit. He was, you know. When he didn’t have something better to do, I guess.’

Glenn winces. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Broken record,’ Daryl says as he slides off the pile of wood and lands on his feet gracefully. ‘Don’t matter none now. ‘sides, I like Maggie so you’d better put some effort in to keep her ‘round.’

‘Yeah?’ The Korean sounds far too hopeful and eager.

Daryl thinks about making fun of him for it but decides not to. ‘Yeah,’ he says instead. ‘She’s good people. Hershel too.’

‘Yeah, they are.’ There’s a hint of pride in Glenn’s voice and Daryl wonders whether that’s there whenever he talks to Maggie about him too.

‘Hey,’ Daryl leans back onto the wood and looks up at his friend, ‘kinda do need your help with something, a’right?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Glenn sounds relieved now and he beams at the boy. ‘With what?’

‘Can ya convince Rick to give me my bow back?’

For a second Glenn just looks at him. Then he snorts and shakes his head, reaching out to swat at the brown hair, ‘no, you pest. Just keep your head down and he’ll give it back whenever he thinks you’ve been without long enough.’

Daryl scoffs at that. ‘’s what Shane said.’

‘I know,’ Glenn grins. ‘I told you; we talk about you behind your back.’

The youngest Dixon narrows his eyes at the Korean but can’t help it when his thin lips curl into a shy smile. ‘A’right,’ he nods, trying to pretend he’s not a little pleased that they’re watching his back. He lingers for a second, hesitating. ‘We’re good though, right?’

Glenn takes his baseball cap off and drapes it over Daryl’s brown hair. ‘Yeah, we’re good.’

Daryl reaches up to the cap. Instead of throwing it back to his friend, he just turns it so it’s backwards and not impeding his view so much. He tucks it lower too.

‘It looks good on you.’

‘Yeah?’

Glenn gives him a soft, fond smile. ‘Yeah, heartbreaker.’

 ‘Stop,’ Daryl scoffs as a blush creeps up to his cheeks. He scuffs his boot on a log. ‘Got a job for me to do now?’

‘Yeah,’ Glenn slides off the wood too and heads back to the farm.

‘What is it then?’ Daryl calls out after him.

‘Keep your head down and give Rick some puppy-dog eyes when he gets back!’

 

 

‘- was big too. Must’ve weighted about 200 pounds or so. Shot it right between the eyes, had to get Merle to carry it home for me though,’ Daryl laughs as he kicks the tire beneath his feet and leans back on the hood of the car. The metal is warm beneath his hands, even though the car is parked in the shade.

‘Merle?’ Shane asks with a glance over his shoulder. The cop is fortifying the barn. A couple of nails stick out of the corner of his mouth as he swings the hammer again, ramming one into the wood with a smooth blow.

‘My brother.’

‘There’s more of you?’ Shane asks, faking shock. ‘You Dixon’s are like a plague, or like a Lernaean Hydra.’

‘A what?’

‘A Lernaean Hydra,’ the cop repeats, a little slower now. ‘It’s a monster from Greek mythology. Some kind of sea snake monster or something,’ Shane laughs as he puts the hammer down to look at the boy sitting on his truck. ‘The story goes that if you’d cut of one of the heads – it had nine by the way, nine heads – if you cut one off, two more grow to replace it.’

‘Wouldn’t be no problem if you jackasses didn’t leave one of us on top of a damn roof. Will is one of the heads, right? In your… example-thing.’

‘Metaphor,’ Shane supplies, ‘and yeah.’

‘’s a fucked up metraf - _metaphor_ by the way,’ the boy scoffs but he’s still smiling. ‘Always were the three of us. No heads had to roll for that to happen.’

‘What about your mom?’

‘Weren’t no Dixon,’ Daryl mutters as he brings his hand to his mouth and chews on his thumb. ‘Not really. Will didn’t deserve her none. ‘s what he always said himself.’ He glances at Shane.

The cop is looking right back at him, a thoughtful look on his face.

Daryl is glad when Shane’s attention is drawn to something else instead. The cop gestures, ‘we got company. And they brought a friend of yours.’

With a frown on his face, Daryl twists around to see who it is.

It’s Rick. The cop walks through the tall grass from the farm towards the barn. Hands stuffed into the pockets of his patch-work jacket, curls wild and beard scruffy. Daryl’s bow is on his back, the revolver in its holster on his hip. The man’s bowlegs always cause the boy to smirk a little. He doesn’t look half as tough as he is.

‘Hey, brother,’ the cop greets as he’s close enough to be heard. ‘Hey, Daryl.’

The boy ducks his head while the brothers clap their hands together for a brief handshake.

‘What’s up?’ Shane asks. ‘Came to inspect my hard work?’

‘Nah,’ Rick kicks some dust up. ‘I’d like to borrow Daryl for a while.’

The larger cop drops the hammer and turns to face his partner. ‘Why’s that?’

‘That walker that got Dale? Turns out Carl had seen it in the woods. He’d stolen a gun, went to investigate and came across it. He says it was stuck in the mud somewhere. He threw rocks at it,’ Rick sighs and shakes his head a little. ‘It got out, he got scared and just ran for it. It must have followed him or something. It came across Dale instead.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Shane breathes.

‘I know,’ Rick nods, ‘it was stupid of him. Reckless, dumb, all that. I already gave him a good talking to.’

‘But he stole a _gun_?’

‘Yeah. I had a spare, kept it with my gear, it – that was stupid, okay? But it… it wasn’t his fault. What happened to Dale? He didn’t mean for that to happen.’

Daryl watches intently as Shane scoffs and runs a hand through his short hair. It’s starting to grow back now that he’s stopped shaving it.

‘Of course not,’ Shane says, ‘but he’s got to stop trying to get himself killed, man.’

‘I talked to him. He – he understand now,’ Rick assures him.

Shane doesn’t look convinced but lets it go anyway. He turns back to his work. ‘Doesn’t explain why you need Daryl though.’

‘I just want to do a quick sweep of the place where Carl found that walker. There could be others. He doesn’t remember where he was, exactly. I thought that maybe Daryl could track it.’

At that, Shane turns around again to look at his brother. They share a long moment. Rick doesn’t break the eye contact, he just stands there with his hands in his pockets and shoulders low, completely at ease.

‘Your call, bud,’ Shane says after a while.

Daryl slides off the car to land on his feet. ‘If I get my bow back.’

‘For now,’ Rick allows.

‘No. I get it back,’ Daryl counters. ‘It’s mine.’

‘All right,’ Rick nods. He throws the strap over his head and passes the boy his weapon of choice.

Shane hesitate for a second. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘knife, bow, holler, Dare. Stick with Rick.’

‘Sure thing, boss,’ Daryl smirks as he shoulders his bow again. After a reassuring nod at his favorite cop, he turns on his heels to follow Rick towards the edge of the property, where Dale had died.

 

The trip with Rick is nothing like how Daryl had expected it to be. It’s quiet, to start with.

Once they reach the place where Dale had died, Rick falls back and lets Daryl do his job. It’s easy enough to find the tracks left by the walker. They zigzag, the steps a mess in the dirt and grass, but he’s gotten used to that now. Daryl is quick, jumping over the fence T-dog reinforced this morning and darting into the woods.

Rick follows silently. One hand on his gun at all times. A large machete is hanging from his belt too. Sometimes it catches the light and attracts Daryl’s attention for a second, but Rick never draws it, always preferring his revolver.

He finds the spot about half an hour later. It’s a dried-up creek bed. There are no other walkers.

Daryl jumps onto a tree that has fallen over and balances on it, walking up and down while Rick examines the area.

‘It’s clear,’ the cop says when he returns.

‘Told ya,’ Daryl comments because he had told him when they’d gotten here.

Rick nods thoughtfully. He sits down on the tree and Daryl keeps to the other side, a bit wary of the cop. Their silence had been comfortable enough but now it’s getting awkward. To him at least. He’s used to Shane, always blurting out whatever he has to say, or Glenn’s moods which he can break with just a glance, but Rick just sits there and stares at the mud around his boots.

‘I gave Carl his gun back.’

Daryl takes hold of the strap of his bow and wobbles on his feet.

‘No more kid’s stuff,’ Rick mutters. He rubs at his forehead and lets his shoulders slump. He looks tired. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you yesterday. It’s just hard to see a kid do something even a grown man would have trouble with. You were right. We needed to know that information, but I never wanted you to do that.’

Daryl squats down and grabs a twig, pulling it out of the mud. Then he uses it draw little figurines in the black substance, just so he won’t have to look at the cop sitting next to him.

‘Lori warned me, days, maybe a week ago. She said that Carl was getting cold. He said he would have put Sophia down himself if he could.’

Daryl shrugs a little. ‘That ain’t bein’ _cold_. She was our friend. I’d have done it too. Bolt between her eyes, ain’t no doubt about that.’

Rick lets out a shuddering breath at that. ‘I know. It’s just… I’m his _father_. It’s my job to look after him. Do the heavy lifting.’

‘He didn’t have to do it. You did,’ Daryl points out.

‘Yeah.’ Rick shifts, pulls his jacket up a bit and pulls a small handgun from his waistband. He holds it out to Daryl. ‘Take it.’

Daryl looks at the gun. ‘Why?’

‘No more kid’s stuff.’

That causes Daryl to bristle a bit because while Carl had been doing his damn homework, he’d been out hunting for the group, making sure they were fed. He’s killed more walkers than most of their group. He’s not a kid anymore. Hasn’t been for quite some time now.

‘I never got that raincheck,’ he says because even though Will had once explained how the gun had worked, he never gotten around to shooting one yet. The last time Shane gave lessons, he hadn’t been able to go because of his injuries. ‘Don’t know how to shoot,’ he explains when Rick frowns. ‘Got my bow, though. I’m good.’

‘No, take it. Why do you think I brought you out here?’

Daryl looks around at the riverbed.

‘It’s the same place where the other walkers had gotten stuck,’ Rick says, ‘the ones Hershel wanted me to put in the barn. Knew the walker came from this place as soon as Carl said it had been stuck in the mud. You really are a great tracker though, I didn’t really expect you to find this place. I just thought we’d wander around a bit until we’d come across a clearing and I could talk to you. But this is even better.’ The cop looks around the area. ‘Good sight lines. The gunshots might attract some walkers, but we’re far enough so they won’t hear us back at the farm.’

‘Gunshots?’ Daryl asks.

‘I’m going to teach you how to shoot.’

‘Shane said he’d do it.’

‘Shane isn’t the only qualified teacher here,’ Rick says as he gets to his feet. ‘He won’t mind.’

‘Ya sure?’ Daryl squints up at the cop.

‘I’m sure,’ Rick assures him. ‘I’m the raincheck. Come on, on your feet. Ever held a gun before?’

‘Once,’ Daryl mutters as he stands. ‘My dad had one at the cabin. Showed it to a friend once.’

‘It’s not a toy,’ Rick stresses.

‘I know.’

The weapon feels cold to his touch. Clunky too, even though his bow is much bigger and heavier. He fumbles a bit when he tries to load it under Rick’s watchful eye. The cop makes him do it again and again and again until the movement is fluid. Then they work on his posture. Daryl swings the gun up and dry fires.

‘Freeze,’ Rick mutters and Daryl smirks but does as he’s told.

‘Shoulders. Legs. Back,’ Rick says, prodding at the boy’s spine. ‘Stand up straight like you would with your bow. Try to anticipate the kick-back, okay?’

Daryl nods.

‘Load it up. Tell me when it’s hot,’ Rick says as he goes to stand behind the boy.

‘It’s hot,’ Daryl mutters when he flicks the safety off.

‘The tree right in the middle, see that smudge? That’s your target. Take aim and slowly squeeze the trigger.’

The sound is so loud that it startles Daryl, causing him to jerk the gun up and miss the target completely. Rick doesn’t laugh. Nor does he clips the boy across the back of his head. A muttered ‘follow through’ is the only comment.

He shoots a complete round. The last two shots hit the target. Not dead-center but close enough for Rick to tell him to put the safety back on.

Feeling a bit put-out, Daryl carefully puts the gun down before loading his bow, swinging it up and releasing his bolt.

‘Bulls-eye,’ Rick grins behind him. ‘Amazing.’

Daryl feels oddly satisfied by the compliment.

‘You’ve got a good eye,’ the cop praises. ‘You just need some practice.’

‘Carl said he’d hit the target every time.’

Rick laughs as he picks the gun up and checks the safety before passing it to the boy. ‘Carl’s a good shot,’ he admits, ‘but he’s just trying to impress you. He looks up to you.’

Daryl narrows his eyes and tries to spot the lie on Rick’s face, but the cop doesn’t seem to be yanking his chain. ‘Oh,’ he says, feeling stupid once he has.

The skin around Rick’s eyes wrinkles as he smiles. ‘Come one, lets head back. Shane will skin me alive if we stay out too long.’

‘Yeah _right_ ,’ Daryl laughs sarcastically. A hand on his shoulder stops him in his tracks.

Rick looks at him. The amusement is gone from his face, leaving only honesty and severity. ‘I hope you know how much you mean to him. We’ve had our differences, Shane and I. A lot has happened between us, but he’s my brother. I _know_ him. You mean the world to him.’ Rick reaches up and puts his hand on the baseball cap Daryl is still wearing. ‘And Glenn.’

Daryl bites on his lip and looks at the ground.

‘I just wanted you to know that,’ Rick says before he turns on his heels and walks back towards the house.

Daryl follows him. Silent as a shadow. And with a skip in his step.

 

 


	23. It's lost

 

* * *

 

 

 

Daryl glares at Maggie. ‘You’re a fuckin’ liar.’

The woman lifts an eyebrow and leans back against the wall, unconcerned by the boy’s hostility. ‘Yeah? Call it then.’

Daryl grits his teeth. ‘Nah. Next time. I’m watchin’ ya.’

‘You do that,’ Maggie nods. ‘Walker-bait, your turn.’

Glenn rolls his eyes, ‘two sevens.’

‘One eight,’ Daryl answers.

‘Two nines.’

‘Bullshit!’ Daryl shouts as he jumps to his feet. ‘That’s such bullshit! You’re a fucking liar, Maggie! I can’t believe you said that, _bullshit_! Ain’t no way ya got two nines right there. Show me!’

Maggie looks up at him and reaches over with a sly grin on her face. She flips the cards. Two nines.

Daryl stares at her.

‘You should have called it last time,’ the woman laughs. ‘You lose. Take the cards, Dare.’

‘You’re cheatin’!’

‘No, you’re just losing.’

They look at each other for a moment.

Daryl sighs and falls back onto the floor, grabbing the cards and rearranging them in his hand. He leans against the leg of the chair that T-dog is sitting on, his brown hair brushing against the man’s jeans whenever he moves. The man sometimes glances at his cards and helps him out when he’s in a jam. Daryl nudges his foot and looks up hopefully. T-dog leans down and peers at the cards, ‘you got yourself in a world of trouble, huh boy?’

‘’s Maggie,’ he says with a glare at the smiling woman. ‘Her poker face is the best. Keeps trippin’ me up.’

‘Stop calling bullshit on her then,’ T-dog mumbles before he points at some cards, pats the boy on the shoulder and turns back to continue the conversation he’d been having with Carol.

‘She’s full of it though,’ Daryl says with a smirk at the young woman.

She stretches her leg out to kick his foot lightly.

‘Three tens,’ Daryl throws the cards down and the game continues.

The whole group has gathered on the first floor of Hershel’s house. Most of them are gathered in the living room, curled up on the couches and floor as they trade stories about their lives before the turn. Laughter floats back to the dining area where Glenn has claimed a corner for his own. That’s where Daryl has dumped his stuff too. Maggie is leaning against his pack, Glenn’s hand on her bend knee whenever he doesn’t have to throw his cards down. Her dark hair is framing her face, eyes on her cards. Sometimes she will glance at Glenn and smile, but her face is carefully blank most of the time to prevent Daryl from reading her.

It works. He’s losing badly but doesn’t mind too much. Maggie isn’t gloating or calling him an idiot like Merle would have done, and Glenn beams whenever the two of them interact at all so that’s something. It’s kind of nice, actually.

He’s used to poker games in smoky bars. Him leaning on Merle’s broad shoulders, trying to catch a glimpse of their cards and eventually drooping off to charm a free coke from the guy or lady behind the bar. That worked most of the time because Merle would spend a shit ton of money on beer and hard liquor and got too drunk to care about the fact that his tips were too big. There was even one lady, about Will’s age, who would give him a piece of paper and a pen so he could sit at the bar and draw.

When he was real small, one of Merle’s friends would lift him onto a bar chair until his eyes started to droop. Sometimes Merle would carry him to the truck so he could sleep there until the older Dixon brother decided it was time to go home. No one ever bothered him. Everyone knew the young Dixon boy and everyone in town seemed to fear either Merle’s vicious retribution, his friends, or Will Dixon’s pride. Their last name, as infamous as it was in their little town, was enough protection for a small boy to sleep in an unlocked truck outside a shady bar. Some had tried stuff in the beginning, of course. Getting too handsy with him at the bar, pulling him into their laps as he made his way to or from Merle’s spot, commenting on how _pretty_ he was. Drunken slurs he hadn’t understood at the time. They were all quickly taken back whenever Merle turned in his seat to shoot a warning glare or when one of Merle’s boys showed up to pull him away from the strangers and push him back to his blood. A balled fist or lifted shirt to show of a gun tucked behind their waistbands the only warning that had been needed.

After a while, nobody paid him much attention. Girls cooed over him and the people behind the bar passed him free drinks, but everyone knew he was Merle’s. And nobody touched something that belonged to Merle Dixon. When Merle had left, Daryl had never gone back to the bar. Will never took him out, and that was fine by him.

A burst of laughter pulls him out of his memories and he glances over to where Lori, Beth and Patricia are sitting on the couch in the living room. Lori is telling some story about the time she started dating Rick in high school. There’s a fond look in her eye as she remembers their first date and tells how they’d gone to see a horror movie and she’d accidentally knocked her coke into his lap during a jump scare. Rick isn’t around to share his side of the story. He, Shane and Carl had taken off about half an hour ago to check the perimeter. It had been a sorry excuse because they’ve never once checked the perimeter, but eighteen people in one house gets a bit much at times so the guys had fled the scene. Carl had asked if he'd wanted to come along too but by that time Maggie had already gotten out her deck of cards and Dary hadl told the other boy that he didn’t want to come. It’s not that he doesn’t like Carl because that would just be unfair. He never really spend time with him. He just feels more comfortable hanging out with Glenn and Maggie than with Rick and Carl.

The game ends and Daryl loses.

‘Another?’ Maggie asks with a small smile and Daryl groans, falling to his side and hiding his grin in the rug.

‘No! Ya fucking cheat.’

‘Mind how you speak to my daughter,’ Hershel warns as he walks by. ‘Leave the cussing at the door.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Sorry, Maggie.’

She winks at him to show that she knows he hadn’t meant it in a bad way.

The old man kneels down next to the boy and holds out a steaming mug. ‘Here, try this.’

Daryl takes it and peers inside. A couple of leaves are squashed at the bottom and the liquid has a green tinge to it. He wrinkles his nose. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s tea made from some herbs Beth grows.’

As if by command, the girl appears by her daddy’s side. She passes a mug to Glenn and Maggie. Her blond hair curls around her neck as she leans on her dad’s shoulder and smiles at Daryl. ‘It’s really good. Try it!’

‘It’s hot,’ Daryl says lamely as he curls his hand around his cup and looks at the liquid.

‘Of course it is,’ the girl laughs. ‘I meant; try it in a minute.’

A blush starts to creep up his neck. He glances at Glenn to get him to save him from this interaction but Glenn is just watching with that easy smile on his face. The girl is still watching him curiously so Daryl searches for something to say. ‘What’s in it? Like, what kind of herbs?’

‘I can show you tomorrow,’ Beth beams, ‘but there are loads you can use. Wild ones too, from the woods.’

Daryl nods and blows to cool the liquid down.

‘If you go out hunting again, maybe you can bring some back?’

Daryl looks up at her. He blinks. ‘Err… yeah, I guess… If ya show me what to look for ‘nd shi- everything,’ he corrects quickly with a glance at Hershel.

‘Cool,’ Beth beams, ‘thanks!’ She walks away to get T-dog his cup.

Maggie shifts to lean against Glenn’s shoulder. ‘That was a nice of you, Daryl.’

The boy frowns a little and shrugs uncomfortably. ‘Ain’t nothing.’ He takes a sip and nearly burns the roof of his mouth. He flinches. ‘’s good,’ he tells Hershel, who is looking at him fondly.

‘Easy,’ the old man laughs, ‘take your time.’ He claps the boy on his shoulder, ‘and I don’t mean with just the tea.’

‘Dad,’ Maggie says softly, not looking at him as she stirs in her cup.

‘What?’ Hershel asks, ‘he’s nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.’

‘ _Dad_.’ The daughter glares at the farmer. ‘He’s doing _fine_.’

Glenn shifts, ‘and _he_ is right there. Doing okay, Daryl? Or is it all getting a bit too domestic for you?’

The boy stares at his friend. He shrugs a little, drinking his tea with hooded eyes. ‘’s a’right, I guess.’

Of course he knows what they’re all trying to do. He’s not stupid. All the little comments about Shane and Glenn, the meaningful looks Hershel gives him whenever he allows Maggie to give him some comfort, Beth who tries to have a conversation with him while looking far too curious. The watch in Glenn’s pocket and the way Glenn’s baseball cap is still backwards on Daryl’s own dark hair.

Carl wears the sheriff’s hat. He wears the baseball cap.

Sometimes it does get a little much. He’s never had a big family – and the Greene’s are not even his family, dammit – but he knows that he’s changed his mind about Glenn and Shane a long time ago. They are nothing like Merle and they’ll never be able to be Will either, but they’re Shane and Glenn and that’s enough for now.

‘ _Rick_!’

A terrified scream cuts through the air. Glenn is on his feet in a flash and T-dog pushes himself away from the table, causing his chair to topple backwards and crash to the floor. Daryl whirls to his feet too, careful to put the hot beverage on the table before grabbing his bow and throwing it onto his back.

‘ _Rick_! _Shane_! _Hershel_!’

‘That’s Jimmy,’ Maggie breathes.

Hershel walks towards the hallway and throws the front door open just as Jimmy bursts through it, out of breath and with scared eyes. There’s blood running down his lips, over his chin. It stains his shirt and seems to come from his nose. A trembling hand tries to stop the bleeding. ‘Easy,’ Hershel commands as he grips the boy’s upper arms and sits him down on a chair. ‘Look at me, son. Tell me what happened.’

‘It’s Randall,’ Jimmy says. A little more blood drips out of his mouth and he winces when Hershel prods at the area around his nose. ‘He escaped! We gotta-‘

‘Sit down and stay down,’ Hershel snaps when he tries to get up. ‘Tell us what happened.’

‘He said he was thirsty. I thought he was chained up still and I went to give him some water but – he must have slipped the cuffs or something! Head butted me and threw me against the wall. I hit my head, I think.’ Jimmy reaches up to the back of his head. When he draws his hand back, his fingers are stained with blood. ‘Got knocked out.’

Maggie sighs and sits down on the table to look at the farm-hand’s busted up face. ‘Problem solved, then. We were going to release him anyway.’

Glenn shifts his weight, ‘but Rick is out there, with Shane and Carl. What if they run into each other?’

Jimmy grimaces, ‘he’s got my gun.’

‘We need to warn them,’ Glenn says as he grabs a shotgun and flashlight.

‘If he wanted to harm any of us, he would have do it by now,’ Maggie counters. ‘We didn’t even know he’d escaped. He could be long gone.’

‘ _Could_ be,’ Glenn points out. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to take us on, or maybe he doesn’t want to harm us at all, but what if he runs into Shane and Rick in the dark? What if he thinks they’re walkers, or panics and shoots first before thinking.’

Lori slowly rises, ‘Carl is out there with them.’

Everyone looks at Hershel.

Hershel looks back at Glenn. ‘Find them,’ he says gravely. ‘Before Randall does.’

 

 

The ground before the barn is too disturbed for him to make out specific tracks. Instead, he grabs Glenn’s flashlight and walks a great circle around the building. He hopes to find tracks which are headed towards the main road so he can trudge back to Glenn and tell him the problem is dealt with, but he doesn’t find any. Instead, he finds tracks on the other side, leading towards the woods. ‘Here!’ He hisses and waves the flashlight to summon Glenn and t-dog from the darkness. ‘Look, here,’ he shines the light on the grass. There’s a clear indent from a sneaker.

‘How do you know it wasn’t Shane? Or Carl?’ T-dog asks.

‘Because he’s limping and I messed his leg up last time,’ Daryl murmurs.

‘His leg was done messed up,’ T-dog says. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t something you-‘

‘I ripped out his stiches,’ the boy cuts him off with a glare because he knows what he did and won’t hide from it now. ‘Don’t matter none. It was him. He went into the woods, but it’s a big place. Rick and Shane have been gone for a while now, so they’re probably already on their way back.’

‘And Randall is on his way out,’ Glenn says as he gazes at the dark woods. ‘What if they meet in the middle?’

‘I can track him for a while,’ Daryl gestures to the markings in the grass. ‘See where he went. If he just left the property then it don’t matter…’

‘He’s got a gun,’ Glenn says, running a hand through his hair. ‘He’s got a gun and thirty men to get back to, remember? We can’t let him leave.’

‘I’ll find him,’ Daryl promises.

‘No.’ Glenn turns back to him. ‘You go back to the house, T-dog and I will take care of this. Right?’

‘Yeah,’ the other man says as he draws his gun. ‘I’ve got your back.’

‘But you can’t track him for shit!’ Daryl argues. ‘I can just follow him. He’s limping, I’ll catch up and-‘

‘And do what?’ Glenn asks. ‘You’re not _killing_ a _man_ , Daryl.’

‘He’d do the same to us.’

Glenn nods, ‘and that’s why I need you back at the farm. No,’ he says when Daryl opens his mouth. ‘I need you to stay with Maggie, okay? Look after her for me. And we will take care of this. I’m going to keep your hands clean for as long as I can. Now go!’

Daryl hesitates for a second but then turns on his heels to walk back to the farm. After a couple of steps, he glances over his shoulder but Glenn and T-dog have already disappeared into the darkness of the woods. He’s climbing the fence when the first gunshot rings out. He freezes, clinging to the metal, fingers going numb as his heart thunders in his throat.

Another gunshot.

Sharp and clear and ripping the dark night apart.

He lets himself fall back into the grass, whirling around. It’s hard to tell where the shots are coming from. The woods are seemingly endless and even Hershel’s fields are so stretched out that he can’t be sure which direction he should be looking.

Another shot.

He starts running. It doesn’t matter where he’s going, he just knows that he must try to get to Glenn and T-dog, or maybe find Rick, Shane and Carl. There’s no point in going back to the farm, Maggie doesn’t need his help nor his protection. He knows he was just send back for safe-keeping but now the tables have turned and-

Another shot.

He runs until his legs burn just as much as his lungs do. It seems that the gunshots are coming closer now but he can’t be sure. Maybe he just wants them to be closer. He stops to catch his breath near the stone building at the edge of Hershel’s property. For a second, he hesitates.

It’s dark. Everyone is armed. Someone is shooting.

What if they mistake him for Randall? What if he gets his head blown off in the woods by Shane?

Another shot.

Followed by a terrifying scream.

He’s not sure who’s it is. Distorted by the night and darkness, by distance, by terror, he can’t even be sure that it was a man’s voice. But he knows someone is dying in the woods. Nobody screams like that when they can still be saved.

He feels sick.

He’s _scared_.

His hands tremble when he grabs the gun Rick had given him. It feels too unfamiliar in his hand. Far too cold, too small and heavy at the same time. He looks at it, so strange in the darkness and he quickly stuffs it back behind his waistband. Instead he grabs his bow, swings it over his head and loads it.

‘Nobody but us,’ he whispers to himself as the bolt clicks into place. ‘Nobody but us.’ He jumps over the last fence and carefully walks up the slope leading to the rest of Hershel’s fields. The moon is bright above him. It takes him a couple of minutes to reach the top. All he hears is his own breathing, too fast and shallow. When he finally reaches the top, his breathing stocks all together.

Walkers.

Ten, twenty, thirty, more, more, more; all ambling towards the farm. Only now can he hear their faint growls. The moans. He’s surprised by how fast they seem to be. Terror causes him to slowly back away, trying not to attract their attention. With feet light as feathers, he turns and slides down the slope before running towards the edge of the wood, hiding behind a tree for a moment to catch his breath.

‘ _Daryl_!’ A hissed voice echoes through the trees.

The boy presses himself harder against the tree, almost standing on his tiptoes as he tries to flatten himself.

‘ _Dare! It’s me, fuck, where are you? No, no, I saw him. I saw him, Rick! Just go! Go, get Carl out of here, run, run!’_

Daryl pushes himself away from the tree at those words, ‘ _Shane_?’

He hears running footsteps but they’re starting to mix with the shuffling of the first walkers that are coming over the hill now. Others are stumbling through the forest. Suddenly someone crashes through a bush, jumping over a log and that’s how Daryl knows that it’s Shane.

‘Shane!’ Daryl darts between the trees to collide with the large man.

‘Dare, Jesus Christ,’ Shane breathes as he draws the boy into a hug. ‘What the fuck are you doing out here?’

 ‘Randal escaped and Glenn needed me to find his tracks, I just – I was heading back, I swear, but I heard the shots and – ‘

Shane drags a hand over his sweaty face. ‘Randall ran straight into that damn herd. The idiot opened fire on them. Drew them all here. They’re heading towards the farm.’

‘We need to warn them. Where’s Rick?’

‘He ran ahead with Carl, I saw you on the hill, I just… come on,’ Shane looks over his shoulder before starting to jog towards the farm. He’s trying to be as quiet as he can but his weight and height is not really working in his favor. Daryl ghosts at his shoulder, keeping up easily and not making a single sound expect for his breathing. When they reach the edge of the forest, it’s clear that they are too late. There are walkers everywhere. Some are already pushing against the first fence. It won’t take them long to push through, Daryl reckons. He breathes a little easier when he sees that the lights are no longer on inside the farm. Dark shadows are moving on the porch. He catches the glimpse of a barrel, possibly a shotgun.

Someone made it back to the farm in time to warn the others.

‘Oh hell,’ Shane pulls Daryl to the side. His gaze is on the barn. Walkers are streaming inside for some reason. Ten, twenty, maybe more still. ‘What’s he doing? Rick, Rick, what are you doing, man?’ Shane whispers in the dark. ‘There’s no way out.’

‘They can get to the loft,’ Daryl says. ‘Carl knows how to get up there. Walkers can’t climb.’

‘With so many in there? They can tear down the whole building,’ Shane answers, a tinge of panic to his words. ‘I don’t know what he’s thinking, he must have – ‘

And then the barn is on fire. Daryl stares as angry flames engulf the building. Smoke starts to rise to the clear sky above them, marking the spot of their doom. Movement at the back of the building draws his attention. ‘There’s Carl! Rick’s with him, they’re on the roof, like, there, right there!’

‘Is there a way down from there?’ Shane asks him.

Daryl thinks about the time he’d climbed up the side to get to Randall. ‘No, I used the tree on the other side. You can jump down from it, but they can’t jump up to it, it’s too high.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Shane breathes.

Walkers crash through the fence and stream onto the property. They’re everywhere.

Headlights snap on near the farm. Their cars, Daryl realizes. The sound of roaring engines draws more walkers near, but then he sees the flashes before he hears the gunfire. Even in this darkness, he recognizes Andrea’s blond hair.

From the other vehicle, a shotgun is fired.

‘That’s Glenn,’ Shane says as he peers down.

‘Are you _sure_?’

‘Yeah – I – I think so. Yeah, I’m sure,’ Shane nods when the car turns around and they catch the familiar sight of the Asian leaning out of the car, with his blue shirt on. ‘He’s got Maggie with him. Someone is getting the RV. Look, if they – oh thank God,’ Shane breathes when the RV makes its way to the side of the barn, where Rick and carl are yelling for someone to get them down.

Another shotgun goes off near the farm.

They hear screaming.

‘Hershel,’ Shane breathes. ‘Lori. The girls. Why are they not getting out of there? There’s too many!’ Daryl whirls around when a branch snaps behind them. Before he can do something about the walkers that’s heading straight for them, Shane pushes him out of the way and draws his knife. He buries it in the rotting skull. ‘Stupid man must want to hold on to the farm,’ Shane mutters as he turns back around. ‘It’s lost, man. It’s _lost_.’ Daryl knows he’s right. There are too many walkers for them all to take on. It’s crawling with them. ‘Bud,’ Shane sinks to one knee. ‘You need to listen to me, okay? Listen real good now.’ He cups Daryl’s face with his broad hands and strokes the dirty cheeks of the boy. ‘You’re going to run. Ssh,’ he shushes when Daryl opens his mouth to protest. ‘You’re going to run to the highway, to the spot where we left the sign for Sophia. And – and,’ Shane licks his lips nervously, ‘you’re going to hunker down, all right? You’re going to sit tight until I come to get you.’

‘No,’ Daryl says softly. ‘No, please, I can help.’

‘No,’ Shane counters. ‘You _have_ to listen to me. Run back to the highway. Run as fast as you can, okay? Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Can you find it? Sophia’s spot, can you find it, Dare?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl whispers because he can see the stars and will always know his way by moonlight.

‘Stay there until I come and get you,’ Shane tells him, fingers tightening on the boy’s cheeks. ‘I will come and get you, okay?’

Daryl feels tears burn in his eyes, ‘promise.’

‘I promise,’ Shane pulls him into a tight hug. ‘I promise, Dare. God,’ Shane kisses the side of his head. ‘I love you. Come on,’ he pushes himself back to his feet and looks at the boy. ‘Go.’

‘I don’t want to.’ Tears are dripping down Daryl’s cheeks.

‘You have to. Hey, hey,’ Shane leans in again, hand on Daryl’s neck, jostling him a bit. ‘Tough as nails, right?’

‘Nobody kills us but us,’ Daryl agrees automatically.

‘Then go!’

The boy takes a stumbling step backwards, away from the cop.

They look at each other, mere shadows in the darkness.

The bow in his hand, Shane draws his gun.

And then they’re both running in different directions.

Only one of them guided by moonlight.

 

 

Dawn breaks as he runs. He doesn’t ever stop. His lungs burn in his chest and his mouth feels far too dry but he still runs on. Feet pounding on the grass and twigs. Exhaustion has robbed him of his silence but he’s too fast for any walker to focus on him for very long. Sometimes he has to roll and dodge, one time he ran straight into one while he’d wiped his tears away but he’d been gone before the walker had time to grab hold of him. He stays clear of the paths because he just wants to get to the spot they’d agreed on and cutting through the forest is the fastest way. If Shane has grabbed a car, he might be already there, or they’ll arrive at roughly the same time. That’s his motivation to keep going. To push through the pain and heartache, to stop thinking about how everyone could be dead for all he knows and to stop feeling guilty about the fact that he’d just left them all behind.

He knows that his five bolts wouldn’t have made a difference.

He still feels guilty for not even trying.

His shirt and vest are soaked with sweat by the time he finally break the tree line. Just one more steep slope and then he’s holding on to the safeguard. The metal is cool on his skin. He takes a second to gasp for breath before tumbling over it and stumbling towards the spot. He’d veered a little too far south and now has to drag himself past the many cars until he gets to the car where they’d left stuff for-

‘Daryl!’

He has just enough time to whip his head up when Carl collides with him. Bony arms around his neck, both of their hearts beating wildly. Then Carl tears away from him again, ‘have you seen my mom?’

‘What?’ Daryl’s still gasping for breath, a little lightheaded now. ‘No, I just… No, haven’t seen anyone. Who – who’s here?‘

‘My dad and Hershel,’ Carl tells him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Ran the way here,’ Daryl mutters.

The other boy grabs his arm and drapes it over his shoulders. Daryl wants to snap that there’s nothing wrong with his feet and that he can walk by himself, but the boy just looks so desperate that he lets him help. Together they walk back to the car.

‘Oh my God, Daryl,’ Rick breathes as he rushes forward and grabs hold of the boy, engulfing him in a crushing hug. ‘Shane? Did he find you?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daryl says as Rick lets go again. He sinks to the asphalt to catch his breath properly. ‘We watched how y’all burned the barn down. We saw Glenn ‘nd Maggie in the car. Andrea too, with T-dog I think. Someone brought the RV out and then…. Shane told me to run. He saw Hershel at the farm, we heard a girl scream… he went to help them and – he told me to run. And – and I did.’

Instead of the anger he’s expecting, Rick breathes a sigh of relief, ‘thank God.’

 

 

They wait for what feels like hours but is probably only twenty minutes. Instead of their friends, a walker slowly makes its way to them. Daryl shoots it easily.

‘I don’t know how much longer we can stay here,’ Hershel says.

Carl protests and Rick looks unsure. ‘So we’re just going to walk away?’ he asks the farmer. ‘Not knowing if my wife, your girls are still out there? How do we live with that?’

‘You’ve only got two concerns now,’ Hershel says with a shake of his head. ‘Just two. Keeping them alive. Your boy. And your brother’s boy.’

‘We ain’t leavin’,’ Daryl snaps.

Rick takes a knee in front of them. ‘Carl, Daryl,’ he says, voice breaking on the words. ‘It’s not safe here. I’m sorry. We’ll-‘

Just at that moment, the sound of an engine breaks the silence. Daryl whirls around. And then the green car rolls up beside them, the windows covered in blood and gore, but otherwise without a scratch. Behind it, the busted truck that used to belong to Will Dixon.

Daryl laughs.

The green car stops and the doors open. Glenn and Maggie. The young woman runs towards her father while Glenn runs towards Daryl. The boy meets him half-way, jumping up into the Korean’s arms and burying himself in his chest.

‘Oh Christ,’ Glenn moans softly as he clings to him. ‘We couldn’t find you and we had to go – I just – Thank God.’ Beside them, Carl falls into Lori’s arms and Rick joins them on the concrete. ‘How did you get here?’ Glenn asks as the boy slides to his own feet again and beams up at him. ‘Did Rick…?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl laughs, ‘I ran all the damn way. Shane told me to head here.’ The boy looks around the Korean’s frame, ‘where the fuck is he?’

The doors of the truck open. T-dog and Beth slide out. The dark-skinned man shakes his head.

Glenn’s eyes grow wide, ‘has anyone seen Shane?’

Lori slowly gets up, ‘he helped us get into the car and told us to drive off. He was going to get Andrea.’

‘Patricia?’ Hershel asks.

Beth shakes her head. ‘They got her, too. Took her right from me, but – what about Jimmy?’

Daryl stops listening. There’s a noise ringing in his ears. All he can think is; _Shane isn’t here. He didn’t make it back. He saved his ass and he didn’t make it back. He’s out there. He’s dead. He’s never coming back. And he ran. He ran like a dog with its tail between its legs and he just left him there. And-_

A rough hand on his shoulder. Rick. The cop gives him a sympathetic look. There are tears in his own eyes. ‘We have to go. I’m so sorry, Daryl.’

 

 

 


	24. defense mechanism

 

* * *

 

 

The walker’s face is nothing but blood and pulverized bones when he’s done with it. His knuckles are aching again and almost everyone is looking at him. Maggie has her arms around Beth, who is the only one who won’t look at him anymore. Her face is pressed into her sister’s neck, one hand still holding on to her daddy’s jacket. The small shoulders still shock due to her sobs, but she’s quiet now at least.

Daryl is breathing heavily. He’s on his knees next to the walker. There’s blood everywhere but he’s gotten so used to it that he doesn’t even smell it anymore. The walker used to be a man, not much older than Jimmy had been. Jeans, sneakers, dark belt and light shirt, he could have been anyone. Daryl hadn’t cared. Instead of killing him easily, he’d tackled him to the ground before anyone could safely pull him away. He’d bashed the skull in until there had been nothing left.

Now, he looks up at Glenn.

The Korean is sitting on his haunches, leaning back against a tire of the truck. His hands cover his mouth and nose. Daryl isn’t sure whether that’s because of the smell or because he just can’t believe what the boy has done. Nobody had dared to get close while he’d raged. Maybe they had all been lucky that a walker had happened to shuffle close by or one of them would have been on the receiving end of one of the infamous Dixon rages. Blood is dripping from his cheek. He wipes it away but only smear brain-matter onto his skin.

Lori is the first who dares to come close. She tucks her dark hair behind her ear and slowly squats down before him. The mangled body of the walker between them as a barrier. He wonders what she sees. Something wild, he guesses. ‘Honey?’ Her voice is steady when she talks. ‘Enough. That’s enough. I’m sorry.’ She looks genuine. ‘I am so sorry, Daryl, but we have to go now. It’s not safe here. Shane wouldn’t want this.’

He thinks about Shane’s words and the last time he’d used his hands like this. _Don’t let this world make you_ _wrong_. And his dad’s. _Don’t lose yourself_. Daryl gulps, turns and then spits on the asphalt. He nods and slowly rises to his feet.

‘Here,’ the woman holds out a piece of cloth. Someone must have cut it from a walker, but it looks clean enough so he uses it to wipe the blood off his hands. His eye falls on Carl, who is being embraced from behind by Rick. The boy looks so scared. Eyes wide and mouth open, the sheriff’s hat askew on his head as he pushes himself closer to his dad.

Daryl turns his back on him. He doesn’t want to see the fear he has inspired.

‘Daryl?’ Lori comes a little closer and carefully takes the cloth from him. She gently wipes his cheeks clean.

After a couple of swipes, he pushes her hand away. He bends down to grab his bow and stalks over towards Glenn’s car. ‘Let’s go then. Gotta get movin’.’

‘Daryl,’ Glenn says softly, hanging his head for a second. ‘Please stop.’

‘With what?’ the boy snaps angrily. ‘Stop lookin’ at me like that!’

‘Please don’t do this.’

‘He was already dead,’ Daryl roars as he whirls around. ‘ _It don’t matter_!’

Glenn looks pained, ‘listen, I know… I’m sorry about… Look… I don’t know what to do. How to make this right.’

That makes Daryl even angrier because he knows that nothing can ever make this right but he also hates that Glenn isn’t even trying. That Glenn looks as lost as he is. He is just looking at Daryl, unsure of what to do to calm him and that enrages Daryl further because this isn’t _fair_ and he wants Shane and –

A soft hand touches his elbow and gently turns him around. Lori again, with her dark eyes and pale skin, hair matted with blood and sweat. Without saying anything, she draws him into a hug. Her hand in his dark hair, knocking the baseball cap off, and her other hand on the angel wings on his back. He freezes. She doesn’t seem to notice, or care. She just holds on tightly. ‘Ssh,’ she whispers into his ear, ‘it’s going to be okay. It’s okay.’

But it’s _not_. He wants to smash something, wants to crush another skull with his bare hands, wants to _hurt_ something, himself, anything, but he can’t because Lori is too close and he doesn’t want to hurt her. It feels like he’s choking. His head hurts, his throat is closing up and he’s scared and mad and so sad. He’s not sure when he starts to cry but suddenly he can’t stop.

He flings his arms around the woman’s neck and hides in her frame, sobbing.

‘I know,’ Lori says as she strokes his hair. ‘I know, honey.’ Maybe she does understand, a little bit. Or maybe she’s just used to a child’s volatile anger, though Daryl doubts that Carl ever rages like this. She’s poked right through the façade, had seen the sadness in his punches and knows him better than he thought she did. She knows he wouldn’t hurt her.

He lets her hold him because she’s warm and comforting. Soft words in his ears, a hand stroking his hair, and it’s clear that he’s not the first child she has ever brought back from a fit of helplessness. It takes him a long time to get his breathing back under control. The tears drip onto Lori’s shoulder until Daryl dries his eyes with the back of his hands. His hold on her slackens. The tips of his ears burn with shame, but he allows her to lean back and push his hair out of his eyes. She dries his cheeks with her thumbs.

‘Yeah?’ she asks, ducking her head a little to catch his eye. There’s a small smile around her lips.

He nods.

‘Deep breath.’

He breathes in deeply. ‘Okay,’ he says softly when he breathes out again.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ He offers her a watery smile. ‘Thanks.’

She takes his hands and kisses the knuckles, ‘you’re welcome. Next time, try not to scare Glenn.’ She laughs at him, the skin around her dark eyes wrinkling. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether teenage boys want to punch you in the face or hold on tightly.’

‘Weren’t sure neither,’ Daryl mutters.

‘I know,’ Lori strokes his cheek. ‘Luckily, Rick and I have more than a month of experience, hmm?’ Daryl glances back at Rick, who has his arms on his son’s shoulders now, no longer clinging to the boy and Carl doesn’t look as scared anymore. He’s smiling at Daryl. ‘We know the signs.’

Daryl nods and looks away. ‘Suppose…’

‘And it’s alright to claim a hug. Being a parent is hard work, you should give Glenn some pointers from time to time.’ She kisses his forehead as she rises to her feet again. ‘Do you want to ride with Carl in the back?’

‘No, I’ll ride with-‘ Daryl looks at Glenn, who is smiling hesitantly, but he falls silent when there’s rustling behind them. Footsteps on the forest floor, the snapping of branches.

‘ _Rick_ ,’ Lori hisses as she pulls Daryl behind her.

‘Get in the cars,’ Rick hisses back as he pushes Carl into Hershel’s waiting hands and moves towards the guard rail. He slowly draws his gun while T-dog jumps back into the truck. Maggie helps her father settle into the car with Beth and Carl. Then she run to Glenn, opening their car doors.

The rustling gets closer. Daryl runs towards the car but instead of hopping in, he grabs his bow and then ducks under Lori’s arms to get to Rick.

He loads the bow a few paces away, clicking the bolt in place before running towards the guard rail, needing the momentum to jump up to it while Rick is leaning against it with his knees, bracing himself. The boy grabs the sheriff’s shoulder to steady himself before he swings his bow up.

‘I got it,’ he mutters. ‘Quieter.’

Rick nods and curls a hand around Daryl’s ankle, squeezing the boot tightly. ‘Wait until you got a clear shot.’

The bushes rustle.

Daryl slows his breathing. He doesn’t need Rick to tell him that.

A branch is pushed aside. Daryl can see a hand but nothing else.

He takes aim, holding the bow steady and pressing his cheek against the stock, peering down the scope. The little red dot wavers a bit as he finds his target. His finger curls around the trigger.

Suddenly the green seems to part and a man stumbles out of the bushes, looking up with wide eyes, right into Daryl’s sight. ‘Whoa! No, no!’ He yells as he ducks while Rick starts and opens his mouth to say;  ‘Daryl! No!’

But they don’t need to because Daryl lowers the bow slowly.

His hands feels numb.

The man seems to register that the boy has lowered his weapon and he glances at Rick, who is still holding his gun. ‘Look, I know I did some shitty things, brother, but that ain’t the answer.’

Rick looks down at his gun as if he only now remembers that he had it out. He puts it away, dazed.

‘Shane,’ Daryl breathes.

‘Yeah,’ Shane grins, ‘told you to sit tight, right? What, you thought I’d break my word? I promised I’d come get you, bud.’

The bow drops into the soft grass.

Shane turns slightly and motions to someone behind him, ‘come on out. They’re here. I told you we were going the right way.’

Carol appears beside the man, covered in sooth and mud, but alive.

‘What are you standing there for?’ the cop asks with a laugh as he starts to walk down the light slope towards the guard rail. ‘Come here!’ Daryl jumps over his bow and runs up the slope, jumping up to throw himself into Shane’s embrace. The cop laughs and hitches him higher before breathing him in. ‘You all right? No trouble underway? Jesus Christ, am I glad to see you, kid. Don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t here.’

‘He arrived just after me, Carl and Hershel,’ Rick says as he helps Carol clamber over the safety guard. ‘Beat two cars getting here.’

‘Tough as nails, strong as a horse, huh?’ Shane laughs as he buries his face in the boy’s neck for a second. ‘You okay?’ Daryl nods but won’t let go of the cop. Shane doesn’t seem to mind. He carries him back to the road and steps over the guard rail. His brother is there to greet him with a firm clap on his shoulder. After a moment of hesitation, he brings him in for a one-sided hug.

‘Thank God,’ Rick mutters. ‘We were about to leave. There are walkers everywhere.’

‘Had to get Carol,’ Shane explains. ‘We didn’t have a car so…. Looks like we took the long way around.’ The cop reaches up to put a warm hand on the side of Rick’s neck. ‘You good? Carl?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick nods. ‘Lori too. We lost Jimmy and Patricia.’

‘Shit.’ His hold on the boy in his arms tightens.

‘Have you seen Andrea?’

‘What? No. I thought we were the last ones out,’ Shane says as he buries one hand in Daryl’s hair and massages the back of his neck. ‘It was chaos, man. I got to Lori and Beth, and then I thought I saw her so I went over there but by the time I got to the other side of the place it was just…. She wasn’t there anymore. Then I heard Carol scream and I ran to get her, I… I thought someone else had Andrea, man.’

‘You tried,’ Rick says with a firm nod. ‘We all did. If she’s still out there, she’s either gone or dead.’

‘Yeah.’

The two brothers sigh at the same time. Rick gives him a small smile. ‘I’m really glad to see you.’

‘It’s good to see you, too,’ Shane smiles. ‘We need to get moving though, you’re right. Mind grabbing Dare’s bow? I’ve got my hands full,’ the cop says with a look at the boy in his arms.

Rick snorts and leans down to grab the weapon. ‘I got it.’

‘Thanks man,’ Shane mutters as he makes his way over to the others. Carl escapes the cars first and flies towards the other cop, hugging his waist and beaming up at him. The man runs a hand through his hair and echoes the sentiment that he’s glad to see the boy, too.

The others join in, crowding around him and hugging Carol.

The reunion is short-lived. They need to get out of there.

When the others have dispersed, Daryl pulls himself away from the cop to land on his feet again.

‘Holy shit,’ Shane breathes as he looks at the remains of the walker on the hot asphalt. He spots the blood on Daryl jeans too, and the guilty look in the boy’s eye. ‘It’s okay,’ he says, a little distractedly as his gaze roams over the walker like he’s looking at a crime scene. ‘You’re okay.’

‘Daryl.’ Rick throws the boy his bow. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he calls out to the others.

Shane gently pushes at Daryl’s shoulder. ‘Listen to Rick now.’

The boy nods and climbs into the back of Glenn’s car.

The cop joins him seconds later after a brief conversation with Rick about their destination. He closes the door and leans against it, a hand rubbing at his tired eyes. One eye blinks open to look at the kid. ‘You _ran_ all this way?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Damn.’ Shane lets his head lull back as he laughs. ‘Tough as nails, all right.’

The youngest Dixon shoots him a shy grin. ‘Didn’t get lost like your city-slicker ass so wasn’t _that_ far.’

Shane shoves his shoulder playfully. ‘That’s it,’ he declares, ‘we’re never splitting up again.’

And that’s fine by Daryl.

 

 

The next couple of hours pass in a haze.

They almost run out of gas.

They’re all infected.

At night, huddled around a campfire, Rick snaps when Carol tells him to _do_ _something_.

‘I _am_ doing something,’ Rick hisses back viciously. ‘I’m keeping this group together. _Alive_.’

There’s still blood on his face. His nerves are fraying now that there’s rustling in the dark and everyone jumps to the worst conclusions. Daryl’s suggestions that it might just have been a raccoon or possum are ignored and Glenn voices the fear that there are walkers out there, heading their way.

They’re cut off from their vehicles. They don’t have much gas anyway.

‘ _I didn’t ask for this_ ,’ Rick snarls when everyone is looking at him.

It’s Shane who intervenes. He slowly moves towards his best friend, shoulders low and relaxed to show that he’s not a threat. ‘Hey,’ he says softly, ‘we know, man. Relax. It’s not all on you, you know.’

Rick is breathing hard, looking at him.

Shane offers a tentative smile. ‘Share the load, right? It’s what partners are for, huh?’ He holds up his hand.

Rick claps them together, holding on tightly. ‘Yeah,’ he breathes.

‘We’re in this together,’ Shane says and it sounds like a promise. Then he turns to look at the rest of the group. ‘We can’t get to the cars right now. We’re just going to sit tight. Nothing is going to happen, okay? T-dog, I want you up on that wall with a rifle, keep guard. Glenn, I want you and Maggie facing that way, sleep in shifts,’ he tells the Korean. ‘Rick, stick to Lori. Same goes for you, other side and in shifts. Hershel, Carol and Beth, get some sleep for now.’ The cop swings the shotgun to his shoulder. ‘Daryl, with me.’

The boy gets up immediately, grabbing his bow and walking over to his friend.

They take the side where the sound had come from and settle down on the cold ground. They’re too far away from the fire to benefit from it.

‘Gonna need to huddle up a bit, bud,’ Shane murmurs, ‘or I’m going to freeze to death.’

In the end, they sit with their backs against each other. Daryl’s bow in his lap, arms wrapped around the weapon as he slouches against the cop. He closes his eyes and listens to the rustles of the leaves around them as the wind ghosts through their camp. The crackling of the fire. Glenn’s soft voice and Maggie’s whispered answers. He can feel Shane’s muscles shift whenever the cop checks his weapon or moves his arms.

He falls asleep.

It’s a couple of hours before dawn when Shane shakes him awake. It’s still completely dark out and the voices have been silenced by sleep and vigilance. Daryl blinks, rubs at his eyes as he tries to make out Shane’s frame.

‘What?’ he croaks.

‘I don’t think I can keep my eyes open any longer, bud, do you think you can…’

Daryl blinks and then sits up quickly. ‘Yeah!’ he whispers back, ‘yeah, I can keep watch. I’m good.’

‘Are you sure?’ Shane’s voice is filled with hesitation and regret, like he hates having to ask the boy. ‘I can see if Carol can…’

‘I got it, man,’ Daryl says as he crawls around the cop to sit in front of him, staring out into the darkness. He loads his bow and puts it down next to him, ready.

‘If there’s anything, _anything_ , you wake me, okay?’ Shane says as he slowly lies down. ‘Even if it’s just one walker, or just a noise, or whatever; you wake me up immediately.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Promise me.’

‘I promise, Shane.’

‘Good,’ Shane moves his hand so it touches the edge of Daryl’s boot and closes his eyes.

 

 

Shane wakes up hours later when the sun is already up in the sky. He stretches and groans when his back cracks uncomfortably. Slowly he sits up, blinking a little as he brushes some leaves from his shoulder. He expects to find Daryl sitting next to him but instead it’s Glenn.

The Korean smiles and holds out a small container, ‘morning. Breakfast.’

‘Thanks,’ Shane sits up fully and takes the item. ‘No trouble?’

‘Nothing. It looks clear,’ Glenn says. ‘We decided to let you sleep a bit longer. The others are getting water so we can boil it. You were out of it.’

‘Hmm,’ Shane nods and uses his fingers to scoop his breakfast out of the container. It’s meat on small bones, but he can’t be sure what kind of animal it used to be. He frowns a little.

‘Some kind of bird,’ Glenn shrugs. ‘Dare shot it.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘There’s a lake or river or something behind here. Rick and Carl took him to get cleaned up a bit.’

‘Bet he loved that,’ Shane grins sarcastically.

‘Took some coaxing,’ Glenn nods. He’s fidgeting with his knife.

‘Something on your mind?’ Shane asks between bites as he glances at his friend.

Glenn sighs softly and looks away. ‘I couldn’t help him. He was so _angry_ when you didn’t come back at first. There was a walker that came a little close. I thought he was going to use his bow, but he just dropped it and started beating the shit out of that walker. And I just… I just watched.’

‘No one stopped him?’ Shane frowns.

‘No. You… you didn’t see him. He was so angry and he freaked Carl out so Rick had his hands full with him… Lori went to him when he’d calmed down, helped him clean his hands and everything. I just didn’t know what to do.’

Shane is silent for a long time. He eats his breakfast.

‘I’m sorry,’ Glenn mutters.

‘What are you telling _me_ for?’ Shane bites back, a bit harsher than he’d intended. He makes a conscious effort to lower his shoulders a bit to seem less threatening.

‘I don’t know,’ Glenn admits. ‘It’s just… I see you with him and it just feels so _natural_. And then he looks at me for something and I just don’t know what to do. He was beating that walker and I wanted to go over to him, get him to stop but…’ He shrugs and runs his hands through his hair.

Shane puts the container down, ‘you were his first friend in the camp. When he was still calling me _pig_ all the time, you took him swimming and everything. He would tell you when he would go out hunting after I’d pissed him off again. He’d take his cues from you. So what changed?’

‘Will,’ Glenn mutters.

Shane lifts his eyebrows.

‘When he got left behind,’ the Korean says, ‘we stuck together, Dare and me. And after the CDC I just realized; he’s looking at me, right? But what do I know? I’m not Rick, or Dale, I don’t… I don’t know how to be all parental and stuff.’

That makes the cop laugh a little, ‘and you think I do?’

‘Looks like it. And you’ve been around Carl his whole life, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane stretches, ‘to spoil him rotten and drop him off with his parents whenever he needed a talking to. That’s their job, I don’t know how to raise a kid. And we don’t have to raise Daryl. Will did that.’

Glenn snorts and shakes his head.

‘He _did_ ,’ Shane says. ‘Not in a way we approve of, but he raised one hell of a kid.’

‘Still a _kid_ though.’

‘Yeah,’ the cop nods. ‘And he still needs someone to put him in his place or show him the ropes from time to time but he doesn’t need you to tell him that he has to brush his teeth and eat his greens. That’s not what he’s looking for.’

‘What _is_ he looking for?’

 ‘Someone to have his back,’ Shane shrugs. ‘I talked to him after what he did to Randall. He was just waiting for a whooping, broke my heart, man. We saw a lot of those kids out on the streets, Rick and I. Good kids, just on the wrong track. Sometimes they just need someone to drag them back onto the right one. And they snarl when you try, right? Daryl does too. He gets all riled up, angry. You’ve got to push past that. It’s just a defense mechanism. Nothing to be scared of,’ he says with a look at Glenn.

The Korean ducks his head. ‘I’m not scared of him.’

‘You’re scared to fuck up.’

Glenn’s gaze snaps back to Shane. Then he sighs and nods.

‘Me too, man,’ Shane smiles. ‘But we’ve got to try, right? The whole world has gone to hell and it’s just him. Can’t leave him hanging. Can’t let him go down that wrong track.’

‘Right,’ Glenn mutters as they look out over the field before them. His gaze is distant, hazy, as he thinks about what the cop has said. After a couple of minutes, however, he smiles and nods again. A little more confident this time.

 

 

 


	25. Prison

 

* * *

 

 

‘I saw a deer once.’

Daryl is leaning against a tree with one shoulder and looks rather unimpressed. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his jeans to keep them warm. Every once a while he will stomp his feet to make sure that his toes are not freezing. It’s still early in the morning and last night they had to sleep in the cars because there hadn’t been a good spot to camp anywhere. These are last days of winter. It’s getting harder to find a decent place.

The group is moving sluggishly. Maggie, Beth and Glenn stumble around to fill the tanks up with what little gasoline they have left while Rick and Shane are pouring over a map with Hershel. They’ve managed to stay one step ahead of the herds all winter but they’re running out of time.

Daryl’s gaze slides to Lori, who is still sitting in one of the cars. Pale and too thin, with one arm curled around her belly. Rick says that she’ll go into labor soon. Hershel has been giving Carol lessons in case that happens and he’s not around for some reason. They’d said that she’d just assist him and that’s why she needs to learn, but Daryl isn’t an idiot.

‘Out in the woods, you know.’

‘What?’ Daryl turns his head this time to look at Carl, who is standing beside him. The sheriff’s hat over his brown hair. He scuffs his boots and glances up at the youngest Dixon.

‘I saw a deer once, out in the woods.’

‘’s where they live,’ Daryl mutters as he looks away again.

‘I know that,’ Carl says defensively. He frowns.

‘Sure ya do.’

‘Was just trying to talk to you,’ the other boy grumbles. ‘Never mind.’ He walks back to the cars to sit with his mother.

Daryl watches him go. It’s been months since the farm fell and they still haven’t quite gotten used to each other yet. Carl is bright-eyed and curious most of the time, always eager for a chat or laugh while Daryl sometimes just wants to lean against a tree and enjoy his peace and quiet. Sometimes Lori will reel her son in, giving him a chore on the other side of camp just so he won’t bother Daryl but other times Shane would clip him across the back of his head and tell him to stop being a dick to the other boy.

 _Compromise_ , Shane would sigh. _Find that middle ground_.

Daryl sighs and drags himself away from the tree. He picks up a small rock on his way over to the car only to toss it into the bushes when he reaches the vehicle. With a soft grunt, he jumps onto the hood so he can sit against the windshield. Carl is sitting in the driver’s seat with his feet still outside of the car. Daryl turns his head so they’re looking the same way. ‘One, two, three?’ he asks as he watches how Shane shakes his head and jabs the map while Rick rubs at his eyes tiredly.

‘Sure.’ The boy perks up a bit.

‘One, two, three,’ Daryl mutters and then adds; ‘maps.’

‘Cars,’ Carl says at the same time.

The Dixon smirks, ‘one, two, three.’

‘Roads,’ they say in unison.

Carl shakes his head and laughs, ‘that was too easy,’ but he still sticks his hand up.

Daryl high-fives him, ‘still counts.’

‘Yup,’ Carl replies easily. ‘Again?’

‘Yeah. Count it down,’ Daryl mutters as he watches how Shane and Rick roll the maps back up and seem to have come to a conclusion. He listens to how Carl counts down slowly, obviously wrecking his brain for a good thing to start with. The two cops head over to them.

‘- three,’ Carl finishes. ‘Blue.’

‘Roadkill,’ Daryl says at the same time.

‘ _What_?’ Carl guffaws. ‘You’re crazy.’

'Nah, just hungry.’

That sends Carl into another fit of giggles.

The look on Shane’s face is soft with fondness as he leans against a car door. Rick is smiling too as he leans in to kiss Lori on her forehead. ‘Ready to go?’

Lori sighs softly, ‘of course. Do you know where we’re heading?’

A pained look crosses Rick’s face for a second. ‘We need to double back a bit, otherwise we’re going to run into the herd we saw out south.’

‘Double back?’ Lori asks with a slight frown, ‘but Rick, there’s nothing there anymore.’

‘I know, I know,’ the cop nods, ‘but if we want to avoid that herd, we need to go back a bit. We missed our window. I’m sorry, I thought we’d make it but…. ‘ He shakes his head. ‘There’s a creek there, so we can stock up on water at least.’

‘We need _food_ ,’ Lori stresses.

‘We know,’ Shane cuts in. Then he turns to Daryl, ‘if we leave now, we’ll be there at noon. Will you have enough time?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Could try.’

‘Okay,’ Rick turns his head a little and lets out a sharp whistle to mobilize the rest of the group. They all spring up and head for the cars.

‘Are you coming or…’ Shane lets the question die as he looks from Daryl to Carl.

‘I’ll ride with Rick,’ Daryl says as he slides off the hood of the car. ‘We just started a new game.’

Carl snorts as he gets to his feet to switch places with his mother so he can sit on the backseat with Daryl. ‘And it’s going to take _forever_ ,’ he moans. ‘He started out with _roadkill_ , like; _what_?’

‘Who the hell thinks of _blue_ anyway?’ Daryl asks as he shoves at the boy’s shoulder to get him to move over. He throws his bow between them on the seats. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warns as Carl’s fingers drift over to weapon. ‘Ain’t touching your gun neither so fuck off.’

Shane looks at Rick with a sly grin. ‘Good luck with them, brother.’

Rick throws him a pained look, ‘can we still leave Glenn by the side of the road for teaching them that game?’

‘Only if you want to face Maggie afterwards.’

Rick hangs his head in defeat. ‘Okay, boys,’ he slips into the driver’s seat. ‘Buckle up.’

 

 

The woods swallow Daryl whole. His footfalls are softened by the moss that’s beginning to turn green again. Winter is ending. Spring has finally come for them. After so many months of biting cold, the first rays of sunshine actually cause sweat to trickle down Daryl’s neck. He’d already shed his jacket and hoodie back at the camp so now his arms are bare once more. The vest keeps his back warm whenever he ducks into the shade of the trees. All his clothes are filthy, torn and ragged, but that doesn’t matter anymore. They all look like they crawled through a forest. He guesses they should be lucky that they came out on the other end, relatively unscathed.

It’s a good thing that the days are getting longer too. With all this moving around, it’s rare that Shane and Rick will allow him to go out and hunt. At first they tried to back it up with ridiculous notions; he might get lost if he went off in new territory or they’d have to run from a herd and he would not make it back in time to catch the ride.

Now, they’ve relaxed their policy a little bit. They had no choice, really. Food is scarce these days. They haven’t found a properly stocked kitchen in a long while and the group is too big to survive on a couple of cans of soup or noodles. These days they let him out to hunt, though never on his own. It’s usually Rick who tags along because he actually has the patience to walk around a forest for hours without a clue about what they’re following or where they are headed. Beforehand, Shane will pick a second meet-up place on the map. And he will only let Daryl go when the boy can recite three landmarks in the vicinity of the point.

Right now, Daryl isn’t following anything but train tracks. It’s late, the sun is starting to go down and he knows that the tracks will lead them close to their camp. It’s an easy trail to walk on, too. Rick might never complain, but Daryl knows that he’s the one who eats the least out of all of them. Sometimes the boy catches him passing his food to Lori. The cop is tired and walking over the uneven forest floor for hours on end isn’t helping much. So he leads Rick back over the tracks. He tries to balance on the steel for a bit before hopping on the beams without hitting the small rocks in between. He can hear Rick’s soft laughter at his behavior but doesn’t care. The cop is carrying a string with two rabbits, four birds and a duck so Daryl figures he’s allowed to screw around for a bit.

‘Hey,’ Rick says to make the boy turn around. ‘Here,’ he shakes a couple of berries out of a bag hanging from his belt. ‘Have some.’

Daryl squints back at him. ‘Already had some when we got ‘em,’ he admits. He’d stuffed his mouth as soon as Rick wasn’t looking because he’d just been so _hungry_.

‘I know,’ Rick smiles as he holds his hand out with the berries. ‘Here.’

The boy looks a bit wary but still walks back to the cop. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters as he pops one of them into his mouth.

‘Hey, you found them,’ Rick says, ‘and you’re not as sneaky as you think you are.’

‘Them rabbits disagree with ya.’

‘I’m smarter than a rabbit. And you looked as guilty as Carl did when he’d eaten half of his Halloween candy on the way home.’

Daryl snorts at that and then scratches at his cheek to hide behind his hand. ‘Was just hungry. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Eat up, you did good today. I don’t know how you do it,’ Rick jingles the line with game, ‘but you come through every time.’

The boy shrugs a little as he continuous to walk over the beams while eating his berries. They’re a little sour because they haven’t gotten much sun yet but he doesn’t mind. Food is food. Today he’d gotten lucky. There are days when Rick will follow him for hours and still be empty-handed by the end of it. The cop never says anything at the end of those days. He’ll just thank Daryl for trying before heading back to the group, his shoulders a bit more tense and frown a little deeper.

‘It’s a good day,’ Rick says with a smile. He reaches out and puts a warm hand on Daryl’s neck, thumb scratching the hair at the base of Daryl’s skull. ‘Carl had fun with you today. Thanks.’

‘Don’t gotta be thankin’ me all the time,’ the boy mutters around his food. ‘He’s a’right.’

With a laugh, Rick pushes him away, ‘he’s more than _all right_ , thank you very much.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl agrees easily. He swallows the last of his berries before hopping back on the steel track, balancing on it as they round the corner. Soon they’ll have to cut through the woods again to get back to their camp. He’ll lead the way once he loses his balance, Daryl thinks as he wobbles dangerously.

‘Daryl.’

The boy’s head whips up and he whirls around again to face Rick. His boots slip off the steel tracks but the cop shoots out a hand to keep him upright. He doesn’t look scared, so Daryl relaxes a little bit before thinking that Rick might tell him off this time for goofing around, but the cop isn’t even looking at him.

Daryl follows his gaze.

It’s a prison.

Right where the track make a left turn, the green opens up a bit and they have a fantastic view of a prison. The steel gates and fences glisten in the dying light.

Daryl has never really seen a prison up close. He’d wanted to visit Merle the second they had received the letter stating that the oldest Dixon boy had been locked up tight, but Will had smacked that idea right out of his head. Merle had been disowned the moment he’d hit an army officer. There weren’t many people Will Dixon liked, but he respected certain professions. Nurses, for the long hours they make and hard work they have to do for minimal pay, construction workers, for their sweat and broken backs, and teachers; understaffed and still managing. And anyone in the military. The fact that his own son had disrespected their flag and armed forces by knocking an officer on his ass had caused bad blood between the two oldest Dixon’s. Daryl had been sure that that would have disappeared over time, if only for the tightness around Will’s eyes whenever he opened their bills. Not only missing his oldest son’s company, but also his paycheck. Whenever Daryl would beg him to go and see Merle, Will would tell him that they couldn’t because it was too far away. He’d throw the letters Merle had written Daryl onto the table without another word. In the morning, he would collect Daryl’s response and post it on his way to work.

Blood was still blood. Even if Will deemed them both worthless.

But now the prison rises before Daryl. The watchtowers, the gates, the fences, the cellblocks, the pond just outside the perimeter. There are walkers roaming the yard, just shadows now that the sun is beginning to set. They can’t hear their growls from this distance, but Daryl doubts that he would have been able to hear them even if he had been leaning against the fence. His heart is beating too hard inside his chest, filling it up and making it difficult to breathe.

Daryl stares at the prison.

Rick does too.

The boy take a step forward, eager, and breathes out a word that’s snatched up by the wind and never makes it to Rick’s ears.

‘Merle.’

 

 

Daryl grunts as he helps Glenn close up the metal fence again. The Korean finishes just as a walker slams into it, snarling and growling like a rabid dog. The boy spins on his heels and runs ahead of the group, leading Rick towards the entrance. The woods are on their right, so quiet and serene. The yard is on their left, filled with walkers. Daryl tries to catch a glimpse of their faces but he’s going too fast for any of them to register properly. He slams through a door and then circles at the entrance restlessly.

There’s a discussion about who’s going to make a run for the gate. It looks like Glenn might be the unlucky one because he’s the fastest but Rick and Shane side with Maggie. It would be a suicide run for him. Speed is one thing, but whoever goes inside must be one hell of a shot to make it past all those walkers. Shane takes charge and sends people up in the towers. A hand on Daryl’s cheek, ‘I need you up there, too, Dare. Stick with Carol.’

‘I got ya,’ the boy nods as he runs back to the first tower.

When Carl and Hershel are send off, the two brothers look at each other. Shane rubs at the back of his head, ‘rock, paper, scissors?’

That makes Rick snort and shake his head. ‘No. Don’t pretend you ever beat me in cross-field, brother. I’m light,’ he wobbles on his feet, a little nervously. ‘Fast.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Shoot straight, okay?’ Rick asks.

‘Always,’ Shane claps him on the shoulder. ‘Wait until I’m up there.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, of course,’ Rick mutters as he closes his eyes and breathes in and out to calm himself. When his eyes snap open again, Lori hands him a sniper rifle. He nods and steps forward to kiss her forehead. ‘Close the gate behind me.’

‘Of course. Be careful.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’

And then the gate is pushed open and Rick is gone. Slow at first, careful, but he gains speed as he runs up the road towards the other gate. He stumbles a bit when a walker is about to cross him, but Daryl takes aim and waits for the space between heartbeats before letting the bolt fly.

Rick shoots him a grateful look before he dashes forwards. It only takes him a couple of seconds. He has a bit of trouble with the walkers by the gate but their heads explode, inches from his own face, and Shane reloads calmly.

‘He did it,’ Carol laughs next to Daryl as the cop ducks into another watch tower next to the gate.

Daryl whistles and signals the others. ‘Light it up!’

 

 

It’s dark by the time they finally settle down for dinner. They’re cooking some of the game Daryl had shot yesterday and it feels like a victory meal. Everyone is relaxed and enjoying the new safe space they’ve found. Shane is on guard duty on top of the bus near the entrance. He’s a dark shadow with a sniper rifle in his hands, a stark outline against the gray of the night sky.

Daryl sucks on a bone and listens to Beth’s song. She has a nice voice. Carl is staring at her from under the brim of his sheriff’s hat, obviously in awe, and Daryl will tease him mercilessly for it tomorrow, when they’re out of the girl’s earshot. Right now, he just enjoys the song. It’s one he used to hear on the radio, not often enough to know the exact words or tune, so he doesn’t mind much when Beth obviously stumbles at some point. Maggie joins in to help her sister out. Their voices melt together effortlessly.

Daryl glances at Lori and Rick. The woman is leaning against her husband’s chest, their hands intertwined and resting on her belly. They’re sharing their food, picking at the pieces. Sometimes Rick pretends to eat something and Lori will jab her elbow into his side. ‘I’m leaning against your stomach,’ she’ll say, ‘I can hear when it growls.’ And Rick will cave and actually eat something.

Carol leaves to bring Shane his food and Daryl gets to his feet too. ‘Gotta take a piss,’ he says when Glenn looks up at him with raised eyebrows. It’s a blatant lie but the easiest way to be left alone these days.

‘Knife, bow, holler,’ Rick calls out after him even though he’s checked the perimeter three times before they all sat down for dinner. His brother isn’t there to remind Daryl of the rules, so he always takes the role on whenever Glenn stays too quiet.

‘Got it,’ Daryl throws back over his shoulder. There’s no point in arguing about the rules anymore. He’d just be wasting his time.

They haven’t gotten around to collecting the bodies yet. All of the walkers are still where they fell, strewn about the yard. Some are riddled by bullets, but most have parts of their heads missing, or Daryl’s signature poking from their eye sockets or skulls.

His eyes have gotten used to the darkness but when he approaches the first walker, he still needs to kneel down in order to get a good look at his face. Most of the bodies are men. That’s hardly surprising, Daryl thinks, even though he’s not really sure how the prison system works. Maybe the women has been locked in another cellblock, or another facility all together, but these walkers were outside. He doubts the guards would let them in the yard at the same time, if they were ever in the same complex. It doesn’t matter anyway, he thinks. He’s not looking for a woman.

The first walker had broad shoulders and light hair, but when he kneels to get a closer look, he sees that it’s blond instead of light brown. The neck is too thick, ears all wrong. Daryl moves towards the next one. It’s a scrawny guy. Too thin, not tall enough. He doesn’t even bother to kneel down and moves on. The next walker has the wrong skin color. The fourth one is on its belly. Daryl pulls on its shoulder to roll it over. Another guy, broad and muscular. He’s missing a good chunk of his face though which makes it harder to tell. Daryl kneels down and examines what’s left of his face. There’s something off about those cheekbones, he thinks, and when he pulls one eyelid up to check the eyes, he notices that they’re too dark to be blue.

‘Daryl?’

The boy ignores the voice behind him and wipes his hand on the guy’s suit before moving to the next one. Wrong skin color again.

‘Dare?’

He doesn’t think the one after that is tall enough but checks anyway. Close up he sees that the guy is far too young.

‘Hey,’ a hand curls around his biceps and Glenn stops him in his tracks. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I was calling your name.’

‘Didn’t hear nothing,’ Daryl lies. ‘Best let me go, or are you gonna watch me take a piss?’

‘What are you doing?’ The Korean ignores the hostility as he sinks to his haunches so they’re on the same eye-level. ‘Shane and T-dog already checked all the walkers. It’s safe here, you know that, right? And Rick checked the fence. It’ll hold.’

‘I know,’ the boy mutters as he looks at his boots.

‘Then what are you doing?’ Glenn ducks his head a little to catch Daryl’s eye. ‘I know you’re shy but you don’t have to walk to the edge of the earth to take a piss, okay? It’s dark and nobody is peeking.’

That makes Daryl laugh and Glenn grins back. ‘Stop,’ the boy protests as he feels his ears start to burn.

‘If you tell me what you’re doing.’

Daryl sighs and grabs hold of the strap of his bow. Then he looks at his friend again. ‘My brother’s in jail.’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘My _brother_ ,’ Daryl repeats, a little forcefully now, ‘he’s in jail.’

Glenn looks crushed for a second. He looks back at the walkers strewn around the yard. ‘And you were checking whether he…’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl bites his lip. ‘Haven’t found him yet though.’

‘Come on,’ Glenn gets up again and puts a warm hand on the boy’s shoulder, steering him towards the fence. ‘Let’s sit for a second, and not next to a walker.’ They sit with their backs against the fence. Daryl is chewing on his fingernails as he watches how the rest of their family curls up around the fire to get some sleep. After a little while, Rick and Hershel are the only ones still awake. The cop gets up and moves towards the guard post where Shane is still walking slow circles on top of the bus. After a couple of seconds, Rick appears on top of the bus, just another shadow on the horizon. He sits while Shane walks his laps.

‘So, your brother was in jail when this all started?’

Daryl nods.

‘What for?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Last we heard was that he got dishonorably discharged for punchin’ some dude. Like, an officer or something. Don’t know whether that’s why they locked him up though. Could have been drugs. He were always hangin’ 'round some tweakers.’

Glenn is watching him closely. ‘Do you know which prison he was in?’

‘No. Never been neither. Dad said – don’t matter. He just wouldn’t let me see him.’

‘Dare,’ the Korean says gently, ‘the chance that your brother was in _this_ prison is…’ he shakes his head, ‘it’s almost zero. You know that, right? There are a lot of prisons out there. And even if he was in here…’

‘You think he’s dead?’ Daryl asks as he sets his jaw.

‘I don’t know. I mean – I just don’t know, Dare.’

‘But what do you _think_?’

‘I don’t think he’s here.’

Daryl bites on his thumb, hard enough for it to hurt. ‘But he could be, right?’

‘Could be,’ Glenn allows quietly.

They sit next to each other for a long time. The cold of the night is starting to gnaw on Daryl’s bones but he doesn’t want to move. Suddenly, he’s scared of checking the other bodies. Especially the ones that have his bolts buried in their skulls. ‘Don’t even know if I’ll recognize him,’ Daryl mutters.

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Two years ago. He’d been stationed on the other side of the country for a while. Trainin’. He wrote me sometimes,’ the boy scratches his cheek. ‘Kept bitchin’ about the cold. Said Georgia boys weren’t supposed to be popsicles.’

Glenn smiles at that. ‘He was a lot older right? Did he look like Will?’

‘Yeah, fifteen years. Him and Will could’ve been twins. They always said I looked like mom. Said I weren’t a real Dixon, like – I didn’t look like one.’

‘So you got lucky,’ Glenn knocks their shoulders together, ‘because I’ve seen Will and your mom must have been really pretty to compensate for all that.’

Daryl snorts and shakes his head, pushing back against his friend and then just leaning against his frame. ‘He’d take your balls if he’d hear ya say that. I don’t really remember my mom, but I got a picture of her in my pack.’ He ducks his head a little, suddenly embarrassed.

‘Maybe you can show me tomorrow?’ Glenn asks. ‘That way I can judge whether Will has any right to take my balls.’

Daryl laughs. ‘Sure, I’ll show ya tomorrow.’ He sobers up a bit as he looks at the prison again. ‘We shot a lot of rounds today, right?’

‘Are you worried about ammo?’

‘No. It’s just… If anyone were still alive inside, they would have heard. You’d think they would have made it out by now, right? To see who was knockin’ on their doors?’

Glenn loops an arm around his shoulders, ‘maybe.’

‘My brother’s pretty tough, so, you know… maybe…’ Daryl shrugs.

‘Big world, Dare,’ Glenn reminds him gently.

The boy nods, ‘but it’s all about slim chances, right?’

 

 


	26. Home sweet home

 

* * *

 

 

The prison is made of steel, concrete and shadows. It feels alien. After the brutal sun of the Georgia spring they are suddenly engulfed in the coldness of manmade dungeons. Their footsteps echo as they make their way to the cellblock that’s been declared home by Rick and Shane. There hadn’t been anything more punishing than having to watch as Rick led Shane, T-dog, Glenn and Maggie into the depths of the walker-infested building. Daryl had watched as they had slain dozens of walkers in order to clear the perimeter. Fingers twisting in the fence, angry that he had been left behind while they had been counting on him all winter.

Rick has taught him how to fight walkers. How to wield his knife and machete, how to kick them in order to make them stumble and lose their balance which always meant that they were doomed for it brought their brains too close to his hunting knife. The blade is discolored by the blood.

His bow is still pristine. He cleans it every night.

He’s used to being Shane’s shadow by now. Every time they go in to clear a building, he ghosts at the cop’s heels, waiting to be called upon. The bow saves ammunition and he hardly ever misses, so they trust him to get the job done. He hasn’t failed them yet.

Carl is Rick’s shadow, of course. The boy has gotten good with his silenced gun and while Daryl has had to learn how to wield his knife expertly because the bow takes too long to reload sometimes, Rick never lets his son run out of bullets. His blade is still clean. Lori would never let him come too close to any walker and his father is quick with his gun. At night, by the campfire, Rick teaches them what the hand gestures mean _. Stop, wait, circle, get down, retreat, reload_ , they get them drilled into their heads until Daryl doesn’t have to wink anymore to show that he’s gotten the message, like he’d done when he and Rick had been looking for Sophia.

They make a solid team.

But when it came to clearing the prison, Rick and Shane had quickly shot them down. Too dangerous for two twelve year olds. So they had watched, side by side, as Rick and Shane fought their way into the building, flanked by Glenn, Maggie and T-dog. Neither had said anything when the team disappeared into the building and out of their sight, never answering Lori’s frantic; _can you see them_?

It feels like hours later when Maggie finally comes to get them. Drenched in sweat and blood but with a satisfied smile on her face. She opens the gates for them, lets her dad kiss her on her cheek before she curls an arm around Daryl’s shoulders, bringing him close. ‘They’re fine,’ she tells him. ‘Come on, we’ve secured a cell block. It’s great.’

And it is.

It’s more secure than the last fifty places they’ve stayed at, at least.

T-dog is dragging the last bodies out when they enter.

‘What do you think?’ Rick asks as he lobes down the stairs.

‘Home sweet home,’ Glenn mutters in the passing.

‘For now,’ the cop nods.

‘It’s secure?’ Lori asks as she looks around. Her gaze passes over the cells, the bars, the locks.

‘This cellblock is.’

‘What about the rest of the prison?’ Hershel asks.

Shane is sitting on the top of the stairs. He looks down at them with a small smile on his face, like he can’t quite believe that they’ve made it. The dark hair is slicked back by his sweat. ‘In the morning, we’ll find the cafeteria and infirmary,’ he answers for Rick.

‘We sleep in the cell?’ Beth looks a bit uneasy at the thought and Daryl can’t blame her. He slowly walks towards one of them, hand trailing over the cold bars. They seem to bite his sun-kissed skin.

‘I found keys on some guards. Shane has a set, too,’ Rick nods and his partner jingles the keys.

That seems to satisfy the rest of the group. They walk up the flight of stairs to claim a cell of their own. Daryl hangs back a bit and watches how Rick crosses the hall to get to his wife, falling gently into her embrace. His forehead onto her shoulder, her fingers in his thick curls. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers. And Rick closes his eyes and just breathes for second, shoulders slumping as his wife keeps him upright.

‘Dare,’ Carl is standing at the top of the stairs, sheriff’s hat almost shielding his twinkling eyes. ‘Wanna share?’

‘Hmm-hmm.’ The Dixon dashes up the flight of stairs too.

‘Can we?’ Carl asks Shane, ‘or do you and Daryl want to…’

The cop laughs and shakes his head, ‘what do you think, Lori? Do double-trouble get their own room?’

‘If they promise not to stay up all night gossiping,’ the mother answers with a fond smile. ‘Or playing _one, two, three_!’

Carl groans and turns on the spot, leading Daryl over to the cell he’d already claimed. They pass by the one that now belongs to Maggie and Glenn. The Korean is checking his girlfriend for scratches but the fond look on her face lets Daryl knows that he has nothing to worry about. ‘This is us,’ the boy declares as he swings into their cell.

‘It’s fuckin’ disgustin’, man. Couldn’t find a better one?’

There’s blood dripping down the walls. The beds are overturned, the sheets smell of vomit and piss. When Carl dashes in, he steps into a puddle of blood and leaves bloody footprints all over the place. ‘Gave the best one to Beth,’ he admits as he throws himself onto the lower bunk.

‘’course ya fuckin’ did,’ Daryl leers. Then he lowers his voice to a mere whisper, ‘Hershel’s goin’ to take ya balls, man. Tellin’ ya.’

‘I was just being nice,’ Carl hisses back, a blush flaming on his cheeks. ‘Made sure she was safe. Anyway,’ he stretches, ‘this is better than those storage units.’

‘Or that damn meat locker, whose idea was that one anyway?’

‘Your dad’s.’

Daryl aims a mean kick at the boy’s knee, ‘best shut the fuck up about that. Joke weren’t ever funny in the first place.’

‘Shane is totally your dad now,’ Carl muses.

‘Gonna murder ya in ya sleep,’ the Dixon boy growls as he climbs the small ladder to get to the top bunk. He throws his bow on the pillow and lays his poncho on the bed as a sheet, glad to mask the stench of the place with his own comforting smell. He stares at the dirty ceiling. The first time Carl had made that joke, just a stupid jab about Daryl getting lectured by Shane when he’d come home after dark after one of his hunting trips, it had caused him to go ballistic on the kid. Vision red with rage, knuckles itching until Glenn managed to get him back under control with a few carefully chosen words. Shane isn’t his blood. And he wants everyone to know that. He’s a _Dixon_.

But when the cop gives him a casual high-five in the passing, or ruffles his hair after a successful raid, or lets Daryl lean against his chest at the campfire, he can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if he had been something else. Not a Dixon. Shane has told him that he used to live in a small house in a neighborhood downtown. Nothing special, but Daryl had asked a million questions while trying to picture the house. In the end, he still couldn’t because their notions of _small_ and _normal_ turned out to be miles apart.

Sometimes he watches Rick, Lori and Carl interact and wonders what that is like. He doesn’t feel jealous, he keep telling himself, he _doesn’t_. But he can’t ever imagine Rick leaving Carl behind. The guy had been in a coma when this all started and he had still found his family. And Will had just left.

When Lori brushes Carl’s hair out of his face or lets him curl up in her lap on cold night, he wonders whether his mom would have done the same thing. Or when Carol steps up and deals with the problems around their camp, he wonders whether his mom would have bounced back like that. Whether the shadow of Will or the taint of their last name would have kept her down or helped her rise up instead. Maybe it would have prepared her for this life in the same way it has himself.

Daryl stares at the ceiling. Just a gray slab of concrete, stained by time and the boredom of inmates. When he reaches up, he can touch the surface. It’s cold, like everything else in this prison. He wonders how many men have wasted away here before him. But mostly he wonders whether Merle had been in a place like this. Are these the walls he wrote about in his sparse letters? Is this the same cold he’d complained about when he’d been stationed on the other side of the country, or is it different? Less, or more severe? Could he hear the people in the other cells too? Their voices and footsteps, did he know their names? Did the way the doors fall into their locks drive him crazy too?

Daryl shivers. He misses the woods already. The sky. The colors. He feels trapped in here. The bars, the locks, the coldness of it all. The way Shane and Rick have keys but he doesn’t. He’s locked in. Secure, of course, safe, but still _locked in_. Locked up. Just like his brother.

None of the walkers he’s seen had reminded him of Merle. Glenn had allowed him to check, standing guard in the courtyard while he moved from body to body. He knows that he won’t be able to check them all. There are simply too many. It doesn’t make him sad because as long as he hasn’t seen the body of his brother, he thinks that he’s still alive. There’s hope. Merle’s tough as nails, nobody kills a Dixon but a Dixon, and the world is a big place, like Glenn had said. Maybe he was never here. Maybe he’s somewhere else, surviving. But when he look at those gray walls, the walkers locked into their cells, the blood and guts everywhere, he fears that their mantra might have turned against them. Nobody kills a Dixon but a Dixon. Nobody kills us but us. Maybe that’s what he did. Opted out, like so many others. Daryl wouldn’t know. He can’t know because they’ve never faced anything like this. He might have done the same thing if he were left on his own, without Will to lead him to Shane and without Shane and Glenn to lead him even further.

The gun feels strange on his hip now. He doesn’t hand it back to Rick because he knows he might need it someday. Either to get away from walkers or to get out altogether.

‘Hey,’ Carl climbs up onto his bunk and sits against the wall. His feet dangle off the bed. ‘It was just a joke. You know that, right? I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.’

‘Best not, if you want to hold on to your teeth.’

The boy swipes at his boots playfully. By now, he knows that it’s just Daryl’s way of telling him to back the fuck off. He looks around the cell curiously. ‘It looks like a good place, right?’

‘Or a tomb.’

Carl meets his eye. ‘Not for us though.’ Daryl shrugs. ‘They’ll find the cafeteria tomorrow. It’ll be okay.’

‘Sure,’ the Dixon mutters as he bites on his fingernail. They’re silent for a little while. They listen to how the others are settling in. They can hear Rick’s low rumble from a couple of cells down while Lori’s answers are lost in the space between them. Shane and T-dog are talking too. It’s hard to make out the words. Daryl decides not to try. He closes his eyes and lets his mind drift.

‘Why were you checking the walkers?’

His eyes snap back open. Just grayness above him, but when he shifts to sit up a little bit, he can see Carl at the edge of the bed. The boy is fiddling with his gun. He unscrews the silencer only to screw it back on seconds later. His dark eyes glance at Daryl a couple of times and he looks wary, like he knows he’s threading on thin ice.

‘My brother was in jail,’ Daryl says. ‘Had to check to make sure.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘No.’

Carl nods. ‘Maybe you can ask my dad? You guys used to live near our town, right? Maybe he knows where they took the guys. Like, which prison. He might be somewhere else.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Or you can ask Shane, I guess…’

‘Careful,’ Daryl warns with a light kick to the boy’s thigh.

‘No, I just mean… You guys are pretty close, is what I mean.’

Daryl shrugs because everyone knows that’s true, has been true for a long while now. He looks at Carl, who is now checking how many bullets he has left. Almost a full clip, Rick must have stocked him up again when he’d entered the prison. Daryl shifts to get his attention again. ‘Y’all were pretty close, too. Before.’

‘Still are,’ Carl answers. ‘He’s my dad’s best friend. He’s always been around, I guess. And he’s still around now, you know? That’s what matters.’ The boy slams the magazine back into his gun.

‘Not like before though,’ Daryl pushes a little. He’s chewing on his nails again, feeling a bit nervous.

‘What?’ Carl grins back at him, ‘you feel like you’re hogging him or something?’

‘Sometimes.’

That makes the other boy laugh. Just a soft puff of air combined with a shake of his head. ‘You’re not. He’s there when I need him. There are some things you can’t really tell your parents, right? So he listens, but… you know. I got my mom and dad.’

‘Yeah.’

Carl bites on his lip for a second. ‘Do you miss Will?’

‘’s my dad.’

‘Yeah, but do you _miss_ him?’

Daryl knows what Carl knows about his dad. Nothing but the blood on his back, the scars, the whispered words about the man from his parents and the other members of their camp. He just knows fractions of Daryl’s family. Only the worst parts. He doesn’t know about the whispered words between them. Those rare moments of comfort in their tent, or the way Will would always let him have the last of their meal, even if the older Dixon had still been hungry himself. He hadn’t known that Will loves him _now_.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says and his voice breaks on the word. He clear his throat. ‘Yeah, miss him all the damn time.’

‘Right,’ Carl nods but he looks unsure.

Daryl knows that he will never understand. And that’s fine.

 

 

The guys and Maggie are gearing up to find the infirmary and cafeteria. Even Hershel is joining them this time, in case they actually find some medicine. He’ll know what to bring back for Lori. She’s watching from the landing, one hand on the small of her back and the other gently rubbing circles over her belly. Her gaze falls on Carl, who is trying on some of the riot gear.

‘You won’t need that,’ Rick says as he takes the helmet from his son.

‘You’re kidding!’ Carl protests immediately.

‘I need you and Daryl to stay put,’ the cop says with a glance at Daryl, who is leaning against the wall next to his son. ‘We don’t know what’s in there. If something goes wrong, you and Dare could be the last men standing. I need you both to handle things here.’

‘Sure,’ Carl nods.

Daryl ducks his head and tries to look past the cop.

‘Don’t go looking for Shane now,’ Rick says with a swipe at Daryl’s hair. ‘You’re staying here. No discussion.’ He hands the keys to his son.

‘Look after Beth for us,’ Glenn says as he puts a hand on Daryl’s shoulders. ‘Listen to Carol and Lori, okay?’

‘Ya got it.’

 

 

Daryl wanders around their new home, trying to get a feel of the place. He’s not allowed to go out of their cellblock even though Carl could let him into the room next door where the guard tower is, but the boy listens to his mother and hides the keys from Daryl. So he just walks around for a bit before finding Carol in one of the cells. She’s changing the sheets on Lori’s bed. ‘Need help?’ he asks because he’s bored and hungry. Having something to do might be better than wandering around aimlessly.

‘You know how to make a bed?’

‘Might be twelve but I ain’t stupid.’

She laughs at that, ‘Ed was forty and he still didn’t know how to do it. Here,’ she tosses him a sheet that looks mostly clean. ‘What do you think of our new home?’

Daryl strips the bed above Lori’s of the dirty sheets and throws them into a corner. ‘Ain’t much to think about. ‘s cold though.’

‘That won’t last. It’s already spring. You know how these summers can get.’

He frowns a little, ‘ya think we’ll be here for summer?’

Carol stands and arches her back to get rid of some of the kinks there. ‘Yeah!’ she sounds almost optimistic. ‘This could make a good home. We’ve got walls, bars. It’s dry and it will be warm. Hershel said the ground outside was good for-‘

‘ _Open the door!_ ’ Rick’s voice seems to echo through the entire prison.

Daryl beats Carol to the doors. Hands curling around the bars, white with pressure as he waits for the cop to come around the corner. He can hear running footsteps and the panic in Rick’s words.

‘Carl! Come on!’

The door opens and Daryl stares. Rick and Shane push Hershel inside on a cart. Half of his leg is missing. There’s blood everywhere. Right next to him, Beth is screaming. They wheel him into one of the cells.

‘Get him on the bed!’

‘He got bit,’ Shane says as they prepare to transfer the wounded man onto the bed.

‘Did you cut it off?’ Lori asks.

‘Yeah,’ Rick grunts as they move the man.

‘Maybe you got it in time,’ she says while helping.

Carol peels the make-shift bandages back and the blood gushes out. They’ve already used all of the bandages they had.

‘Carl,’ Lori orders, ‘go get the towels from the back, right next to my bed.’

The boy dashes past Daryl to get them.

‘Is he gonna die?’ Beth asks her.

Lori takes the time to shush her, hugging her close for a second.

Daryl doesn’t listen to any of the medical talk that’s going on around the bed. He almost can’t hear it. He’s just looking at the leg that has been cut off, eyes wide with horror. Pillows and elevation and sheets and burning and shock and arteries and bleeding. It doesn’t make any sense to him. The blood doesn’t frighten him. He’s seen it swirl down the drain of his own shower too often for that to bother him anymore. It has covered his hands too many times after too many kills, but this is _Hershel_.

‘Dare, I need you,’ Shane barks as he dashes out of the cell. Daryl resumes his role of ghost and follows silently. ‘Load your bow. Up on that table, keep an eye on that door.’ He loads his bow and jumps onto the table, kneeling so he’s perfectly level with any head that will pop out of the darkness of the corridor. Shane take his position next to him, gun drawn and shoulders low. ‘Inmates,’ Shane mutters, ‘they were in the cafeteria. Heads up. Finger on your trigger, but don’t shoot on sight.’

‘Got it,’ Daryl murmurs.

Slow, cautious footsteps and then a man steps out of the darkness. Dirty and sweaty, dressed in white wife-beater and blue jumpsuit. Then another, smaller and with darker skin. The third is big and broad.

‘That’s far enough,’ Shane warns.

‘Cell block C,’ the first one says. ‘Cell 4, that’s mine, Gringo. Let me in.’

There are four men in total. Daryl’s got his bow aimed at the apparent leader, the one who came out first while Shane switches targets to keep them all in line. ‘Today is your lucky day, fellas,’ Shane tells them. ‘You’ve been pardoned by the state of Georgia. You’re free to go.’

‘What you got going on in there?’ one of them pipes up.

‘It ain’t none of your concern,’ Daryl growls.

‘Don’t be telling me what’s my concern, pipsqueak,’ the leader says as he reaches of his gun.

Daryl stands up to tower over him, shifting his bow a little and letting his finger curl around the trigger, a little tighter than before.

‘Chill, man,’ the big guy says. ‘Dude’s leg is all messed up. Besides, we’re free now. Why are we still in here?’

‘The man’s got a point,’ Shane nods.

‘Yeah, and I gotta check on my old lady’

‘A group of civilians break _into_ a prison you got no business being in?’ The leader cocks his head to the side. ‘Got me thinking there ain’t no place for us to go.’

‘Why don’t you go find out?’ Daryl bites back.

‘Maybe we’ll just be going now,’ the one with the blond hair says. He looks nervous and reminds Daryl of one of the local tweakers from their hometown.

‘Hey, we ain’t leaving!’

‘Ya ain’t comin’ here neither,’ T-dog barks suddenly as he rounds the corner with his gun drawn. He’s still wearing the riot gear.

‘It is my house, my rules, I go where I damn well please,’ the leader shouts.

‘I’m getting’ tired of your mouth!’ Daryl bounces back.

‘Why don’t you come here and shut it then, you little runt?’

‘There ain’t nothing here, why don’t you go back to your own sandbox?’

Rick comes running just when things are about to escalate. The inmates don’t understand. They’ve been locked inside of the cafeteria for almost ten months. They have no idea what has been going on outside of those walls. What war has raged and is still raging between the living and the dead. Daryl kneels again, slowly so his aim doesn’t waver. He rests his elbow on his knee before his arm gets too tired from holding the weapon up. He looks at the inmates through his sight while they talk to Rick. Their eyes widen but they don’t look as frightened as they should be. There’s no army. There’s no government, no hospitals, no police. It’s all gone.

Rick has explained it all and by the end of it they still ask for a cell phone to call their families.

No phones, no computers. Half of the population has been wiped out. Probably more.

They don’t believe Rick. Daryl can’t really blame them. It sounds like the script of a bad horror movie or something that might happen to others but never them and not their country. He knows he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been there to see it happen.

So they go out to see for themselves.

 

 

The deal is made.

Half of their supplies in exchange for clearing out another cell block.

Daryl watches from the sidelines. Shane and Rick spin the conversation expertly until the prisoners cave. They don’t really have a choice. Most seem game to be on their side, but the leader has that glint in his eye. The one that promises knives in backs later.

They lead them back to the cafeteria and Daryl stares at the shelves. ‘That’s what ya call a little bit of food?’

‘Goes fast, mini.’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ the boy hums as he slips past the leader to inspect the can and bags. He doesn’t mind the nicknames, is used to far worse than that. Rick and T-dog take the first load back towards their cell block. Daryl sits on one of the tables and lets his bow rest on his knees. He watches the prisoner who’d reminded him of that tweaker he used to know. Dirty blond hair that’s too long, scrawny dude, but he seems most keen to get out of that place and team up with Rick and Shane. The leader keeps shooting him down, however. 'Hey,’ Daryl gets up and walks over to the guy. ‘You been here long?’

‘294 days,’ the man answers.

‘No,’ Daryl wipes his nose with the back of his hand, ‘I meant before that. You been here long?’

‘Couple of months.’

That’s long enough, Daryl decides. Merle’s nothing if not obnoxiously loud. If he were here, everyone would have known him. ‘Ever met a guy called Merle in here? White dude, kinda big like Shane.’

‘Merle?’ the man echoes with a frown. ‘No, why? Were you looking for someone when y’all busted in here?’

‘ _Hey_!’ Shane stalks over and pushes the guy away from Daryl. ‘Don’t talk to him. If you’ve got something to say, you can say it to me.’ He steps into the guy’s personal space. ‘Do we understand each other? You don’t speak to him. _Ever_.’

‘Okay, okay,’ the tweaker says as he raises his hands in surrender. ‘We won’t talk to your boy.’

Shane hesitates for a second. ‘That’s right.’

Daryl doesn’t even hear it. His mind is racing.

The guy hadn’t known his brother.

Merle isn’t here.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to say that there won't be an update on Friday. I need to travel unexpectedly for my job and will be home on Friday night. This story is not something I want to half-ass, so I'm going to need a bit more time.  
> Whether it's going up late (aka Saturday) or I have to skip the entire update and pick it back up on Tuesday is something I'll have to see. I'll try my hardest but this story really does take me a very long time to write and edit.
> 
> I'm sure you all understand.
> 
> Thanks for the support and briljant comments. They're the highlights of my week.


	27. Lori

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a little longer than expected. I wanted to spend some time with my family after my trip.  
> Thanks for your patience.
> 
> Also; please no spoilers for (your) tonight in the comments. It doesn't air until Monday night in my country, and while I'll keep out of everything internet-related until then, I won't be able to ignore your lovely comments. They're just too great to not read.  
> Thanks!

 

* * *

 

 

The prisoners’ hands were bound behind their backs before they were executed. Daryl doesn’t know why. The cells are too small, nobody could have saved themselves by hiding behind the bed, and even if they could have it’s clear that whoever executed them had guns. The prisoners were unarmed. Hardly a fair fight.

Daryl wrinkles his nose as he runs up a couple of steps before he sits down on the staircase that leads to the next floor of cells. He watches how Rick herds Axel and Oscar into the cellblock with Shane. The two prisoners flinch at the sight of their fellow inmates, dead on the cold ground. Executed by the ones who were supposed to guard them. Daryl wonders whether any of them knew how the tables had turned when their cells were opened for the last time.

‘They were good men,’ Axel tells Rick. He knew them.

Daryl looks at the bodies again. Eight of them, lined up and in their blue overalls. Their hands are bound by what looks like thick zip ties but he knows that they’re just plastic cuffs. One of Merle’s friends had been at a riot some place out West once and had come back with tall tales about how he’d gotten arrested and put in the damn plastic cuffs by some pig. When people asked how he’d gotten out or who had paid his bail, he would always hold up his cigarette lighter to collect the round of cheers and howls. Daryl doesn’t know whether the story was even true. Probably not, considering who Merle hung out with on most nights.

Merle always knew everyone worth knowing. The tweakers and the runners, the ones who sometimes had the odd job to do, the lady who traded her drugs for other means of forgetting, the girls on the corner of the street, that douchebag behind the bar but also that hot-shot lawyer who just wanted to keep working hard without sleeping, that housewife who paid more when she was scared, the baker who had a soft spot for hungry kids, or the woman who missed her grandchildren enough to make due with other kids for the time being.

If they had something Merle wanted or needed, the oldest Dixon boy would always sniff them out. He usually got what he wanted, too. From the girls and women, at least. He seemed to have inherited Will’s cool swagger and that mischievous glint in his eye. Whatever came out of his mouth sometimes broke the spell, of course, but others found it either endearing or just another opportunity to turn a bad guy good. Merle would play along, but only if he could get what he wanted. And once he had it, the game was up.

Maybe he would have known these guys, Daryl thinks as he leans against the cold bars of his staircase. Or maybe he was one of these guys, somewhere else.

He looks at the bodies of the good men, and thinks about what might have happened to the bad ones.

‘Let’s go,’ Rick says to Shane with a nod at the door.

‘So you’re just gonna leave us in here? Man, that’s sick,’ Oscar turns to the cop. He’d been the one who wouldn’t beg for his life when Rick had buried his machete in their leader’s skull. Daryl could respect that at least. Will always told him the rules, too. Never beg, for anything. And never, ever kneel.

The boy curls his hands around the cold steel of the stairs and watches how Shane carefully positions himself at Rick’s right shoulder. The dark eyes flick to Daryl occasionally, always checking where he’s at.

‘We’re locking down this cell block,’ Rick nods. ’From now on, this part of the prison is yours. Take it or leave it. That was the deal.’ But the deal had been made with a dead man and these two, who are still very much alive, don’t seem too happy with it. There’s still blood on Rick’s face though. And it still drips from his machete too, so neither of them dares to protest too much.

‘You think this is sick?’ Shane asks as he watches Rick’s back while his partner walks away. ‘You don’t want to know what’s outside.’ He beckons. ‘Dare.’ The boy hops over the railing. The thud of his feet on concrete cause the prisoners to flinch, but Shane is used to his shenanigans and just gives him a tight smile. He reaches out his hand, holding it high enough so Daryl can duck under it and let it brush over his hair. Shane cups the back of his head and scratches at his nape for a second, the smile becoming more genuine now.

‘Consider yourselves the lucky ones,’ Rick tells the prisoners as he waits for his partner and the boy.

Daryl looks back at the prisoners and bites his lip. ‘Sorry about your friends, man,’ he says.

 

When they get back, everyone gathers in Hershel’s cell. The old man looks almost dead. Too pale and oddly still, like a man passed out in a gutter after a night of drinking. Dead to the world. Daryl listens to Carl as he tells how Lori saved Hershel’s life and watches how Rick brushes a hand over Beth and Maggie’s backs when he joins them at the sickbed.

‘I got the bandages,’ Carl tells Daryl. ‘I found the infirmary. Killed two walkers.’

‘Your dad will tan your hide when he finds out.’

‘My mom already did that. But we needed it, so I got it.’

Daryl looks at him. Dark eyes almost hidden by the sheriff’s hat, mouth just a tight line as he watches Hershel’s movements like a hawk. ‘Ya did good.’

Carl nods. ‘Yeah. What happened to the prisoners? Dad said there were survivors. Did you see them?’

‘Hmm-hmm. Two are in the other cell block. Don’t have to worry ‘bout the rest no more. They got themselves killed.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

Carl glances at him. ‘Did you ask them about your brother?’

‘Hadn’t ever heard of him, so Merle weren’t here.’

‘Maybe they just didn’t know him.’

‘Guy was a tweaker, nah, he would have known Merle, all right,’ Daryl says. ‘If not by his loud mouth than by his own trade. No one ever forgets about Merle.’

The whole group inside the cell surges forward to see something happening on the bed. Daryl peeks through the mass of limbs to see Hershel’s eyes open. Hazy and unfocussed but not bloodshot and empty. He reaches up to grasp Rick’s hand, but instead of bringing it to his teeth, he just holds on like a man drowning. Rick sinks to his knees next to the bed and presses the hand against his forehead. Probably thanking a God who only Hershel still believes in. Muscle memory.

Carl sags a little, relief washing through his posture and making him seem a little smaller and more his actual age when he finally smiles broadly at the Dixon boy, who beams back.

Lori, who is standing next to them, strokes her son’s cheek lovingly. She reaches out to do the same with Daryl.

He lets her because it’s a good day.

 

‘Where’s Glenn and Maggie? We could use some help.’

Daryl is sitting on top of the overturned bus and lets his feet thud against the window. The dull sound echoes over the field of the prison. Now that it’s light again, he can see how big the building really is. Large and gray and cold, but not so bad once he’s looking at it from the outside. The sun is beating down on him again and he welcomes it by leaning back on his hands, closing his eyes and tilting his head back to catch some rays. The bodies in the yard are starting to smell really bad. Rick decided that they should burn them today and Daryl agrees with T-dog. It’s going to be a long-ass day.

‘They’re up in the guard tower,’ the boy says, gesturing to it with his right hand.

‘Guard tower?’ Shane echoes as he leans against the bus, folding his arms with an amused look on his face.

‘They were just up there last night,’ Rick chimes in.

‘Glenn!’ Daryl shouts, opening his eyes and looking at the guard tower on the other side of the yard. ‘Maggie!’

They all watch as Glenn’s head pops up first, followed by Maggie’s. The Korean stumbles out while still buttoning his jeans. ‘ _Hey_.’ He tries to answer casually but fails miserably. ‘What’s up, Dare?’

Rick and Shane chuckle.

‘You comin’?’ Daryl shouts back.

‘What?’

The two cops laugh while Carol tries to hide her amusement behind her hand.

‘You comin’?’ Daryl repeats and Shane needs to turn away when Glenn looks at Maggie helplessly. The boy takes pity on his best friend. ‘Come on,’ he yells, ‘we could use a hand.’

They watch how Glenn ducks back into the guard tower to grab his stuff while Maggie fixes her hair. Shane shakes his head and looks up at Daryl, tapping his boot to get his attention. ‘Is that what Will taught you? Crude innuendo?’

‘Told ya. I know stuff.’

Rick frowns but the laughter causes his blue eyes to sparkle. ‘What’re you on about now?’

Shane ducks his head for a second, ‘Daryl found out that Lori was pregnant right? So-‘

‘Cause you ran your mouth,’ Daryl laughs as he gets up and balances on the edge of the bus. ‘Weren’t snoopin’ or nothing,’ he tells the husband.

‘Yeah, ‘cause I ran my mouth,’ Shane agrees as he rolls his eyes. ‘Anyway, I thought that, you know, he had some questions about… stuff. Things.’

Amusement makes Rick’s lips twitch as he tries to keep a straight face. ‘Right.’

‘He thought I didn’t know a guy needs to screw a girl to get her pregnant,’ Daryl says, ‘but I grew up with Will and Merle, so I know how it works. They kept calling it different things too, like, to hide that they were talkin’ ‘bout it, so I know a lot of words for it too. ‘cause I ain’t stupid, I knew just fine.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Rick laughs as he gestures with his hand for the boy to come down from the bus. Daryl jumps down to land beside the cop in the grass with a soft grunt just as Shane hisses; ‘ _Rick_!’

‘What?’ His partner laughs, ‘at least you don’t have to do the whole talk. He got it,’ Rick slams his hand down on Daryl’s shoulder to steer him towards the first bodies. ‘Come on then, let’s hear it. If I know half of the terms Will threw around, you help me clean my cellblock tonight. If I don’t, I’ll clean yours. How’s that?’

‘Pssh. Like a rigged-ass game,’ Daryl scoffs, ‘ya could just say ya knew all along. That ain’t fair.’

‘You’ve got to have some faith, man.’

‘Stop trying to corrupt my boy, Grimes,’ Shane laughs as he pushes his brother way from Daryl.

‘Yo, Rick.’ T-dog’s call breaks their moment. There’s no amusement in his voice and the cop turns around to see the two inmates wandering over towards them.

Rick’s posture changes immediately. Second ago he’s been all relaxed muscles and smiles, but now his back is rigid and eyes dark as he rests his thumbs on his gun belt. ‘Come with me,’ he says as he starts to head over to Axel and Oscar, meeting them half-way. He doesn’t really need to say it, though. Shane had already claimed his right-hand spot while Daryl falls back like he would do if they were raiding a house.

T-dog steps closer to the boy after a glance from Shane.

‘That’s close enough,’ Rick growls. ‘We had an agreement.’

The inmates don’t want to stay in the cell block anymore.

Blood, brains everywhere.

There’s ghosts.

‘Why don’t you move the bodies out?’ Shane asks, his hands on his hips.

‘You should be burning them,’ T-dog adds.

One side of the prison has collapsed. Whenever they drag the bodies out, more walkers come to try and feast on their flesh. Rick nods a little to show that he understands their situation, but his posture doesn’t change. The white shirt he’s wearing is already filthy, discolored by months of sweat soaking into the fabric and now the dust of their new lawn. Shane is wearing a dark shirt which hides most of the bloodstains.

Axel is begging to be part of their group. He’ll do anything to not have to live in that cellblock for one more second.

‘Our deal is non-negotiable,’ Rick says with a shake of his head. ’You either live in your cell block or you leave.’

Oscar gives the cop a dirty look. ‘I told you this was a waste of time,’ he tells his fellow inmate. ‘They ain’t no different than the pricks who shot up our boys.’ The inmates with their hands tied behind their backs. Executed. The good men, dead. ‘You know how many friends’ corpses we had to drag out this week? Just threw him out, like… these were good guys. Good guys who had our backs against the really bad dudes in the joint, like Tomas and Andrew. Now we’ve all made mistakes to get in here, chief. And I’m not gonna pretend to be a saint but believe me; we’ve paid our due. Enough that we would rather hit the road than to go back into that shithole.’

Rick looks back at Shane.

Shane shakes his head.

Daryl kicks one of his boots against the other and squints up at the two cops. ‘Could lock them into the guard’s post at the gates. It’s cleared, so no bodies but still a ways away from our people.’ He bites on his fingernail, ‘ya know… until we decide.’

That’s exactly what they do. Daryl locks them up and climbs back onto the overturned bus so he has a bird-eye view of the yard. Below him, Rick argues with T-dog and Shane about what to do with the prisoners. T seems to be in favor of letting them join their group while Rick doubts that they can be trusted. Shane argues that they’ve picked up a lot of guys like them when they were out on patrol. Degenerates, but not psychos. That doesn’t mean he wants them anywhere near the group, however. They should take their chances out on the road, just like they have done all winter. In the end, Rick decides that their deal still stands. They’ve been through too much to risk it all now.

 

They are moving the cars and checking out the fences when Hershel comes out of the prison to have a look around. He’s on crutches and pale but Daryl laughs when he sees the old man fumble down the small staircase. Lori’s right in front of him, ready to catch him should he fall. He doesn’t.

Rick and Glenn are gathering wood for a fire. Daryl holds the fence open for them. ‘Looky here,’ he says when he spots Hershel.

‘He’s one tough son of a bitch,’ Glenn laughs when he throws his wood onto the ground. ‘ _All right Hershel_!’

‘Ssh,’ Daryl hisses, ‘keep ya cheers down,’ he says with a nod at the walkers who are ambling over after they heard the Korean’s yell.

‘Ahw, man, can’t we just have one good day?’

The boy swings his bow onto his back. ‘Hey,’ he says to get Glenn’s attention again. ‘He lived. Yesterday was good.’

Rick is leaning against the chain fence, fingers twisted into the metal as he first looks at the progress Hershel is making and then at his wife, who is smiling at him. She looks beautiful. Hand on her belly, dark hair flowing in the breeze. Carl is standing next to Beth, beaming as well. A noise attracts the boy’s attention.

And seconds later the moment is shattered.

‘Walkers!’ Carl screams as he goes for his gun. ‘Watch out.’

‘No!’ Rick screams as he pushes himself away from the fence and starts running. The sound of gunshots echoes their thundering footsteps as both Glenn and Daryl chase the cop, but Glenn has to go back in order to close the fence again.

‘ _Lori_!’ Rick’s screams are desperate as he runs ahead. Then he falters, ‘the lock! Keys, keys!’ Daryl nearly falls when he changes directions, slipping on the gravel as he tries to get back to Glenn, who still has the keys on him. The Korean throws them at the boy, who throws them to the cop. ‘Come on,’ Rick snarls as he struggles to get the door open. When he finally manages, he pushes further. ‘Get out of the way,’ he screams at Oscar before trying to get the other lock open.

They run up the lawn together. No one bothers to lock the prisoners back up.

In the chaos, Daryl has tried to keep track of where everyone had run off to. He knows that Shane had been near the red car when the walkers had come and with Daryl safely behind the fences, he’d run for Carl and Lori. The last thing he’d seen was him closing the door behind Rick’s family after pulling Maggie in as well.

T-dog and Carol were trying to close the gates on the other side of the yard.

Beth and Hershel are inside a small fence on the outside of the prison.

‘Daryl!’ Glenn shouts, ‘go, lock yourself in there! Go!’ But the boy doesn’t listen. There are still walkers crawling around their yard. He watches how Glenn sweeps a guy’s head clean off with his machete and then takes out his knife. He’s not scared of the monsters anymore. All winter, they have relied on him to have their backs. And now he’s got to live up to that. So he shoots past Rick, ducking beneath the cop’s gun as it goes off, and jumps onto one of the picnic tables to get that extra bit of height he needs to plunge his knife into a walker’s skull. They go down together but the walker is already dead when they both hit the ground. Daryl lands on his feet.

‘On your left!’

Daryl ducks to the right and Rick shoots a walker that was coming for both of them.

‘Get the right,’ Rick orders when he needs to reload.

The boy slides forward over the concrete, kicking a walker’s feet out right from under them. The body smacks onto the ground and Daryl crawls back to jab his knife right between the skull and the neck, the tip burying itself into the brain as the body stills.

Rick hauls him back to his feet.

‘Those chains didn’t break on their own. Someone took an ax or cutters to them,’ Glenn says as he comes back from inspecting the fence.

Rick looks back at Axel and Oscar.

‘You think they did it?’ Glenn asks.

‘Who else?’

The alarm goes off. The sound is deafening. It can be heard from miles and miles.

Daryl walks around in a circle, unsure of what to do as the mechanical noise hurts his ears. ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kiddin’ me,’ he screams. Every walker in the whole damn forest will be coming for them now.

‘Daryl,’ Rick throws him a set of keys before he starts to shoot the loud speakers in order to shut them down. Then he runs over to Oscar, pointing his revolver in his face. ‘How can this be happening?’ he demands.

 

Into the prison they go. No one of their group is anywhere near their own cell block. They must have been driven deeper into the prison.

They’re splitting up and whoever gets to the generators first, they’ll shut them down. Daryl's not sure how it happens but somehow he loses sight of Glenn in the madness and ends up with Rick and Oscar in the generator room. His knife is dripping with blood and he’s running out of bolts.

‘Daryl, get the door,’ Rick barks as he moves into the room with his gun drawn.

The boy tries to push it closed but his boots keep slipping on the concrete. He struggles with it until Oscar comes to help, pushing it close with his body weight .‘I got it, kid,’ he grunts.

‘How do you shut these down?’ Rick screams now.

‘Go help, I’ll keep it closed,’ Daryl shouts because he doesn’t know anything about the damn generators and Oscar used to work down here. The moment the large man pushes himself away from the door, Daryl grunts and curses. Walkers are banging against the door, trying to get in and Daryl knows he won’t be able to keep them out for very long. He tries though. With sweat and blood running down his arms, he tries.

There’s grunts and shouts coming from behind him.

‘Come on, hurry,’ he yells. ‘Please, Rick! _Rick_!’ But Rick is fighting Andrew, the inmate that had gotten away, and doesn’t have time to come and help him.

Daryl glances at his bow, which is positioned just right and loaded to boot. His feet slide on the concrete, he won't be able to hold on for muc longer. With a grunt, he lets go of the door and grabs his bow, taking the first walker down with a shot. Then he throws the weapon away because he doesn’t have time to reload and grabs his knife instead. Another walker goes down. He dashes back towards the door and closes it with a bang. When he whirls around, he sees that Oscar has Rick’s gun. He’s aiming it at the cop.

‘It’s our house,’ Andrew is shouting behind Rick. ‘Shoot him!’

Oscar’s aim changes slightly and Andrew’s brains get splattered all over the lockers behind him. The inmate lowers the gun and gives it back to Rick with a haunted look in his eyes.

Rick nods. He switches the generators off.

Oscars glances at Daryl, who is holding on to his knife so tightly that his knuckles have gone white. ‘Hey,’ he says softly, getting the boy’s attention. ‘You okay, kid?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You sure? That was crazy.’

‘Stop talking to him,’ Rick orders as he pushes past Oscar and drags Daryl over to where he’d dumped his bow. A hand ghosts over Daryl’s exposed skin, trying to find a bite or scratch. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, let’s go. We’ve got to find the others.’ They find Axel and Glenn a couple of minutes later in a dark corridor. Daryl ducks past Rick and Oscar to get to Glenn’s right-hand side, claiming the spot. The Korean lets his flashlight flicker over to boy in order to check him over and briefly reaches out to touch his shoulder as if he needs to make sure that the boy is actually there.

They find T-dog too. Ripped apart.

Daryl can’t look at him. He’d watched it happen to Dale. He’d seen Sophia go down, but he can’t look now. Hot tears are stinging in the corners of his eyes. He turns around and buries his face in Glenn’s chest. The Korean lets his hand slide into the sweaty, dark hair and holds him close.

‘We need to go outside,’ Glenn say softly as he massages Daryl’s skull. ‘To where Hershel and Beth were. Maybe the others found their way back there.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick says softly as he starts to back away.

‘Dare. Deep breath for me,’ Glenn says as he tips Daryl’s chin up. ‘Just a little more. We need you.’

‘I’m here,’ the boy whispers in a daze. He’s not sure whether he’s answering Glenn’s or reassuring himself. ‘I’m still here.’

 

Daryl isn’t sure what he’s expecting but he has to blink against the sunshine when they finally manage to get back to the yard where Beth and Hershel had been locked into their little cage. He stumbles a bit and can’t quite figure out why the sun is still out. It’s almost noon, of course the sun is out, but he’d expected dark clouds to swirl above their prison. The sweat on his back feels cold, the tears on his cheeks too. The heat of spring is as unexpected as it is unwelcome. Especially when Hershel asks; ‘you didn’t find them? ‘ and the yard is empty. The rest of the group isn’t back yet. Beth is there, of course, with her daddy, but they both look crushed when they see that it’s only Glenn’s original group that has returned for them.

‘We thought maybe they came back out here,’ the Korean says, a little out of breath and with his machete still in his hand. He scans the yard too but finds only the bodies of the walkers littering the floor.

‘What about T? Carol?’

‘Didn’t make it,’ Glenn says with a little shake of his head.

New tears are forcing their way to Daryl’s eyes. They spill over his lashes and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away. Everything is hazy anyway. He’d seen T-dog’s body in a flash, that broad chest completely ripped apart, the face turned away but probably just as badly damaged, but he hadn’t seen Carol’s body. Maybe that’s for the best. He probably wouldn’t be able to look at her anyway. He feels sick. He feels sad. He’s mad at nobody in particular. There’s bile rising in his throat and he swallows painfully to keep it down. His knuckles start to itch because he knows he _helped_ but it wasn’t _enough_.

‘That doesn’t mean the others didn’t,’ Rick says and he too sounds angry. Covered in blood and sweat, his eyes sweep over the exterior of the prison.

They don’t know where the others are. They should have made it out by now, something must have gone wrong.

Daryl thinks about Shane. The last time he’d seen him, the man had pulled the heavy door closed between them. When it happened, Daryl hadn’t even realized that it might have been the last time they would see each other. It hadn’t even crossed his mind while he’d taken his spot at Rick’s right hand during their raid of the generator room.

All winter, Shane had been the one everyone leaned on as Rick drove them through the country side. That silent force and soft touch behind his partner’s orders. Rick’s soundboard and the one who would listen to their suggestions when Rick’s eyes became too dark and his gaze too distant. He always had Rick’s back during arguments but at night, when everyone else was thought to be asleep, Daryl could hear them in the other rooms. Whispered debates which sometimes resulted in one of them storming out only to come back an hour later, calmer and ready to try to come to an agreement again.

Shane had led Carol back to the highway.

Daryl prays that he will do the same thing with Maggie, Lori and Carl.

‘We’re going back,’ Rick states. ‘Daryl and Glenn, you come with –‘

He’s interrupted by the soft cries of a young child.

Everyone turns around.

A door opens.

Maggie comes out first with a small bundle in her arms. Her hands are covered in blood as she holds a child to her chest. Her black hair is framing her pale face, tangled and matted with blood and guts and sweat. There are tears on her face. She takes small, hesitant steps, almost too weak in the knees to go on.

Carl walks right behind her. Eyes down and the gun still in his hands. The sheriff’s hat obscures most of his expression but his hands are bloody too.

Rick slowly walks towards them. The axe he’d been holding slides through his limp fingers and clatters on the concrete. ‘Where – where is she?’ he asks, voice so broken that it hurts to listen to it. He takes a step to the side, then back, afraid to actually approach Maggie and hear the answer.

The woman is sobbing, her broken cries echoed by the baby in her arms.

The door opens again and Shane steps out. He, too, blinks against the sunlight. His eyes are bloodshot, tear tracks on his face. His hands are clean. One of them is still resting on his gun. He looks down at Rick and can barely meet his eye.

Rick pushes past Maggie to get to the door.

‘Rick, no-‘ she cries, trying to grab hold of his arm without jostling the baby too much but he shrugs her off easily.

A few steps away from the stairs, he stops, shoulders drooping. ‘No,’ he croaks, ‘oh no- no, no, no…’

Carl just stands there. He stares at the floor, gaze empty.

Rick’s form crumples, he leans on his own knees as he looks at his son’s face, ‘no,’ he cries, hands going to his hair as he stares up at the sky. ‘Oh God, please no.’

Glenn moves forward to stroke Maggie’s cheek and bring her close, the baby between their heaving chests as Maggie sobs.

‘ _No_ ,’ Rick cries.

When his legs seem to give out, Shane is there to catch him. He guides the wrecked body of his partner to the ground and loops his arms around the smaller shoulders, shocking with grief now. A hand on the dark curls. ‘I’ve got you,’ he murmurs into his best friend’s temple, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rick.’

But Rick just shakes his head and claws at his friend’s shirt, tugging him closer and hiding in his warmth. ‘Please, God,’ he begs, ‘not her. No, _no_.’

Daryl puts his bow down gently and walks over to Carl. He reaches out and takes the gun from him, sliding it back into the boy’s holster. He doesn’t even seem to notice, just stares at Daryl’s boots. He’s not crying. Daryl steps closer still, a little hesitant and unsure. He has never done this before. But he carefully brings his arm up and puts it around the boy's neck, drawing him close for a hug. They just stand there like that for a second. And then Carl’s body seems to come to life. He lunges forward, arms coming up around Daryl’s ribs to hold onto him tightly, the face buried in the other boy’s neck. And then he’s crying. Heaving, broken sobs, fingers digging into Daryl’s flesh.

‘I’ve got ya,’ Daryl murmurs.

It’s not enough. Not nearly enough. But it’s something, at least.

 

 

 


	28. Judith

 

* * *

 

 

The baby is crying.

Small, bloodstained hands wave helplessly as tiny fingers are balled into unhappy fists. Daryl looks over Carl’s shoulder as Maggie transfers the tiny child into the waiting arms of the boy. The kid’s face scrunches up when her brother shifts her a little, curling an arm under her head in order to support it.

‘Let me see the baby,’ Hershel orders.

Carl carries it over to the old man. Daryl nervously dances around his friend, trying to catch glimpses of the baby while also trying to see Hershel’s reaction when the vet finally lays eyes on the screaming bundle

‘What are we gonna feed it?’ Daryl asks. ‘We got anything a baby can eat?’ He’s never really seen a baby before, actually. He might have run past one or two strollers in their local supermarket but he’s never stopped to have a look and he certainly doesn’t know what they eat. Not their food, he knows that, but they don’t have any milk or anything so he’s out of his depth once he crosses off the beans and tuna.

‘The good news is that she looks healthy,’ Hershel says as he inspects the child with gentle hands. He strokes her cheek for a moment. ‘But she needs formula, and soon, or she won’t survive.’

Carl’s head whips up, eyes scared.

Daryl whirls around to look at Rick and Shane. The cops are still sitting on the concrete but Rick seems to be unresponsive now that his crying has stopped. He just stares as the ground while his partner tries to bring him back with gentle words and soft touches.

Then Carl looks at him.

Daryl nods and throws his bow onto his back, ‘nope. No way. Not her. We ain’t losin’ nobody else, I’m going for a run. Anyone gonna give me a ride?’

‘I will,’ Maggie says immediately.

‘I’ll go, too,’ Glenn nods.

‘Okay, think where we’re going,’ Daryl orders as he grabs Beth’s hand to drag her a little ways away. ‘Beth, kid just lost his mom. His dad ain’t doin’ so hot and Shane’s –‘

‘I’ll look out for him,’ she cuts in with a firm nod.

Glenn takes charge. He orders Oscar and Axel to get rid of the walkers by the gate. If too many pile up, they will become a problem. And they don’t need any more of those today.

Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl sees how Rick slowly rises. First, the boy thinks that their leader is going to head over to Carl, to take his daughter into his arms and have a good first look at her, but the cop stoops low and grabs an axe instead. Shane is too slow with getting to his feet. ' _Rick_ ,’ he shouts, struggling to catch up once Rick breaks out into a run. Up the set of stairs and back into the darkness of the prison. He hurls himself after his partner but pauses at the top of the stairs. ‘I got him, you take care of them!’

‘I got them, go!’ Glenn shouts back.

And Shane disappears into the tunnels once more.

‘Get the gates!’ Daryl runs towards the cars, yanking the door of the green car open. It’s the fastest one they have. ‘Come on, we’re gonna lose the light!’

There’s a brief discussion about where they should start looking. A lot of the places they came across on their way here had been looted already. The baby sections had been cleared out. There’s a place up North, some kind of shopping mall but they’ll have to take the long way around in order to avoid the roads that are littered with debris. Not for the first time, Daryl misses Merle. Only this time for his motorcycle. With that thing, they could have cut right through the middle, made a beeline for the damn place and be back before nightfall. Now, he’s not so sure that they’ll make it back in time. Maggie seems to have the same fears. She takes the driver’s seat but grabs Glenn’s wrist to prevent him from getting in too. ‘You stay,’ she says.

The Korean opens his mouth to protest.

‘No,’ his girlfriend cuts in, ‘if something happens here… they need you. Look after Beth and daddy. Carl. Let me do this for Lori. I have to.’

Glenn looks torn but still nods. He leans in to kiss her goodbye. ‘I love you,' he whispers. ‘Be safe. Dare?’

‘I’ve got her back,’ Daryl says quickly.

‘Knife, bow, holler.’

‘Yeah, yeah, close the damn door, we gotta go!’

‘ _Promise me_.’

‘We promise,’ Maggie says as she puts a hand on Daryl’s shoulder to calm him, even though she hadn’t seen him snarl and try to lunge for her door to pull it closed. Her fingers find his chest and she pushes him back into his own seat. ‘Get the gate, Glenn.’

 

 

In the end, they don’t make it to the mall. Instead, they find some sort of preschool or kindergarten building on the outskirts of town nearby. Daryl listens to how the glass breaks behind him and Maggie climbs into the building. After a couple of seconds, everything stays quiet and he joins her. She’s already raiding a cupboard when he has a look around the room. Blue walls and play mats on the floor. It used to be quite a cheerful place when it had been running. Smiley’s laugh at him as he slowly walks a circle to take it all in. Glass splinters beneath his boots. One wall is covered with cut-out hands. Some are painted an unnatural color but most are brown or that strange sun-stained white which is supposed to match his own skin tone. He likes the ones that are green better. Maybe, if he’d ever gone to a place like this, his hand would be up on that wall. Green, most likely, or maybe that dark purple color that makes it look almost black. Those look pretty cool, he thinks as he peers at them.

The names of the children are written on the palms of the hands.

Alyssa, one says.

George.

Chester

Veronica.

A scribble he can’t read.

Ty.

Sofie.

He looks away.

‘Next room,’ Maggie whispers as she zips her backpack closed. She follows the boy out into a dark corridor. A flashlight is toggled on, bright light gliding over the wooden panels as Daryl cautiously creeps towards the next rooms, his bow at the ready.

Every room is either a play area or designed as some sort of bedroom. Several small beds are lined up, cots and pens, small blankets have drifted to the floors and are now covered by dust. A window has been blown out or broken in one of the rooms. Dried leaves stick to the floorboards. Some have drifted into the beds, covering the pillows and stuffed animals there. Daryl is thankful that none of the beds are occupied. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he ever saw a walker that young. The girl in the back of the car, the second walker he’d ever taken down, had been young enough to be strapped into a car seat, but a baby? Daryl bites his lower lip.

He walks into one of the rooms. Maggie passes it to go get to the next one.

His hand trails over the small beds, rustling through the leaves until his fingers brush over some textile. He brushes the leaves aside and looks down at a small doll. Soft, made of only textile. A little girl with blonde hair, dressed in a faded yellow dress. It reminds him of the doll Sophia used to carry around. The one he’d found on the bottom of that cliff that almost got him killed. He picks it up. Maybe it’s something the little girl will like.

A faint rattling noise attracts his attention.

He puts the flashlight into his mouth so can grip his bow tighter and sneaks back into the corridor, heading towards the middle room. Maggie approaches from the other side, her knife drawn. She’s just a shadow in the dark but he can see her eyes glint when he moves his flashlight just so.

The room has one of those weird doors that splits at the middle. It always reminds Daryl of a barn. He doesn’t understand why anyone would need that kind of door in the middle of house, but it doesn’t matter. It makes raiding it a lot easier. The noise seems to come from one of the cupboards inside the room. Too small for any walker to fit in.

Daryl opens the lower part of the door and steps inside.

He takes aim.

Maggie opens the cupboard.

It’s just a possum. It snarls viciously just before it’s pierced by a bolt.

Daryl grins around his flashlight. ‘Hello, dinner!’

‘I’m not putting that in my bag.’

‘Bet you’ll put it in your stomach tonight though,’ Daryl leers as he grabs his kill and stuffs it into his own backpack. He watches how the woman opens another cupboard and starts to load several cans into her bag. He tries to read the labels but she moves them too fast. ‘That what we need?’ he asks, squinting up at the girl.

‘Yeah,’ she smiles. ‘Jackpot.’

‘Cool.’

‘I need you to run into the other rooms, grab a bag, _not_ your backpack, and grab all the baby clothes you can find, okay? Diapers, wipes, anything that looks useful to you. Just grab it all and throw it onto the lawn near the window, we’ll grab it on our way back. I’ll worry about the formula. _Hurry_.’

Daryl nods and does as he’s told. It takes him a couple of minutes to find a bag, all he sees are useless plastic bags, too small to really hold anything but then he spots a roll of garbage bags and tears some off before running into the other rooms again. He doesn’t check the clothes for anything. Not for size or fit or what the hell is printed on them. Pink and blue disappears into his black bag. Hell, it won’t make no difference to her, he thinks and he doesn’t have time to be picky.

By the time Maggie comes to find him, he’s thrown two bags out of the window already. Not just clothes, though. He’s also found some bottles, a couple of plastic toys still wrapped, sippy cups, bibs and pacifiers.

‘Good job,’ Maggie praises when she sees his haul. ‘Let’s go. We need to get back.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl climbs through the window first and scans the area. ‘Walker at the car.’

‘Can you get it?’ the woman asks as she clambers out after him.

Daryl nods and lets his backpack fall to the ground before dashing forward, flashing his knife. He needs to jump onto the hood of the car to get to the right height, his boots almost slipping on the metal, but the walker is not expecting him and the knife slides in effortlessly. Daryl follows the walker down and cleans his knife on the woman’s shirt as best as he can before running back to Maggie.

She’s staring at him. ‘ _I meant with you bow_ ,’ she hisses.

‘Didn’t have a bolt in yet.’ Daryl blinks. ‘I took care of it, right?’

Maggie reaches out, grabs his shoulder and jostles him, hard. ‘Don’t _ever_ do that again!’

‘Best let go!’

They glare at each other. Another walker comes shuffling up the path.

‘Get to the car,’ Maggie snarls as she grabs his backpack and dumps it into his waiting arms. She carries the rest of the garbage bags and throws them on the backseat. The walker is not close enough to be a threat to them. The woman slides into the driver’s seat and barely waits until the boy closes his door.

He glares at her.

She glares at the road ahead.

They drive like that for a good half an hour. Silent and angry at each other.

In the end, it’s Maggie who takes a deep breath and caves first. Sick satisfaction causes Daryl to smirk. That’s giving up in his books. He’s lived with Merle long enough to win any glare-competition and he can be silent for however long he likes because Will never did like to talk when they were out on one of their camping trips.

‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie says and she swallows with some difficulty. A trembling hand pushes her dark hair behind her ear. ‘I just – you scared me.’

‘It was just the one.’

‘It was just the one who took out Dale. It was just the one who got T-dog and daddy.’

‘I was careful.’

‘No, you weren’t.’

He hadn’t been, of course, but he’d just wanted to get back to the prison as fast as possible.

‘It takes you two seconds to load your bow,’ Maggie continuous. ‘And I would never send you to kill a walker up close.’ She wipes sweat from her forehead and glares at him some more. ‘Don’t do it again.’

Daryl shrugs moodily and sinks down in his seat so he can put his feet on the dashboard and pluck at the hole in his jeans. His knee is poking out. He runs his fingernail over his skin. It leaves an aching white trail that disappears within seconds.

‘Stop that,’ Maggie bats at his hand.

‘Stop tellin’ me what to do! Damn, mind your own damn business, lady,’ Daryl curls in on himself and bites on his thumb instead. This is the only thing he hates about fighting in a car. There’s no escape. He turns sideways so he doesn’t have to look at Glenn’s girlfriend.

Maggie is silent for a little while. ‘I had to watch Lori die,’ she says. ‘She went into labor while the alarm went off. We hid in some room, Shane, Carl, Lori and I. There were walkers outside, we couldn’t make it back to daddy. She laid down on the floor, started pushing. Something was wrong.’ Daryl glances over his shoulder. Maggie is staring at the road but seeing something else. ‘There was blood and… I tried to see if… if she was ready, you know? But I couldn’t tell, I’d never done it before. They say that your body knows what to do in those kinds of situations, that it’s natural, but there’s nothing natural about having to _watch_. There was nothing I could do for her. I mean, I held her hand and told her everything was going to be fine, but… I knew. We all knew. She said goodbye to Carl. To Rick, in her own way. Carl gave me the knife, I had to cut and…’ Maggie is crying again. She wipes the tears away angrily. ‘She died while we watched. We just _watched_.’

‘Nothing you could have done,’ Daryl murmurs as he turns back a little. ‘Ya did right by her.’

Maggie glances at him.

‘If I die,’ Daryl says, ‘I want people to be watchin’ too.’

‘What?’

The boy shrugs. ‘Means ya cared enough to stick ‘round ‘till the end, right? Means you’ll end me right, too. If something’s shreddin’ me to pieces, or if I’m bit? Want to see a friendly face ‘fore someone pulls the trigger on me. Might not be fair on all y’all having to watch but hell, I’m the one who’d be dyin’. And that ain’t fair neither.’

Maggie flashes him a small smile. ‘No, that would not be fair. I’m sorry I snapped at you. You did really good back at the prison. I just don’t know what we would do without you. Me and Glenn? And Shane, of course.’

‘Stop sayin’ that like I’m gonna be six feet under tomorrow,’ Daryl grouses. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘We lost so many people today.’

‘Yeah, but we got a new one, too,’ Daryl says and he can’t help but let a smile tug the corners of his mouth up. ‘So weird. Like, a _baby_ , you know?’

‘You’ve never been around babies before?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl shifts so he’s looking at the young woman again. ‘Thought they’d be small, but she’s kinda big,’ he looks down at his hands and wiggles his fingers.

Maggie glances at the movement and snorts, ‘what? You thought she’d fit in the palm of your hand?’

‘Everyone always said babies were _small_!’

‘Relatively speaking!’

‘What?’

‘Compared to something similar,’ Maggie explains.

‘Like other babies? You sayin’ she’s just a big-ass baby, is all?’

Maggie tilts her head back to laugh, ‘no! Oh my God, no.’

Daryl sniggers and shifts so he’s curled up on his side against the seat. He watches how her hands are slacking on the steering wheel, no longer white with pressure, more relaxed now that she’s smiling and he’s happy he caused that. He thinks about their day, the people they’ve lost. He still can’t quite wrap his head around that.

Lori. T-dog. Carol.  

It hurts. More like it had done with Dale, maybe, if he can even measure the one hurt against the other. But he thinks about Carl, about his friend who’d broken down in his arms, crying until he could barely breathe, and knows that it hurts more because he’s hurting for more people. For Lori, because she’s dead. But also for Rick who hadn’t been there to help or even watch. And for Carl, who had been.

It feels weird, because he’s happy that the baby is here, but it does nothing to soothe the pain.

And T-dog, who had been his friend, too. The large man, a gentle giant around the skittish Dixon boy, who would always have a crooked smile for him when he needed it.

And Carol, of course. She’s stranger to miss because they had been keeping their distance a little bit ever since they lost Sophia, but he knows her. Knew her. And she knew him without having to be around all the time. Whenever Shane lost his patience and Glenn didn’t know what to do with him, she would be there with a stern or kind word, whichever one he’d needed at the time.

He hates that they’re gone. A new wave of sadness is rolling through his body, starting somewhere low in his gut and almost making him sick with it. He watches Maggie’s fingers tap on the steering wheel. Slowly, as not to spook her, he reaches out. Hesitant fingers on the tapping ones. Maggie looks at him sharply for a second, probably wondering what he’s doing, but the sharpness fades into curiosity. He doesn’t initiate contact much. Mostly he just leans on Shane’s broad shoulders when the guy is sitting around the campfire, or he punches Rick on the arm when the cop is teasing him again, but now he lets his fingers drift over Maggie’s hand.

She turns it over, palm up.

He slides theirs hands together, finger intertwining, and holds on tightly.

She smiles as she lets their hand slide off the steering wheel and rest on the console between them. Another glance at him. ‘Try to get some sleep now. It’s still a couple of hours before we get back to the prison. It’ll be dark.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl murmurs as he reluctantly lets go of her hand.

The car slows a little bit as Maggie reaches out to brush his hair out of his eyes. Then it speeds up again.

 

 

‘Beth!’ Maggie summons her little sister to help as she runs towards the kitchen area in order to get the bottle ready for the baby.

Carl is still holding her. He’s sitting at one of the tables, clearly unsure of what to do now that his little sister won’t stop crying.

Daryl jumps into the common room and throws his bag and bow onto the floor. ‘How’s she doin’?’ he asks but he’s a little surprised when Carl gets up to hand the baby to him. Of course he accepts her, curling an arm around her head to support it like he’d seen the other boy do earlier. Big, blue eyes glance up at Carl.

‘She won’t stop crying,’ his friend says a little helplessly, ‘and…’ His own eyes are filling up with tears again.

‘Ssh,’ Daryl shushes the girl as he sways a little on the spot. The girl stops crying for a second when she notices that somebody else is holding her, but it doesn’t change much in the end. She just starts back up again. Beth appears with the bottle at his side and gives it to him. ‘Erm,’ Daryl brings it to the girl’s lips after an encouraging nod from the blond girl. ‘Come on,’ he encourages under his breath, ‘come on now.’ She latches on and drinks greedily. She’s quiet. Daryl looks up at Glenn and laughs, amazed.

The Korean smiles back.

‘She got a name yet?’ Daryl asks her brother.

‘No,’ Carl shakes his head as he falls back into his sea, ‘not yet. I was thinking… Maybe Sophia?’

The boy lists the names of the death and ends with his mother’s.

Daryl looks down at the small girl in his arms and thinks that a dead girl’s name will never suit her. ‘Yeah,’ he breathes, ‘ya like that? Huh? Little ass-kicker.’ He looks at the rest of the group with a grin on his face, ‘right?’ he asks. ‘That’s a good name, right?’

A door behind them opens.

Daryl turns around slower than the rest of the group because he’s scared of losing his grip on the little girl and her bottle.

Rick is standing on the top of the stairs. The axe is still in his right hand, blood dripping from it and falling noisily on the concrete. It creates a puddle next to his boots. The eyes are still haunted, forever changed by the loss he has suffered, but he scans the little group to find his son and the shoulders relax a fraction. He’s fidgeting with his left hand. His thumb rubs over his wedding band and a new ring that has joined it. Covered in blood, the gold barely visible, but Daryl knows that it used to be Lori’s ring. The cop take a wobbly step down but needs to stop immediately. He reaches out to grab hold of the railing, losing his grip on the axe in the process. It clatters onto the floor.

Everyone flinches.

‘Easy, brother,’ comes the rumbled reassurance of Shane, who steps out after him and closes the door behind them. There’s blood all over him.

Rick nods. He takes a deep breath and then scans the group again. His gaze lands on Daryl. Or rather, on the little girl in his arms. A trembling hand come up to press against his own heart and then his mouth, hiding the small sob when he sees his own daughter, properly, for the first time. Blue eyes flicker up to meet Daryl’s. Rick swallows, licks his lips and then says: ‘Are you already corrupting my baby girl, Dixon?’

‘He’s calling her ass-kicker,’ Carl says with a little laugh.

‘Is he now?’ Rick asks as he slowly makes his way down the stairs.

‘Rat,’ Daryl accuses Carl. ‘Anyway, I think she deserves her own name, you know? But whatever, ‘s your blood, so…’

‘What should we really call her?’ Carl asks his dad.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Rick pauses at the bottom of the stairs to look at his son.

‘Remember my third grade teacher, Mrs. Mueller?’

‘Of course,’ the father nods but Daryl can spot a liar a mile away and Rick has no idea who Carl is talking about.

‘Her first name was Judith,’ Carl continues. ‘Do you think that’s a good name?’

‘I- I think that’s a fine name,’ Rick says. Then he glances at Daryl again, ‘what do you think? Better than ass-kicker?’

Daryl hides his surprised expression by looking down at the little girl in his arms. She’s still happily sucking on the bottle. Tiny fists bump into it occasionally. Daryl’s not sure whether she’s trying to hold onto it or bump it out of her way. Maybe she doesn’t really know either. ‘Sounds like a real good name,’ he nods.

‘Judith it is,’ Rick decides. He slowly walks towards the Dixon boy, eyes on his daughter. The girl wriggles in his arms. ‘You gotta – ‘ Rick starts and then waves at the bottle, ‘you gotta tilt the bottle a bit more, it’s –‘ he falters, hand going back to his heart, pain flashing across his face. The wedding band leaves bloody stains on his shirt.

Daryl steps closer to him, ‘can you do it? I don’t wanna mess up.’ He looks up at the father. ‘Can you take her? Please?’

Rick swallows with some difficulty. Then he lowers his hands. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers hoarsely. ‘Yeah, ‘course. Come here, girl.’ He takes his daughter from the boy and then accepts the bottle too. Tears are slowly dripping down his cheeks, into the rough beginnings of his beard. ‘Judith. Hi.’ He leans down to kiss her forehead. ‘Look at you. Oh my God.’

Carl beams at his father and steps closer so he can lean against his wiry frame. Hand on his father’s gun belt, eyes on his little sister.

Daryl takes a step back. His gaze finds Shane, who is leaning against the wall near the staircase. Dark eyes on the broken family. He’s pale, jittery. There’s sweat running down his neck. He’s not crying. A hand rests on his gun, the stance that’s been drilled into him by the academy. After a minute, he notices Daryl’s gaze on him. The corner of his mouth curls up in a tired smile.

Daryl walks over to him. ‘Ya okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane breathes. ‘You?’

‘Yeah. Kinda.’

The cop nods his understanding.

Daryl steps up in front of him, then turns around and leans back against that broad chest. Strong arms wrap around him, one hand over the boy’s heart, and Shane’s chin on the top of Daryl’s head. ‘Glad you’re here,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Thanks for looking after Maggie and getting the formula.’

‘Teamwork.’

The arms tighten around Daryl. Shane breathes him in. ‘I love you.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says as he brings his hands up to hold on to Shane’s forearms, just like he’d always done when Will held him close. It doesn’t feel the same, however. He looks up at the cop. ‘Same.’

 

 

 


	29. Tallulah

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl listens to Carl’s slow breathing inside their cell. It’s dark, the rest of the prison is mostly silent. There’s soft clanging coming from the depths, walkers pushing against half-closed doors somewhere far away, but they don’t have to worry about them just yet. Tomorrow they will sweep the lower levels. They will burn the bodies. Bury their own dead, or what’s left of them.

After a while, Daryl sits up in the darkness.

He can’t sleep.

He’s so tired but he still can’t sleep.

With a grunt, he kicks his poncho aside and climbs down the steps to land next to Carl’s bed. The boy is curled up on his side, face buried into a filthy pillow and fingers twisted in his sheets. He’s still wearing his clothes and shoes but the gun belt is on the floor next to him. Within reach. The sheriff’s hat hangs from a little hook on the wall opposite their beds.

Daryl slips out of their cell and thanks the stars that they never lock it or close it. It creaks and would have woken his friend up.

He hopes that Glenn is on guard duty. Maybe he will let him sit with him in the guard tower for the time being. Daryl has his own shift in the morning, but that won’t matter. Ever since the winter, he’s been given shifts. Instead of four hours, he will only have to be on for two and never during the night, but it’s something. It makes him feel like he’s helping out.

Soon he will help them change their minds about the night-routine. He likes the night shifts, so quiet and serene. He never gets scared like Beth, or bored like Carl. He can sit there for hours and not move a muscle while still being vigilant.

The mornings are for hunting, he thinks. He can’t go whenever he’s on guard duty.

They’ll break their policy when they get hungry enough, he supposes.

Moonlight guides him down the stairs and into the common room. There, he’s surprised by the soft glow of candles. He hesitates on the threshold.

Rick and Shane are sitting at one of the tables. Legs out in front of them, shoulder to shoulder. Rick has his head tilted back, eyes closed. He brings one hand up to drag it over his face, wedding bands gleaming in the soft light.

‘- old truck. The one with the busted windshield.’

Rick nods and croaks; ‘yeah, I remember.’

‘Was all busted up but I bought it,’ Shane says with a soft laugh.

‘Worthless piece of shit, it was.’

‘Hey,’ the cop looks sharply at his partner. ‘I drove your ass around town, didn’t I? First guys from our year to get a car. Man, I made us the hottest guys on the block.’

‘Acne riddled in a car with a busted windshield,’ Rick answers but he’s smiling. ‘Remember how, when you picked me up, you had to wait one block over because my mom-‘

‘Your mom thought I was going to get us both killed with that piece of shit,’ Shane nods, ‘yeah, I remember. What was she thinking anyway, that we were walking to school every day?’

‘Taking the bus,’ Rick laughs softly. ‘I’d told her we were taking the bus.’

‘Well, your mom was a right sweetheart but the brains must have come from your pops then.’

‘Nah,’ Rick shakes his head, ‘she knew. ‘course she knew. Sometimes you see things, right? As a parent. You see things happen and you think; that’s going to blow up in your face, son, but… I don’t know. Sometimes you just gotta let it happen, I guess. I mean, it was a one horse town and you were a good driver. She probably thought the engine was going to give out or something. That we’d learn our lesson by paying for all those damn repairs.’

‘We didn’t though,’ Shane smirks.

‘No, we didn’t. We worked all summer to get that money for that new engine block. Shit. Remember that shady guy who made us-‘

‘- the one with the red cap and that – fuck, yeah, I remember him. That was one shady ass job we did, man,’ Shane laughs. ‘I don’t know what we delivered but I was shitting my pants the entire time.’

Rick snorts. ‘Was stupid.’

‘Got the job done,’ Shane counters. ‘We drove all the way out to the Grand Canyon. I felt like the king of the world.’

Rick stretches and slumps in his seat. ‘It was the best road trip I ever had. We tried doing it, you know, me, Lori and Carl. He was just a baby and he got sick on the way there. Never made it.’

‘See? That’s what happens. I kept warning you but you were all wife, house, kids. Domestic, man,’ Shane shoots him a grin and bumps their shoulders together. ‘You were changing diapers while I was off trying to fuck a girl from every state. I had a list and everything.’

‘Yeah, I loved that,’ Rick admits. ‘Wife, house, kids. Church on Sundays, that dumb book club she was into on Thursday nights.’ He sighs and looks at the ceiling again. ‘We were thinking about having another kid, you know? Before. But… Well, you know how we were. A kid shouldn’t be the thing that fixes your marriage. Fuck,’ Rick drags another hand over his face. ‘Can’t believe she’s gone, man. Every time I close my eyes, it’s just… She’s all I see. Staring at me. _Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you check whether Andrew was dead in the first place?_ I heard him scream, man, I know I did and-‘

‘I know, I know,’ Shane hushes him. ‘There was nothing you could have done. I’m sorry, you know I am, but there’s another lady who needs you now. Don’t you, missy?’

Daryl steps to the side so he leans against the other doorpost. Only now can he see Judith, who is in Shane’s lap, sound asleep. The cop is stroking her head, fingers brushing over the few strands of blonde hair there.

Rick nods. He aims a soft kick at his partner’s boot. ‘You’re gonna stick around, right? I know it’s… I don’t know. With Lori and you and… I can’t….’

‘I’m gonna stick around,’ Shane agrees. ‘Look after your sorry ass,’ he grins at his partner. ‘And Carl. And your daughter. Here,’ he carefully transfers Judith back to her father’s lap. ‘I might need to take some lessons with you though.’

‘What kind of lessons?’ Rick frowns as he lets his daughter rest against his shoulder.

‘How to get twelve year olds to stay in bed,’ Shane says before he looks at the doorway.

Daryl stares back at him, eyes wide at being caught listening in.

‘Well,’ Rick grins, ‘I wouldn’t know any kind of trick to lure that one back into bed. You see, I never have that kind of problem because mine is so well-behaved it’s just-‘

‘You mean; Lori raised him right and I didn’t fuck him up too bad, right? ‘cause that’s what happened and you know it, brother.’ Shane smirks and then turns back to Daryl. ‘What’s up, Dare? Need anything?’

Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand and shuffles his feet a bit. ‘Couldn’t sleep. Is Glenn on watch?’

‘Yeah,’ Shane gets up and stretches. ‘You know what? Grab your poncho and pillow, your bow, knife, gun and come back. You can sit with him, but you’re going to let me walk you to the tower. And you’re going to try to get some sleep while you’re up there. Maggie is up after Glenn, so you can just stay up there until breakfast. Deal?’

‘Deal,’ Daryl says quickly.

Rick chuckles and stands up, clapping his brother on the shoulder. ‘You don’t need any lessons, man. You’re a natural.’

 

 

Glenn is quiet as his eyes roam over the forest behind the fence. A couple of walkers are ambling through the tall grass below them. Sometimes their shoulders will knock against the chain link. The sound echoes through the night. There are not enough of them to cause a problem. In the morning, Daryl will help Axel by grabbing a long metal rod and poking the walkers in the eye and so clear the fence for a little while. But now, the boy is huddled in a corner of the watchtower. The poncho is wrapped tightly around his shoulders. It’s colder up here than it had been in the cell with Carl, but he doesn’t mind that. Silver moonlight illuminates the small room.

Glenn is just a silhouette, one hand raised, splayed out against the glass, as he leans against it in order to look down at the walkers near the gate. Every once in a while he will step outside and walk the landing, checking every side of their tower before coming back in. It’s a little warmer inside than it is out.

‘Are you okay?’ the Korean asks.

‘Fine,’ Daryl mumbles as he ducks his head lower, pressing his nose into his poncho.

‘How’s Carl holding up?’

‘He’s a’right. You know…’ the boy shrugs. ‘Sad.’

‘Maybe you should talk to him,’ Glenn says as he turns a little so he can look at the boy sitting behind him. His skin is eerily pale in the moonlight. ‘You lost your mom, too, right?’

‘Everyone’s lost their mom these days.’

‘I meant before. It was just you and Will who came to the quarry, but you didn’t lose her on the way there. You weren’t sad. It happened a long time ago, right?’

Daryl wraps his arms around his legs, ‘what the fuck do you know?’ he snipes. ‘Maybe she just left our sorry asses behind. _My_ sorry ass, just like dad did.’

‘Did she?’

‘No.’

Glenn turns back to the forest. Fingers on the cold glass again, tracing the tiny metal wires inside of it. His breath ghosts around him, disappearing into thin air. The edge of the world is already turning that promising gray of the approaching dawn. It won’t be long until their world is made of color again.

Daryl bites on his fingernail. He rubs at his nose, shivers and then settles down again. Ducking down deeper into his own warmth, he plucks at his poncho. ‘Ya know, my mom,’ he starts, ‘she liked her wine. ‘s what people told me at least, I don’t remember her much. Not too bad though, not like Will did his moonshine later, but, ya know…. She liked to smoke in bed, too. Virginia Slims.’

The Korean lets his shoulder rest against the window so he can glance at both the forest and the boy on the cold floor.

‘I was playin’ outside with the kids in the neighborhood,’ Daryl continues. ‘I could do that with Merle gone. They had bikes, I didn’t. We heard sirens gettin’ louder. They jumped on their bikes, raced after the sound, you know, hopin’ to see something worth seein’. I ran after them, but I couldn’t keep up. Ran around the corner and saw my friends lookin’ at me. Hell, I saw everybody lookin’ at me.’ He lets his head thud back against the metal behind him and avoids the look that Glenn is giving him. Even in this lighting, he can see the pity in those dark eyes. The fear of how this story will end. ‘Fire trucks everywhere. People from the neighborhood. It was my house they were there for. That was my mom in bed, burnt down to nothing. That was the hard part, ya know. She was just _gone_. Erased. Nothing left of her.’ Daryl bites on his nail again. ‘People said it was better that way.’ He gives a soft chuckle and shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. Just made it seem like it weren’t real, you know? Don’t even remember her properly. Hell, maybe she weren’t ever really there.’

‘It was an accident?’ Glenn asks. ‘The fire?’

Daryl feels something twist inside his chest. His breath catches as his mind reels with the sudden possibility that it hadn’t been an accident at all. He feels sick. _Opted out_ , Jenner leers in the back of his mind. He’d never even considered that option before all this.

‘Shit,’ Glenn mutters when he catches the look on Daryl’s face. ‘I’m sorry.’

Daryl bites on his lips.

‘Do you still have her picture in your pack?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl ducks back into the warmth of his poncho.

‘You said you’d show it to me. You never did.’

‘Didn’t exactly have a chance with people dyin’ all the damn time!’

‘Daryl,’ Glenn says softly but sternly, cutting down the rage that’s building up in the boy. ‘I said I was sorry. I’m sure it was an accident and I’m sorry you lost her like that. That you lost her at all. Did you bring your pack with you?’

‘Ain’t gonna show ya nothing.’

‘Dare,’ Glenn sighs.

‘I’m tryin’ to sleep,’ the boy grouses as he curls up in a little ball, head on his pack and face hidden by his poncho.

 

 

‘Her name was Tallulah.’

Glenn’s head whips up to look at the boy who is leaning against his cell door. There’s a picture frame in his hands, fingertips going white on the glass. Dark hair hides the boy’s eyes as he looks at it. Pale lips curl around his teeth, almost gone as he bites down on them. His jaw works. 

‘Your mom?’

Daryl nods. He glances at his best friend and then back at the photograph before he steps into the cell and holds the picture out.

Glenn takes it.

The woman in the picture couldn’t be anyone else, really. The mixture of dirty blond hair is longer, flowing past her shoulders and curling at the ends, just like Daryl’s does when it’s wet. She’s thin but healthy looking, a blush on her cheeks and mouth slightly open as if she’s mid-laughter. Her eyes are bigger than those of her youngest son. Open and shining even in the faded picture. Just as blue as Daryl’s, though. There’s a beauty mark on her cheek. She’s not stunningly pretty but there’s a warmth in her smile that makes Glenn think that she’s just like her son. Quiet and observant.

‘That’s a pretty name,’ Glenn murmurs as he sits down on his bunk. ‘Uncommon.’

‘It’s an old name,’ Daryl says as he gingerly sits down next to his friend. ‘Indian or something. She…’ He rubs at his nose, ‘Merle used to tell these stories, like, about Indians. Said she’d told them to him when he was small.’

‘Native Americans,' the man corrects. 'Do you know what it means? Tallulah?’

‘Leapin’ water.’

Glenn nods and smiles at the boy. ‘She’s pretty.’

Daryl shrugs and bites on his lips again. ‘Everyone said she was good people.’

‘How old were you when she died?’

‘Dunno. Six, seven maybe? Merle was in juvie when it happened. ‘s why I could play with them other kids. He used to scare them off with his big mouth. They let him out though, so he could help with the funeral and shit. Don’t know he did, but, ya know… Was glad he were around.’

‘You remember the funeral?’

‘Not really. Just remember being sad. And Merle was there. I remember clingin’ to his hand, scared that he’d go away too. He was a good sport about it. Normally he’d tell me to piss off after a while, used to get sick of me, but he didn’t that day.’ Daryl brings his fingers to his mouth and nibbles on the nail of his thumb. ‘There were all these people from the neighborhood. They kept sayin’ they were sorry ‘nd everything. Tried talkin’ to me. Didn’t like that none. He took care of ‘em.’

Glenn nods his understanding. ‘What about Will?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘He got us a place to stay for a little while. The fire had damaged the house pretty bad, didn’t have any money to rebuild it or nothing so… Got us a trailer eventually. People are always sayin’ he’s bad people, right? But my mom married him. He weren’t always like that.’

‘No?

‘Nah. He just… I don’t know.’

‘He didn’t… hurt you before your mom…?’

Daryl cringes a little. ‘No. Don’t think so. I remember the first time he did it. Think he was as shocked as I were. Just stood there. Said he were sorry after. He didn’t mean to do it, ya know? Just happened.’

‘Those things don’t just _happen_.’

‘Do,’ Daryl disagrees. ‘He were real upset about it, too. His daddy… Said his daddy had done the same thing to him. Used a rod. I’ve seen them scars,’ Daryl nods. He’s looking at the tips of his boots and refuses to meet Glenn’s eye. ‘Didn’t wanna be like his old man, he said. That he’d tried but… He were. Can’t escape your blood.’ Glenn reaches out carefully and puts an arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘Never used a rod on me, though,’ Daryl says with a small smile as he looks up at his friend. ‘My scars ain’t that bad. Had to learn, right?’

‘Not like that.’

‘Don’t matter how.’

‘Of course it does,’ Glenn breathes before he presses a kiss to Daryl’s temple.

Daryl bumps him away with his shoulder. ‘How’d _you_ learn then?’

‘By not getting ice cream for dessert. Or my parents would take the keyboard from my computer away so I couldn’t use it anymore.’

‘Well, we never had no ice cream and didn’t have a computer neither,’ Daryl laughs as he takes the photograph back. ‘So I had to learn another way, right?’

‘Right,’ Glenn echoes but it sounds hallow and fake.

 

 

Shane dug the grave.

Carl made the cross.

And Rick holds their baby girl close to his chest while he looks down at his wife’s final resting place.

It feels strange to stand there with that broken family unit. Daryl is next to Beth, hiding a little behind her because he’s not sure what to do or say. She seems perfectly fine with just witnessing the whole ordeal, however. The blonde hair is up in a high ponytail. It swings gently in the breeze.

Rick says a few words but can’t manage a whole speech. He cries, sinking to his knees in front of the grave while his son leans on his shoulder as they say goodbye.

Shane stands a little to the side and decides it’s not his place to say anything about the woman they both loved, in their own ways.

It’s Maggie who talks about how Lori was. As a mother, not just to Carl but to the whole group, and as a fighter, proud beside her husband and fierce in her own right. How she’d loved her little boy. All those long nights at his bedside back at the farm, that long winter with a new life growing inside of her, and how she’d longed for spring to come.

Hershel says a few words, too. About a mother’s love and the importance of family. He cites the bible, knowing the words by heart.

After that, everyone is silent for a long while. Lost in their own thoughts and way of mourning.

Rick gets up. Stiff limbs and red eyes, but he gets up and kisses his daughter. ‘We named her Judith,’ he tells his wife. ‘I hope you like it.’ He glances at his son, ‘we fought for months over what to call you. She thought all the names I came up with were stupid or old fashioned.’

‘That’s why you let me choose?’ Carl gives him a hesitant smile.

‘That’s why I let you choose,’ Rick nods, lips twitching.

Carl ducks his head a little and looks back at the grave. ‘Bye, mom,’ he whispers before turning on the spot and marching back to the prison.

Hershel, Beth, Maggie and Glenn hurry to follow him.

Shane turns too.

‘Brother,’ Rick croaks, eyes still on his wife’s grave. ‘I need to know.’

‘You already know,’ Shane responds as he shifts, a little uncomfortable. ‘We kept to the pact. Nobody turns.’

‘ _Who_?’ Rick demands to know, grip on his daughter tight. ‘Maggie?’

‘No, man…’

‘ _Carl_?’ Rick’s voice breaks on the name.

‘Of course not,’ Shane snaps and then closes his eyes, calming himself. ‘I did it.’

‘How?’

Shane opens his eyes again and looks at his brother. ‘Maggie had to do the C-section, something had gone wrong. She was losing too much blood. She died. Maggie got the baby out, got her to breathe. Carl wrapped her in his vest and… I sent them outside to wait in the hallway. Shot her. I couldn’t do it with the knife, man, it was too… I shot her in the head.’

Rick takes a step towards him. A trembling hand grabs hold of his shirt, fingers twisting in the fabric as the cop pulls his partner close. For a second, Shane looks like he’s steeling himself for a sucker-punch. But then the shoulders relax and he brings an arm up to draw Rick in. He lets his brother cry on his shoulder.

‘Thank you,’ the smaller cop says, voice wrecked and shaken.

 ‘I’m sorry, Rick. I’m so goddamn _sorry_.’

Daryl turns on his heels and slowly walks away.

At the entrance of the prison, Glenn is talking to Axel and Oscar.

‘Hey, Dare,’ the Korean says when the boy comes closer. ‘I’m taking Maggie to go on a run for some more formula. Oscar and Axel are going to sweep the lower levels. Can you join them?’

‘Whatever.’

Glenn glances at him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine,’ Daryl mutters. He looks at the two prisoners, ‘lemme just go ‘nd grab some more bolts, okay? Meet you at the locked doors.’

 

 

He sits on the ground for a very long time, in front of the cell that holds the last walker. The one that’s been making the clanging noise all night. The sound haunts through the rest of the lower levels. He can faintly hear Oscar and Axel who are just around the corner. They’re still arguing about whether they should leave the boy behind in the darkness of the prison. Axel is pretty scared of Shane and says that they’re not allowed to talk to his kid. Oscar argues that they’ve just cleared a whole floor, just the three of them, and staying with him until they all get back safely is the least they can do.

In the end, the conversation just drives Daryl mad.

He listens but tries to think about nothing. Not about Lori who died in one of these rooms, not about T-dog’s ripped up body they had to drag out earlier, not about Carol who is just gone.

He lets the knife he’s found snag on the concrete, again and again and again. It was her weapon. Carol’s. He’d recognize anyone’s knife anywhere. Hers is small. Better suited for his hand than a grown-woman’s, but he has the biggest knife of them all. World’s unfair like that, he supposes. Maybe if she’d had a bigger one, she wouldn’t have missed.

The door clangs in front of him.

With an angry snarl, he gets up and kicks the door closed. He walks away, back towards Oscar and Axel who are quiet after his outburst.

_Y_ _a let a damn opossum bleed to death after a messy hit from one of yar bolts, huh? Nah, man, ya kill it good and put the vermin out of its misery. Same here. Do what needs to be done._

He stops. Will’s ghost haunts him but at least the man was right about that; that used to be someone. A son or father, an uncle maybe. A wife or husband, perhaps a sister or daughter. Whatever they were, he’s supposed to end it when he has the chance. And he has the chance now.

He stalks back to the door, breathes a couple of times and grips Carol’s knife to take some vengeance. There’s a walker in front of the door. It’s what’s been keeping it shut. He puts the knife between his teeth and, with a grunt, he drags the body out of the way. Knife back in his hand, he rips the door open.

Carol turns to look at him. Dazed, filthy, but so alive that her eyes shine when she finally realizes that it’s him.

He sinks to his knees beside her, reaches out with a free hand to cup her chin clumsily. ‘Hey,’ he breathes, a smile creeping onto his face. ‘I got ya.’ Then he turns on his heels, leaning out of the cell. Carol makes a distressed noise, afraid that he’s going to leave her, but he doesn’t. ‘Oscar!’ he calls out because the man is big and strong, more than capable of lifting Carol’s frail body. ‘Oscar, come over here! Gimme a hand.’

The prisoner comes lumbering back, machete at the ready, but he lowers it when he sees the woman. ‘Oh my God,’ he says as he takes Daryl’s place, puts his arms under her knees and back to lift her up.

‘Careful,’ Daryl warns. ‘Real gentle, okay?’

Oscar gives him a fond smile. ‘I got her, kid. Get the door for me.’

 

 

He doesn’t know that somewhere not too far away, Glenn is being forced to drive a car while Maggie cries in the back seat, a southern drawl telling him where to go.

He doesn’t know that somewhere far closer, Rick is leaning against the fence and looking at a woman with dreadlocks who is carrying a basket filled with formula.

He just knows that Carol made it.

 

 


	30. The switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When your roommate tells you; 'ooh, man, I've never seen you look so unhappy while editing', you know you need to rewrite that chapter.
> 
> This is the new version. It's three pages longer than the old one. I figured y'all wouldn't mind much.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for all the comments. They always make my day.

 

 

* * *

 

 

‘Rick.’ Daryl walks into the common area outside of the cellblock to see a woman on the ground, Rick towering over her. Her dreadlocks are splayed out around her head like a halo. Blood is dripping onto the floor from her thigh. Her eyes are wild and scared as she looks at the boy who’d just called out to attract the leader’s attention. Daryl frowns. ‘Who the hell is this?’

Rick turns back to the woman, holding her down with one hand. ‘You wanna tell us your name?’ She doesn’t answer. ‘You wanna tell us your name?’ Rick asks again, softer now, almost a whisper between them but dark and filled with even darker promises.

‘Y’all come on in here,’ Daryl says when it’s clear that the woman is going to keep her mouth shut. He glances at Hershel, Carl, Shane and Beth who are standing on the other side of the sheriff.

‘Everything all right?’ Shane asks so Rick won’t have to.

‘You’re going to want to see this,’ Daryl smirks, a hint of pride in the way he lets his shoulders roll back.

‘Go ahead,’ Rick nods at his brother. ‘Carl, get the bag.’ The rest files out while Rick stands guard, eyes never leaving the woman on the ground. Carl slips past Daryl with a basket full of formula and strange bag. Shane is the last, after Hershel limps out too. He shares a soundless high-five with the Dixon boy as he passes.

‘We’ll keep this safe and sound,’ Rick tells the woman with a nod at her weapon. ‘The doors are all locked. You’ll be safe here. And we can treat that.’

Daryl doesn’t know what they’re supposed to treat. He can’t see any wounds from where he’s standing but he supposes that the blood must come from somewhere.

‘I didn’t ask for your help,’ the woman says, looking angry.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rick shrugs. ‘Can’t let you leave,’ he says as he puts his hands on Daryl’s shoulders to steer him back into the safety of the cellblock, locking the door behind the both of them. ‘What’ve you got?’ he asks the boy when the key turns.

Daryl grins and leads the way to Carol’s cell.

When the sheriff spots the woman, he freezes. Blue eyes going wide and wet instantly, hands trembling slightly when he reaches for her. Carol lifts herself up but has to cling to him for support, wrapping her arms around his neck.

‘Thank God,’ Rick breathes, ‘oh, thank God.’

‘How?’ Hershel asks as he limps forward to claim the next hug.

‘Solitary,’ Carol laughs into his shoulder.

Daryl leans against the doorpost. ‘Poor thing fought her way into a cell. Musta passed out. Dehydrated. I found her. Oscar carried her back here for me.’

The moment Carol spots Judith in Beth’s arms, she knows. One hand comes up to Rick’s chest, turning him back towards her as his eyes fill with tears again. He nods. Carol cries when the leader bows his head to hide his own crying. She cups his face, fingers stroking the rough beard there as she whispers to him how sorry she is.

Shane steps forward to rest his hands on Carl’s shoulders, drawing the boy into his space and letting him know that he’s there for him. The boy is crying too.

Daryl scuffs his boots on the metal of the doorpost. He knows they’re happy that Carol made it back to them but he also understand the blow of having to tell someone they love that Lori isn’t here anymore. The wound keeps being ripped open again and again and again. He supposes it will never heal.

It takes the group a little while to get settled again. Carol needs lots of rest and water. Carl and Beth will look after her while Shane, Rick and Hershel take Daryl back out to talk to the woman again. She’s no longer on the floor. Instead, she’s sitting at one of the round tables with a piece of clean cloth pressed against the wound on her thigh.

‘We can tend to that wound for you,’ Rick says as he strides in, all calm authority while Shane looms behind him. ‘Give you a little food and water, and then send you on your way, but you’re gonna have to tell us how you found us and why you were carrying formula.’

‘The supplies were dropped by a young Asian guy with a pretty girl.’

Daryl’s ears ring. He stops seeing things, just stands there holding his bow, mouth slightly open as the news registers.

‘What happened?’ Rick asks, somewhere far away.

‘Were they attacked?’ Hershel asks.

‘They were taken,’ the woman answers.

‘Taken? By who?’

‘By the same son of a bitch who shot me.’

‘Hey,’ Rick crouches down in front of her to catch her eye. ‘These are our people. You tell us what happened, _now_.’ He strikes like a rattlesnake. One hand shooting out to press hard against her bullet wound.

Pain flashes over her features as she struggles to stand up. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again!’

Daryl raises his bow. ‘Ya better start talking or you’re gonna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound!’

‘Whoa, whoa,’ Shane steps forward to drag his brother back a couple of steps, out of the woman’s space. Then he puts a hand on Daryl’s bow, careful and insistent. ‘Lower it, Dare. Step back. _Back_.’

Daryl snarls, wrinkling his nose and drawing his lips back to flash blunt teeth at the girl in anger but he steps back all the same. The bow is lowered until it aims at the ground again.

‘Find them yourself,’ the woman sneers at the boy.

‘You came here for a reason,’ Shane says, stepping closer and claiming her attention. She won’t look at him.

‘There’s a town,’ she say after a moment, clearly forcing herself to talk. ‘Woodbury. About 75 survivors. I think they were taken there.’

‘A whole town?’

She nods. ‘It’s run by this guy who calls himself the Governor. Pretty boy, charming, Jim Jones type.’

‘He got muscle?’ Rick asks.

The woman leans against the fence next to her to keep the pressure off her leg. ‘Paramilitary wannabes. They have armed sentries on every wall.’

‘You know a way in?’ Shane asks, tilting his head to the side a little.

Again, she nods. ‘The place is secure from walkers, but we could slip our way through.’

Rick sniffs behind Shane and shifts his weight, looking doubtful. Eyes narrowed, he asks, ‘how did you know how to get here?’

‘They mentioned a prison,’ the woman answers and she makes it sound like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Said which direction it was in, said it was a straight shot.’

Shane runs a hand through his hair and lets his shoulders roll back. ‘This is Hershel,’ he says with a wave at the older man. ‘The father of the girl who was taken. He’ll take care of your wound.’

Rick nods and turns on his heels to walk out. His brother follows him, but not before snapping his fingers and pointing at Daryl and then at Hershel.

Daryl nods and goes to sit on the table opposite the woman, resting the bow on his knees.

The woman glares at the weapon.

Hershel smiles at the young boy and reaches out to pat him on the head lovingly. ‘And this is Daryl. He’s a fine shot. And a good boy to be keeping an old man company. Now take a seat and let me see the wound.’

 

 

His cell feels too small. Just five steps until he hits a wall, five steps back until he’s up against those cold bars but he keeps going back and forth like he’s expecting it to get bigger. Or just to check that it really isn’t getting any smaller. There’s sweat gathering in the palms of his hands. He pushes them into the pockets of his jeans to keep them from shaking too badly. He glances at Shane, who is sitting on Carl’s abandoned bunk. Those broad shoulders curled in as he checks Daryl’s gun. Over and over and over. The metal parts clicking into place, the new clip reloaded, the safety off and on and off and on.

‘You don’t have to go,’ Shane says now, again, with a little more conviction now that they’re alone.

Daryl wishes he hadn’t. He stops his pacing and leans against the wall, one of his boots coming up to rest against it too, trying to look casual but failing miserably. ‘It’s Glenn,’ he answers, voice stronger than he thought it would be. ‘And Maggie.’

‘I know. Rick can take care of it. He will bring them back.’

‘You said we’d look after them.’

Shane looks up at that. He seems to be regretting his words now. ‘Glenn wouldn’t want you out there.’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Tough. I’m going.’

The words make him a little sick. He can hear the others downstairs, out in the common area. Rick with baby Judith on his arm, saying goodbye to his son and telling him to listen to Shane. The rattling of keys being handed over.

Oscar comes back from outside and tells the cop that the car is packed and ready.

They’re waiting for him. It’s selfish to be stalling, God knows what’s happening to Glenn and Maggie right now, but Daryl leans back against the wall and can’t quite figure out how to get himself to move. He pinches himself through the inside of his pockets. It hurts but doesn’t help.

‘Axel can go with them,’ Shane suggests now and Daryl wishes he’d stop.

The plan has been made. He’s going with Rick and Oscar and Michonne. And they’re going to Woodbury.

With pain in his eyes, Rick had agreed to let him come. The bow, the small figure, the silence of his boots even on concrete and his sheer _will_ of Glenn coming home had been enough to convince the cop. His partner had been another story, of course. At first, Shane hadn’t believed that it had even been a realistic option. Maybe he’d thought of it as a joke to relieve the tension. But the laughter had soured into anger quickly when he realized that both Daryl and Rick had been serious.

He’d quietly raged at his best friend, throwing Carl into his face. Why did that twelve-year old get to stay behind while his didn’t?

But everyone knows that he and Carl are only the same age. They don’t share much else. At least, nothing that matters these days.

He knows he’s not like Carl. The heft of his knife is discolored by sweat and old blood. Carl’s is still too clean.

Daryl had watched how Shane had raged, hissing at Rick around a corner as if to shield the group from the splintering. When that got him nowhere quick, he’d tried to reason again, throwing himself in the mix. They’ve been partners for ages, always, it was his job to have Rick’s back, not some _damn_ _kid_.

The words hadn’t hurt this time. Not at all.

It had all reminded him of Will, kneeling at the edge of the forest before going hunting and telling him to go swimming. Be a kid. Have some fun.

But those days are gone and they can’t deny it.

Nobody wanted to leave the prison’s defense to two kids, an old man, a girl, a woman just back from the dead and a man who’d liked his pharmaceuticals.

‘I’m going,’ Daryl repeats. He tries not to sound scared.

It must have worked because Shane runs his hands through his hair with a frustrated little snarl and then puts the gun aside. He grabs Daryl’s pack. ‘Flashbangs, grenades, you remember I thought you how to use them, right?’

‘Throw ‘nd run.’

‘Remember to pull the pin.’

The smile Shane throws him is almost painful to see. Far too fake to reach his eyes.

Daryl just looks at the floor. He bring one sweaty hand up to his face, gnaws on his thumb just to have something to do. It always calms his nerves.

Below, Rick passes Judith to Beth. Must have, because the little girl starts to cry and Beth hums a song under her breath to settle her down again. The tune bounces around the hallows of the prison, rings between the bars and leaks into Daryl’s ear. He wonders whether she knows the words. She hasn’t sung anything since their first night at the prison. At least, nothing that Daryl has heard. Maybe Judith has.

He wonders whether he’ll get the chance to listen to another one of her songs sometime soon.

‘Daryl.’

He looks at Shane now. The features so familiar that he can read them like a book. Easier than Hershel’s gaze, far harder than Glenn, but he manages all the same. He’s always been good at reading faces. It’s one of the upsides to being quiet. There’s a lot of time to just observe when you’re not busy trying to figure out what to say.

Shane is sorry. And sad. He’s also scared and trying to hide that part behind a fake smile.

The boy shifts his weight, boot dragging over the wall a little as he regains his balance. He bites on his thumb and bites the bullet too. ‘You ever killed a guy? One that weren’t sick, or bit, or… You ever killed a guy before all this?’

Shane blinks and looks a little perplexed. Sometimes Daryl’s way of thinking still catches him off guard. The switching of topics, the dodging, the sudden bluntness of youth and Dixon blood. But he always recovers. Another slow blink, something hardening in his eyes, and then a nod. ‘Yeah,’ he confirms. ‘I have.’

‘How?’

‘I shot them.’

That’s not what Daryl meant.

They look at each other. They both know what he meant.

‘There’s a switch,’ Shane tells him. ‘Somewhere inside of you, there’s a switch. The one that controls everything you feel. The one that makes you scared or angry, or sympathetic, whatever. You flip it and you don’t think anymore. You just act.’ Shane takes the gun back into his hands, checking it for the last time. ‘’cause odds are somebody else is counting on you. That’s your partner. That’s your friend. That’s Glenn and Maggie and Rick.’ He looks up at the boy. ‘There ain’t nothing easy about taking a man’s life, Dare, no matter how little value it may have. You do it for your friends. For your family.’

He holds out the gun.

Daryl pushes himself away from the wall and takes it. It’s still warm from Shane’s touch. He meets the cop’s eye. ‘Us or them, right?’

‘Us or them.’

‘And it’s always going to be us.’

Shane nods. ‘Yeah, bud.’

He puts his gun in his holster, checks his knife and throws his pack onto his back. The bow hangs on his shoulder. The quiver is filled with new bolts.

‘Ready?’ Shane asks him as he rises from the bunkbed. A steadying hand on his shoulder, moving the point where it meets his neck just so he can brush his thumb over the boy’s cheek.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods even though he’s not so sure. He hasn’t located the switch yet. He is still scared. It feels like time is running out, slipping through his fingers and he wants to tell Shane something before it’s too late. ‘That thing ya said, when – after – I mean… Same, ya know?’

‘I love you.’ Because sometimes they understand each other perfectly.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl looks at his boots, at the wall, anywhere but at the cop. He reaches up to tug Glenn’s baseball cap down, sweeping some of the hairs from his fringe under it so they won’t get into his eyes. ‘ _That_. Same.’

‘I know.’ Shane brings him in for a gentle hug, a kiss is pressed to the top of the baseball cap. ‘Stay close to Rick, okay? He will look after you.’

‘Yeah…’

It’s only later, when the gates are opened, closed, and they’re driving down the darkening path, away from the prison, that Daryl wishes he’d had the guts to actually say the damn words.

 

 

It feels strange to be walking through another town. There are streets and cars and lights and _people_. Daryl watches from inside a building, looking out as the last stragglers walk home. Curfew started a couple of minutes ago. The streets start to empty, only guards scarring the horizons, guns on their shoulders as they slowly walk up and down the walls.

They haven’t been spotted yet. Michonne has led them through narrow corridors, dark spots, to come back to the place she’d been held prisoner too. Glenn and Maggie aren’t there but that doesn’t surprise Daryl. Woodbury is a big place. They could be anywhere.

He listens to Rick’s impatient snarling, Oscar’s nervous pacing and Michonne’s stunted replies but doesn’t force himself into the conversation. Instead he watched the people of the town drift by the window, unaware of the shadows looming inside the building, fingers on triggers.

It kind of reminds him of the diner, back home. With the curtains and the windows and the watching. Merle used to take him there whenever they needed a break from Will. Sharing a milkshake because they could only afford one, Merle bitching under his breath about how only pussies loved strawberry milkshakes and still ordering one because it was Daryl’s favorite. He used to sit there, behind the window, and watch their own town go about their business.

Sometimes they’d make up stories. Merle resting his chin on Daryl’s bony shoulder, his breath tickling the boy’s cheek and both sets of blue eyes following the town’s residents. Stories about how that guy had come to the conclusion that wearing a pink shirt would be a good idea, why that woman was rushing, whether that old guy had fought in any of their wars and how likely it was that that girl would slap Merle for trying to feel her up.

There’s a woman and a man walking hand in hand. A guy who hurries home but still stops to wave at the couple.

‘Hey,’ Rick’s warm hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently to get his attention. ‘If this goes south,’ he whispers, ‘we’re cutting her loose. It’s the blind leading the blind right now. You stay with me. Whatever happens; _you stay with me_.’

Daryl nods.

Someone knocks on their door and Rick has just enough time to drag him into the shadows before a guy walks in, talking about how they’re not supposed to be in here.

Rick strikes with practiced ease. He pushes the guy up against a wall, then forces him to turn around. He shoves his gun into the man’s face when he starts to whimper. ‘Shut up. Get on your knees. Hands behind your back,’ he glances at Daryl, ‘zip tie him.’

Daryl does so as the cop questions the guy. He doesn’t know anything.

A cloth in his mouth, another nod from Rick and Daryl hits him over the head with his bow to knock him out.

Maybe two seconds later, gunfire erupts from somewhere in Woodbury.

Either they’re under attack, which would be real convenient, or it’s Glenn and Maggie putting up a damn good fight. Daryl presses himself against Rick’s side, ghosting in his footsteps as the cop leads them towards the mayhem, and thinks that both their money is on their friends.

There’s shouting and screaming and so much chaos that nobody notices that the guys, woman and boy running among them are, in fact, not theirs at all.

The gunfire has stopped once they breach the right building. It’s at the very back of the compound. The walls are covered in blood and rust but nobody cares. Rick leads the way. Posture rigid, an automatic gun in his hands and with Daryl half a second behind him.

Into a strange storage building with metal walls, their footsteps echoing back to them as they move from corner to corner to corner until they hit a room that has a window. Daryl peeks through it but can’t make out anything. The glass is too dirty.

Someone is talking. There are a lot of people inside the room. A second, and then they’re all moving towards the corridor where Daryl is hiding behind Rick.

‘On your feet, move! Let’s go, come on.’

‘Shit,’ Rick hisses because they all know that Glenn and Maggie are being herded by a couple of dudes. ‘Dare, your pack, come on.’

Daryl’s hands shake as he puts the flashbangs and smoke grenades on the floor between them. His hand curling around the metal, taking one and trying to remember what Shane taught him over the last couple of months.

Rick is looking at him.

Daryl flips the switch inside of him. Fingers tightening on the grenade. He nods.

On their feet again, fingers hooking around the pins. Rick throws first, making sure that the flashbang slides over the floor and slightly around the corner to land right in front of the group. Daryl copies his movements before ducking back into the corridor, protecting his own eyes from the explosions.

Smoke fills the room.

Daryl aims his automatic gun. He thought he saw someone slip out of the room on the other end. If he did, they’re gone now and he saves his bullets.

Rick finds Glenn first and drags him out of the chaos.

Daryl darts over to Maggie, who is blinded by a bag over her head. He yanks it off. There are tears on her cheeks, snot running over her upper lip as she screams and cries. With a quick move, he draws his knife and frees her hands.

They don’t have time to say anything. Someone is firing at them and Rick drags Glenn out of the room while Michonne grabs hold of Maggie’s arm and tugs her along. Daryl is the last one to get out.

Back out on the streets, the night air hitting them and cooling the sweat on their backs. This time, they can’t pass for insiders. Glenn can barely walk. He’s leaning heavily on Rick’s wiry frame and Maggie’s shoulder. Blood is running down his face and neck. Bruises are blooming on his skin already, dark and vicious, and his face is swollen.

They duck into another building to catch their breaths for a second.

Daryl dashes forward but finds only cold, stone wall at the end. ‘Ain’t no way out back here!’

‘Rick, how did you find us?’ Maggie asks frantically while trying to tend to her boyfriend’s wounds.

‘How bad are you hurt?’ The cop asks instead of answering the woman.

‘I’ll be alright.’

The words seem to be dragged from Glenn’s chest. Blood spills over his lips as he talks. He’s badly hurt, Daryl realizes as he watches, nervously pacing because he doesn’t really know what to do right now. His hands are sweating again. The switch is still flipped, he’s not scared right now and his finger is still on the trigger. If someone comes in now, he’ll gun them down for Glenn and Maggie and Rick. Ain’t no doubt about that.

Michonne has disappeared. That doesn’t matter. She’s on her own.

Rick glances back at his friend, eyes roaming over the many wounds. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathes, ‘who the hell did this to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Glenn says as shrugs on a vest Maggie has found him.

‘Was it the Governor?’ Rick presses.

‘No,’ Maggie says, ‘it was some guy who -‘

‘Maggie,’ Glenn rasps, ‘ _don’t_.’

The woman sinks back on her heels and stares at her boyfriend. Surprised, shocked, all of that. ‘Why won’t you tell Rick? The guy said that he knew-‘

‘Maggie, please,’ Glenn begs while Rick snaps; ‘tell me what?’

‘Glenn, you _have_ to tell him.’

‘Tell me _what_?’

But when the words finally fall from Glenn’s bloodied lips, he’s not looking at Rick.

He’s looking at Daryl.

The words take a second to register.

By then, everyone is looking at him.

The world seems to tilt a little, making it difficult for him to keep his balance. Something has gone wrong with the sounds, too, they’re all muted and too far away. Hope and pain mix inside his heart when the message finally sinks in. He’s so happy and he’s horrified and-

‘He threw a walker at me,’ Glenn says. ‘He was going to execute us.’

‘He’s the Governor?’ Rick asks, stepping forward with a frown on his face.

‘No,’ Maggie answers as she zips Glenn’s vest up. ‘That’s someone else. He’s his lieutenant or something.’

Words stick to Daryl’s tongue, always have. They come out in a mangled mess. ‘Does he – did ya tell him – does he know I’m with ya?’

‘He thinks you’re at the prison,’ Glenn coughs. ‘ _I_ thought you were at the prison.’ There’s something besides pain in his eyes now, a soft anger that tells Daryl that he’s fucked up again.

A corner of the boy’s mouth twists into a wry smile because Shane had been right. Glenn doesn’t want him here.

Tough.

The Korean shakes his head, ‘Rick, I’m sorry. We told him where the prison was. We couldn’t hold out.’

There’s no need to apologize. They need to get out of there.

Suddenly he realizes that they are, in fact, leaving. Fear starts to claw at his throat, he grabs hold of Rick, pleading.

‘I need to see him!’

‘Not now,’ Rick says, firm and with dark eyes. ‘We’re in hostile territory.’

Daryl objects, shaking his head and eyes wide as he dances on the spot, nervous and scared. The flip has been switched the wrong way. He’s feeling too much. He wants Glenn to be okay but he also wants to run out into the street and find –

‘ _Look at what he did_ ,’ Rick hisses into his face. ‘Look, we gotta get out of here now.’

‘Maybe I can talk to him, work something out!’

‘No, no, no. You’re not thinking straight,’ the cop tells him. ‘Look, no matter what they say, they’re hurt. Glenn can barely walk. How are we gonna make it out if we get overrun by walkers, if this Governor catches up to us? I need you, Dare!’ A hand on his shoulder, jostling him gently. Rick’s eyes beg him to understand. ‘ _Glenn_ _needs you_. Are you with us?’

Daryl glances at the cop. Ducks his head. ‘Yeah.’

 

 

Someone has given him another clip for his automatic gun. Rick, probably. It’s a good thing that Shane has taught him how to use it. Still, it feels big and far too powerful in his hands.

He lays down cover fire for their group.

He’s shooting at shadows and muzzle flashes in the distance.

And every time he pulls the trigger, he prays that he’s not aiming at his own blood.

‘You guys go ahead,’ Daryl says a he passes another rifle to Oscar once they’re all pressed into a small hide-out. ‘I’m going to lay down some more cover fire. All y’all run for the wall.’

‘No, we gotta stay together,’ Maggie objects.

‘Too hairy. I’ll be right behind ya,’ Daryl promises. ‘I can sneak back into town, go out the other way if I have to. ‘m small. Fast.’ He looks at Rick, ‘s why you brought me, right?’

The cop looks pained but doesn’t deny it.

Daryl grabs another smoke grenade. ‘Ready?’ he throws it and runs for one of the solar panels. He lands hard in the grass and takes aim with his gun.

The noise is unbelievable. Not just from his gun but also from everyone who is shooting right back at him. Rick is yelling something in the background while herding the group over the wall. Daryl glances over his shoulder for a second and sees how Oscar lifts Glenn up onto one of the cars.

Then he looks at Rick.

A guy comes at their right. Lifts his gun, aims right at Oscar.

But Rick fires first and the man goes down.

When Daryl looks over his shoulder again, Oscar is helping Maggie up and over the wall.

‘Rick!’ She screams just before she disappears.

The cop reaches the barricade, jumps onto the car and then turns around. ‘ _Daryl_!’

‘Go!’ Daryl screams back.

‘ _Daryl_!’

But Daryl doesn’t move. He stops shooting and lets the gunfire chase Rick over the wall. The last one of their group. They all made it out. He sits back against the panel and throws the riffle to the side. He looks up at the stars.

He never knew they could lead him to a place he didn’t even know existed before now but still needed to go to.

He laughs.

He waits until the gunfire dies down. When it does, everything is quiet.

‘Come on out. We know you’re still back there,’ someone calls out.

The accent is all wrong.

‘I’ll come out,’ Daryl shouts back. ‘If ya run ‘nd get Will Dixon.’

 

 


	31. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all amazing. Thanks for all the feedback.

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, it doesn’t quite work out like that.

They don’t run to get Will and they certainly don’t leave him alone until his dad is there, no matter how hard he screams. The men round on him, kicking his bow and rifle aside. They take his knife and pack. They shut him up with a balled fist to the side of his mouth for good measure but Daryl supposes he should be grateful that it’s just that.

When they haul him to his feet, he sees the bodies on the ground. People he hadn’t seen clearly through the mist but had still shot at. Until a couple of seconds ago, he hadn’t known whether he had hit anything at all. But now he’s looking at the bodies, the blood and brains everywhere, the wary looks in the eyes of the men who are still standing. He doesn’t have time to feel guilty or sorry or anything at all. One guy comes forward and yanks a bag over his head. Another pulls his hands behind his back, twisting his arms painfully so they can be tied together.

‘I’m Daryl Dixon,’ Daryl says, hoping the words register through the cloth and his own blood. It’s spilling from his split lip. There’s a moment when his tongue tastes that warm fluid. A sense of familiarity washes over him, but it’s been a long time since he’s had to tend to his own wounds.

‘Of course you are,’ a man growls but it sounds like he doesn’t believe it.

‘That’s supposed to mean something?’ another snarls as he jostles Daryl’s shoulder.

‘What did he say?’

‘That he’s Daryl Dixon,’ the first guy spits out.

‘Will’s kid?’

Something leaps in Daryl’s chest. He steps towards the voice, or tries to, because he’s yanked back by his hands and made to stand in front of another guy. The one that growls and spits but now sounds a little curious and surprised. ‘Will’s got a kid?’

‘Yeah, man, fuck. Why’d you think he’s always bitching about going back to Atlanta? Let me see him.’

Someone reaches around and grabs the edge of the bag, stripping it back so Daryl’s face is revealed. He blinks against the flashlights now shining into his face and squirms when it registers that everyone is looking at him. Fingers curl roughly around his chin, tugging it up so he’s forced to meet a guy’s gaze.

The man is a little smaller than Will is, younger too. He has a darker skin color and even darker eyes, and when he opens his mouth a little huff of amazed laughter escapes him and Daryl can see the flash of perfectly white teeth. ‘Well, fuck me,’ the man breathes, eyes narrowing as his gaze flicks over Daryl’s features.

‘What, you know the little shit?’

‘No,’ the man straightens up again. ‘But if that ain’t Dixon blood right there, I don’t what is. Look at him, man.’

‘He killed at least five of our men,’ another guy says. ‘We should end it right now.’

Daryl struggles against the hands holding him, suddenly very aware that he could _die_ here. It hadn’t been a real possibility until now. Even with all the gunshots, the knives and grenades, he still hadn’t realized that it could all end here with a single bullet. It hadn’t been a game, never that, but it hadn’t been real either. Maybe that’s just the best way to deal with those kinds of situations; thinking that it isn’t real. That way, he hadn’t been too scared to follow Rick down dark corridors, nor had he really thought about what would happen if he pulled the trigger on another human being.

Maybe, if it had been real, he wouldn’t have dared to do it.

‘Dixon blood, I’m telling you,’ the man grins as he pushes his gun higher onto his shoulder. He reaches out again, fingers on Daryl’s cheekbones. ‘One mean son of a bitch in the making. Took out five of our men? Shit. Thought his old man was ruthless. What are you? Eleven? Twelve?’

‘None of your business, ‘s what I am,’ Daryl snarls. ‘Wanna talk to my dad!’

‘And do what? Say goodbye? Because, son, you killed five of our men. _His_ men. And he’s not going to take too kindly to that.’

‘Was us or them,’ Daryl counters. His dad will understand that, at least.

‘Should have been you,’ the man behind Daryl growls as he shoves the boy’s shoulder roughly again. ‘Little fucking shit.’

‘Stop.’ The guy in front of him leans back and inspects his gun, checking the safety. ‘Man your posts. Whoever is not on guard duty, pile up the bodies. We’ll bury them tomorrow morning.’ Then he looks at Daryl. ‘Nobody tells Will that his son is here, you hear me? Nobody.’

‘Then what are we going to do with him, Martinez?’

Martinez flashes the boy a smile. ‘Take him to the Governor. Let him deal with the kid.’

 

 

Only now does Daryl understand what the woman had meant when she’d referred to the guy as charming, the Jim Jones type. He doesn’t understand the reference, doesn't know who the hell Jim Jones was, but he understands what she meant all the same when the Governor smiles at him. Brown hair slicked back, cleanly shaven, perfect teeth and enough muscles to not be scared easily. One of his eyes has been covered by a bandage. The other one is staring at Daryl, who has been thrown on the ground before his feet by two men. The bag has been removed. His hands are no longer tied behind his back. He looks up through his bangs to meet the man’s gaze.

‘So this is Will Dixon’s child,’ the man muses, one corner of his mouth lifting to form a crooked smile. ‘You’re Daryl, right? He said that Merle was a lot older.’

Daryl shifts so he’s on his knees. When he makes a move to get up, one of the guys behind him cocks the gun and presses it against the back of his head. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to. Daryl curls his shoulders inwards and remains on his knees before the man.

Surprise must have flickered over his features because the man nods as he reaches for a bottle of whiskey that’s next to him on a small table. ‘Will has told me all about his boys,’ he says as he takes a sip, not bothering to get a glass. His hand shakes a little. There’s blood seeping out from under the bandage.

Daryl wonders whether the wound hurts. He hopes it does.

‘He’s real proud of you.’

That comment will get him nowhere but it takes a moment for the other guy to realize that. Dixon boys aren’t ones for flattery and words are meaningless to them most of the time.

‘You’re the quiet one, right?’ the Governor asks even though he already knows that. ‘Not like Merle, because Merle was loud. Just like Will. Big mouth,’ he leans forward a little. ‘Tiny brain.’

Daryl bristles at that because words are meaningless save for when they’re used to insult his blood.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ the Governor smiles. ‘He’s good at what he does. I’m sure you know by now; he’s my right-hand man. Couldn’t keep this place safe without him. Well…’ the man cocks his head to the side and gives him another grin, almost lazy and taunting. ‘I couldn’t even keep it safe with him, it seems. Thanks to you and your group. The Asian and that girl. Glenn and Maggie, right? They are your friends?’

Daryl wipes his running nose on the back of his hand and doesn’t answer.

‘Of course they are. That was awfully risky of you, to break into a place so heavily guarded? You must have a tight group. And help. Is Michonne part of your group?’

Daryl glares at his knees. They’re starting to ache but he refuses to shift his weight.

‘ _Michonne_ ,’ the Governor says, a little louder now. ‘Is she a part of your group?’

‘Don’t know who the hell you’re talkin’ about.’

‘The woman with the dreadlocks.’

Daryl shrugs, ‘is now, I guess. Where’s my dad? I wanna see him.’

‘Of course you do.’ It sounds condescending. ‘I promise you will get to see him, once you’ve answered my questions. Okay?’ He ducks his head a little to catch Daryl’s gaze, a movement that reminds him of Rick but the eyes that meet him are green like the drink that would make his dad unpredictable instead of the color of the sky just before a thunderstorm hits. Two different kinds of dangerous. He’d rather face a force of nature than a man-made disaster though.

‘Okay,’ Daryl nods because he wants to see his dad and he’s not sure what will happen once the Governor runs out of patience.

‘Good,’ the man leans back in his chair again. Takes another swallow of his drink, one finger running over the neck of the bottle. ‘That’s real good of you, Daryl. How many people are in your group?’

‘Thirty.’

The Governor flicks his fingers and a man steps forward to punch Daryl in the mouth.

The boy groans and catches himself with his hands. Blood gathers behind his teeth. He spits it onto the floor, trying to get rid of the taste. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he mutters, pain blossoming and setting one side of his face on fire.

‘If you’re going to answer, you should answer truthfully,’ the Governor tells him calmly. ‘How many in your group?’

He already knows the answer, Daryl realizes with a silent curse. That’s low. ‘Eleven,’ he croaks. ‘Michonne would make twelve, asshole.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘The prison.’ He already knows that too, so there’s no point in trying to lie now, Daryl thinks bitterly.

‘Who is your leader?’

‘Rick.’ Daryl spits on the floor again and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘And Shane.’

‘Armed?’

‘’course.’

‘Automatics?’

‘Yeah.’ That’s a lie but only partially so Daryl is willing to take the risk. Rick had taken most of their automatic guns with them to Woodbury, they must be running low on ammo by now. He knows that Shane has a sniper rifle, but Beth, Axel and Carol only carry handguns. Hershel isn’t even armed besides the knife. And of course it seems like both he and Maggie counted Judith as a member of their group, which is true save for the fact that she won’t be any good with a gun for a while. That thought almost makes him laugh. Little Judith, ass-kicker. He shakes his head a little. Hell, with a daddy like that and big brother watching over her, she’s going to rain down holy hell in just ten years.

And Daryl looks up at the Governor, because he had a daddy just like that and a big brother too. There’s blood on his lips, running into his mouth and down the back of his throat. He’s going to pay for that.

One way or another.

‘Rick,’ the Governor waves a lazy hand as if trying to recall the names correctly, ‘and Shane. They were part of that Atlanta group?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tell me about the defenses at the prison.’

‘I’m done talkin’.’

Another hit but Daryl had time to anticipate it. It barely even hurts now. He runs his tongue over his teeth and glares at the Governor. ‘Said enough. Take me to my dad.’

The man puts the bottle away and slowly rises. Measured steps, heels clicking on the floorboards, then he kneels in front of the boy. He reaches out, fingertips on Daryl’s forehead, tracing one of his eyebrows and then his cheek to the beauty spot above his lip. He smiles. It reminds Daryl of the leers people would throw him as he tracked through shady bars to find his brother. That smile he would see when he’d feel a hand on him, on his back or behind, on his hips, and he’d throw a glare over his shoulder to get them to stop, reminding him with flashing eyes that he’s a goddamn _Dixon_ and his brother is _right there_. Just a call away.

But his brother isn’t here.

And neither is Will.

Daryl gathers the blood on his tongue and spits it into the man’s face.

The Governor _seethes_. Daryl knows that, even though the smile doesn’t falter. The fingers leave his cheek to drag through the blood and spit. He looks at it. Pale red on paler fingers. Green eyes snap back to blue ones.

The madness of man-made drinks.

‘I will take you to your dad,’ the Governor promises in a soft voice. ‘I’m sure he’s _dying_ to see you.’

Before Daryl can protest, or beg or scream or shout, the bag is yanked over his face again and he’s pulled out of the room. His boots scrape over the floorboards uselessly.

 

 

Through corridors which echo, crossing the street that still smell of gunpowder and finally onto uneven ground. He nearly falls a couple of times but the men who are pushing him forward keep him upright with rough pulls and nudges. One man has a hold of his hands, tugging at the zip tie that keeps them together, while another digs his nails into his shoulder.

The town had been quiet, but this, wherever they are now, is loud.

It feels like there are hundreds of people but Daryl knows that can’t be true. His senses are messing with him now that he has lost his sight. His own heartbeat mingles with the shouts and noises coming from all those people. There’s light filtering through the bag, just flashes, bright and alien, which makes Daryl think that they are artificial. Those lamps used on construction sites.

The ground beneath his feet feels loose. Like he’s kicking up dust with every step.

The groan of metal. Someone is opening a door, he realizes. It’s the same sound he’d dreaded yesterday morning, this morning, he can’t quite remember, but he’d never wanted that sound to wake Carl up from his slumber. The clang of metal on metal, locking tight and never letting go.

A voice, thundering until it’s surrounded by quiet waves of answers instead of the roar of an ocean.

He can barely make out the words. He’s sure it’s the Governor who’s speaking.

Something about keeping people safe, about failing, about terrorists.

The bag makes it hard to breathe. Every time he sucks in a panicked, painful breath, he feels the bag pull against his lips and he thinks he might choke on it. The feeling gets worse when Daryl realizes that the Governor is talking about him. Terrorists who want to destroy them.

But one of those terrorists is one of their own.

 _Will_.

There’s outraged murmuring, people shifting on their feet and Daryl thinks that Will must be right there, standing in the middle of that crowd.

The Governor drones on while Daryl struggles against his captors. They push and pull again, getting him to move closer to the lights and the noises. He can feel people surrounding him.

‘This,’ the Governor calls out as his fingers curl around Daryl’s upper arm to yank him close, ‘is one of the terrorists.’ He yanks the hood off. ‘Will’s own blood.’

The crowd surrounding them gasps. Daryl stumbles a bit when his vision is suddenly restored, when he can breathe again, only to have it stolen from him when he finally sees who he’s facing.

Will stares at him. Blue eyes finding blue ones in all these shadows. He hasn’t changed, not at all. There’s a wound on the bridge of his nose, covered by a Band-Aid, and there’s stubble on his chin now but Will Dixon hasn’t changed at all.

Broad and imposing, muscles and keen eyes.

Daryl breathes hard as his gaze wanders down to Will’s hand. The place where it was supposed to be. He’s wearing a metal brace. It looks heavy. He lets his gaze drift away, feeling like someone has hit him over the head until his eyes meet another set of blue ones.

Andrea stares at him from the crowd. Horrified, amazed, mouth slightly parted.

‘What should we do with them, huh?’ the Governor asks.

‘ _Kill them_!’

The crowd goes wild.

Daryl staggers as he looks around the circle. So many faces he doesn’t know. Shadows and light and guns and knives and mouths condemning them both to death. Saliva pools on his tongue, he almost chokes on it, unable to swallow suddenly. His pulse quickens, impossibly fast in his temples and throat and chest. A panic attack, he realizes far too late. He’s going straight into a panic attack and these people want them dead and everyone is screaming and –

Will’s hand grabs hold of his shirt and vest, curling into the fabric. Loose limbs and easy grace as something hardens in his eyes.

‘I asked you where your loyalties lie. You said here,’ the Governor say while looking at the father. ‘Well, prove it. Prove it to us all. Blood against blood. Winner goes free. Fight to the death!’

Daryl gasps. Tries to, opens his mouth but he can’t get any air into his lungs. His mind is frying inside his skull, because this isn’t what he thought would happen. He’s choking on his own panic, which sends him into a frenzy because he can’t breathe and Andrea is screaming his name but-

Will yanks him close, ‘breathe, ya pussy,’ the man says softly before he throws his youngest son into the dirt at his feet. ‘Y’all know me!’ he shouts at the cheering crowd. ‘I’m gonna do whatever I got to do to prove,’ he plants a boot between Daryl’s shoulder blades and presses him into the earth, ‘that my loyalty is to this town!’

Daryl grunts and digs his fingers into the loose dirt. He blinks against the sweat that’s dripping into his eyes. Hot tears mix with the salt. He tries to scramble out of the way but the boot just digs in deeper.

‘Y’all know me,’ Will shouts again as he sinks down to grab Daryl’s dark hair, yanking his face out of the dirt. Blue eyes meeting blue ones yet again. Something shimmers in the depths. ‘Brace yourself,’ he whispers.

Daryl nods despite himself. His mind going in overdrive, stuttering along with his broken heartbeat as he chokes on tears. The smack comes out of nowhere. Or maybe he could have seen it coming if he hadn’t been panicking. Either way, it hits him in the corner of his mouth, not splitting his lip and not bruising his cheekbone.

‘Now, this ain’t gonna be much of a fight,’ Will laughs as he stands up again. Fingers twisted into the fabric of Daryl’s shirt, he hauls the boy to his feet. Daryl stumbles, feeling drunk and disoriented as the crowd swims before his eyes. ‘Look at him,’ Will sneers. ‘Pathetic piece of shit. Ain’t even sure he is my blood.’

Another smack and Daryl falls to the ground again.

‘His momma was a right whore,’ Will laughs, ‘couldn’t be sure she weren’t-‘

As he bends down to grab Daryl by the collar again, the boy balls his own fist and lands a sickening punch to his father’s face.

The man stumbles back, bringing a hand up to his nose and mouth. He checks for blood. ‘Jesus Christ, boy,’ he grins, ‘taught ya something after all. Ooh-ooh, ahw yeah. Now, that hurt. But playtime is over, Daryl!’ He grabs the boy by his shoulder and drags him along.

Daryl’s feet scrape over the dirt as he tries to get his feet under him again.

‘Hell, you’re so used to being smacked around, y’re probably ain’t even feelin’ it. But I want ya to feel it. ‘cause this is my home, and those were my people!’

The crowd cheers.

‘Beatin’ ya to death, pssh, too easy. Too quick for ya.’

Daryl manages to stumble a few steps and looks up to see where Will is dragging him towards.

A cage. Long, covering the entire wall, and filled with walkers. Dead fingers clawing at the fences, teeth snagging on the metal as they try to get out. The crow has got them all riled up.

‘Dad, no,’ Daryl says, words spilling over his lips as he feels his knees give out. Terrified. Hurting. He’s going to die, he thinks as he gasps for breath again. ‘Daddy, please, _please_ …’

‘Shut up,’ Will snarls as he jostles him.

Closer and closer and closer until they’re right up against the fences.

‘Dad,’ Daryl yells as he struggles against his father’s grip, trying to push himself away from the cage. The smell of rotting bodies makes him gag on his panic. His hands on metal, sometimes touching desperate dead fingers before he yanks his hands back, only to have his face pushed against the chain link. Walkers so close to his cheek, teeth snapping at him. ‘Please don’t,’ Daryl cries, reaching up to cover Will’s hand with his own, desperate. ‘Dad, _please_.’

‘Relax,’ Will breathes into his ear. ‘I’m right here. I’m here.’

‘Stop! Stop, please, dad…’

‘I’m going to get you out, ya gotta follow my lead, okay?’

Daryl nods frantically, cheek scraping over the metal of the fence.

‘They’re hungry,’ Will roars as he pulls his son away from the fence again. The metal stump on his right arm moves to the lock on the door of the cage. ‘ _Dinner time_!’

He opens the door. But instead of shoving Daryl inside, he pushes him to the side and rolls with the door, using it as a barricade when the walkers stream out.

It takes a second for the crowd to realize what happened.

And in that second all hell breaks loose.

A smoke grenade lands in the middle of the crowd.

Somebody opens fire.

 _Rick_ , Daryl knows when three people go down in a hail of gunfire.

‘Let’s go, boy,’ Will grunts as he pulls Daryl out of their confines and into the circle, ducking when gunfire erupts somewhere behind them and keeping his son close, shielding him with his body.

A flashlight guides them home.

‘Hold up,’ Will mutters as he pushes Daryl down, back to the ground before he steps to the side, clocking a guy over the back of his head. Only when he falls, does he notice that the guy had been holding his crossbow. Will snatches it up and throws the strap over his head to let the weapon rest on his back.

‘Daryl!’ Rick is waiting for them.

They run for it.

 

 

They run until their lungs ache. And then they run some more.

Down the road, cutting through the forest, barreling past a couple of walkers drawn in by the gunfire, over fallen trees, so fast that Daryl’s feet barely seem to touch the ground. He uses trees to change direction, hands on the smooth bark, on the rough ones until splinters threaten to dig into his palms, swinging around back into the direction of the car where Glenn and Oscar are waiting for them.

In the end, it’s Rick who seems to give up first. For Michonne, who can’t keep up due to her wounds.

‘Daryl!’

The boy halts immediately, almost. Momentum causes him to stumble a couple more steps before he grinds to a halt, heart hammering in his throat as he turns around, eyes wild and hand curled around his knife.

Rick is leaning on his knees, doubled over as he looks at the dark-skinned woman.

She’s leaning against a tree, gasping for breath.

But then his gaze finds Will, who is a couple of steps ahead of Rick. Sweat causes his pale skin to glimmer in the early morning light. Realization hits Daryl harder than his father’s fist had done.

He staggers a little.

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Will breathes, hand going to his heart as if to keep it in his chest and then reaching out to his son.

And Daryl runs back, flinging himself into his dad’s arms. Arms around his neck, pulling himself up and breathing deeply when he buries his nose in the crook of Will’s neck. One arm comes up to curl around his back, the other supports his thighs, keeping him securely in place.

‘My boy,’ Will gasps. ‘Oh my good God. Thought I’d lost ya. I thought… My God, my God, thank you.’

Daryl holds on so tightly that he fears he might be hurting his father but doesn’t care. He just presses closer, trying to disappear into that broad chest. His muscles shake, tremble due to exertion, the night finally catching up with him. Guns flash behind his eyelids, flashbangs go off inside his head, and he whimpers.

‘I got ya,’ Will murmurs into his skin. ‘I got ya, boy.’

‘ _I_ got _you_ ,’ Daryl counters softly.

‘Almost got yourself killed, dummy,’ Will laughs into his ear, kissing his son’s temple soundly. His nose buries itself in his dark hair, longer than he remembered, and he hugs him fiercely.

‘Nobody kills us but us.’

‘Damn straight,’ Will nods. ‘ _Damn straight_. God, I missed ya, but _Jesus_ , what did they feed ya? Steroids? Look at ya.’

When Daryl leans back a tiny bit, his hands still on his dad’s neck, he can see that Will is smiling at him. Blue eyes moist. ‘My baby boy,’ Will grins, proud, as his gaze wanders over Daryl’s body. ‘Finally got some muscle on ya, huh? About a foot taller, too. Gettin’ heavy.’

‘Don’t give a fuck,’ Daryl laughs as he drops his head back onto his father’s shoulder. ‘Missed ya. They went back for ya, you weren’t there.’

‘Don’t matter none now,’ Will hums and strokes his back, hand on the angel wings that used to be his own. ‘Hey, ya still wearing that rag?’

‘Was yours.’

It’s all the explanation Daryl has and it’s enough for Will.

Rick uncurls and moves forward again, putting a gentle hand on Maggie’s shoulder who is glaring daggers at the man. ‘We need to move on. The car’s not far.’ He looks around the forest, not quite sure of their position. ‘I think.’

Will lets Daryl lean back once more but keeps him close enough so he can bump their noses together, making his son smile. ‘Got a look at them stars, hmm?’

Daryl nods, ‘yeah.’ He’s dropped to the ground and lands on his feet with easy grace. Hand wandering over to Will’s belt, finger slipping into one of the loops and holding on as if trying to make sure his dad doesn’t make a run for it as he looks back at Rick. ‘Come on, it’s right over there.’

Will falls into step beside him, arm around his shoulders, tugging him into his side and marveling that his son’s head now rests against his breast instead of his belly. He glances at the rest of the group and then kisses the brown hair. He whispers in his ear. ‘City slickers, huh?’

Daryl giggles, high on victory and life, and nods.

 

 

Of course, it all falls apart the moment Glenn spots Will.

‘We got a problem here, I need you to back up,’ Rick says, extending his hand to try and keep both Michonne and Glenn at bay, but both are grabbing their weapons already.

Michonne her wicked-looking sword and Glenn his gun.

‘What’s he doing here,’ the Korean shouts, pointing it at Will.

‘What the fuck,’ Daryl breathes, darting to stand in front of his father, feeling that trusted heartbeat against his back. ‘Put it down,’ he shouts, trying to be heard over Rick and Glenn’s screams.

‘He tried to kill me,’ Michonne says, eyes wide and sword pointing at Rick’s chest as the cop places himself between the Dixon men and his friends. Her anger had been kept at bay by her wounds the whole walk back, but now it’s spilling over. Rekindled by Glenn’s rage.

‘If it wasn’t for him-‘ Glenn starts.

‘He helped us get out of there,’ Daryl objects, ‘drop it!’

‘Yeah, right after he beat the shit out of you,’ Rick snarls, glancing at the boy even though he’s still pointing his gun at Michonne in order to keep her back.

Will’s leaning back against a tree now, ‘hey,’ he drawls, ‘at least I didn’t send him into a hostile town with fifty armed men. The hell were y’all thinkin’, sendin’ some kid to do your dirty work, huh?’

‘Don’t start nothing,’ Daryl hisses over his shoulder a he steps closer to Glenn, reaching up to the gun, trying to get him to lower it.

‘Enough!’

Daryl glances back at Rick, who’d screamed. All the guns and the swords are setting his teeth on edge. His nerves are fraying, have been for a while, and when he looks back at his best friend, he’s looking right into a barrel. ‘ _Get that thing out of my face_!’

Will is laughing now. ‘Man, looks like you’ve gone native, son.’

‘No more than you hangin’ out with that psycho back there!’

If Daryl thought that this has been the low-point, he’d been dead wrong. The conversation spirals out of control, tempers flaring as Will tells a tale about the Governor and Andrea, about Michonne and her pet walkers, Rick surrounded by liars, thugs, cowards and kids.

‘ _Shut up_ ,’ Glenn shouts when he can’t take it anymore.

And Daryl watches how Rick clocks Will across the back of his head, knocking him out cold for the time being.

The sudden silence is crushing.

 

 

‘Look at me.’ Rick’s rough hands on his wet cheeks, forcing his gaze up to those blue eyes. The cop is kneeling in front of the boy. The ground is wet because of the morning dew. Dawn is breaking over the horizon to their right. Hesitant rays of sunshine which will soon warm their world again until sweat is running down their backs once more.

Daryl’s gaze wanders. He looks at Michonne, who is sitting in the ditch, one hand still pressed against her wounds to stop the bleeding. When she moves, she limps. They will take her back to the prison and Hershel will have a look and then she’ll be just fine. And that’s just _not fair_.

There are tears running down his cheeks. He can’t stop crying.

‘Hey,’ Rick whispers. ‘Look at me.’

Daryl’s gaze snaps back to the cop.

‘We don’t have much time,’ the cop says urgently. ‘Let me check our gun. Hurry!’

But Daryl’s hands feel too numb to do anything useful with them so he just stands there. He doesn’t move when Rick takes his gun out of the holster, checking it over frantically. The cop grabs his own pack and starts to dig around in it. He glances at the boy.

‘You find shelter first, okay? You go North, at least half a day and then you find shelter. A cabin or a house, anything with four walls, a roof and a strong lock. Set up your snares if you can find the trails,’ Rick grunt as he moves stuff around in his bag in order to get to the bottom. ‘When you make a fire, don’t make it big. It attracts walkers, remember?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Shelter,’ Rick repeats, ‘food, fire. Here,’ he takes another clip of bullets out of his pack and pushes it into the boy’s pocket. ‘Come on,’ he grabs the boy’s pack and helps him put it on his shoulders. Then he kneels down in front of him again. Shaking fingers button the flannel shirt up properly and then tug the leather vest tighter around his shoulders. He nods. ‘Good. Good.’

Daryl bites on his lips. ‘ _Please_ ,’ he whispers.

‘We can’t. _He_ can’t.’ Rick looks at him with pleading eyes, hands still on the vest, tugging the boy closer. ‘But _you_ can, Dare. It doesn’t have to be this way. I understand he’s your blood but that doesn’t make him _good_. You know that.’

‘He can change,’ Daryl promises softly. He wipes his tears away. ‘I know he can. He’s real sorry, I know he is, please, Rick…’

‘He’s not,’ a warm hand against his cheek again. ‘He’s not, and even if he were, it wouldn’t make a difference, Daryl. I know he’s your dad, but he’s not good people. Look at what he’s done to Glenn. Please, Daryl. You heard Glenn. You’re part of his family. Family is so much more than blood these days. Come back to the prion with us.’

Daryl chokes on his tears, ‘don’t ask me to leave him.’

Rick looks heartbroken. But he won’t cave. ‘He can’t come. He’ll put everyone at each other’s throats. And after what he did? No.’

‘Why does _she_ get to come?’ Daryl cries angrily, glaring at Michonne who glares right back. ‘ _It’s not fair_!’

‘Ssh, ssh,’ Rick hushes, wiping his hand over the boy’s forehead, his temple and letting it rest on the crook of his neck, thumb rubbing over the pulse point there.

The rustling of leaves behind Rick, the snapping of branches under careless boots and then the green parts as Will stumbles back out onto the road. One hand still on his belt, a lop-sided grin on his face before he barks out a raw laugh.

‘Jesus, some things you just can’t get used to, eh? Pissin’ with the wrong hand. Well, made jackin’ even harder, too. Ya sure knew what ya were doin’ back on that roof, ya fuckin’ pig,’ his gaze lands on his son. ‘What the hell? I leave ya alone with my kid for five seconds and ya made him cry like a baby? The fuck’s wrong, Dare?’

‘Five seconds? Try a _nine months_ ,’ Rick snaps.

‘Weren’t my choice,’ Will snarls back. ‘And if it were up to me right now, you’d be payin’ for it, too.’

Rick slowly rises to his feet. One hand on Daryl’s shoulder, holding him back, as the other hand glides towards his trusted python. ‘Yeah?’ he asks, deceptively calm.

‘Yeah,’ Will smirks. He’s the first to look away but Daryl knows that that’s just a trick to make you think you’ve won the fight while it hasn’t even started yet. Not for Will. ‘But my boy seems to have grown to love bacon, so we’s all good, piggy. Wipe them tears, son. We’re out of here.’

‘Give us a second,’ Rick snaps, sinking back to one knee again.

‘Already gave ya five,’ Will reminds him before he walks over to the other side of the road where he plans to lead his son into the woods. North. Away from Woodbury. Away from the prison.

‘Hey,’ Rick taps Daryl’s cheek gently to get his attention again. ‘Remember what I said. Shelter, food, fire. There’s… there’s always room for you, back at… You can come back, Daryl.’

But his dad can’t come with him and Daryl can’t leave him behind. Not when they’ve just found each other again. Not when his dad had been so happy to see him, holding him close and kisses his temple. He can’t do it again. He can’t leave without him.

Rick knows that. In way, he understand it. Not fully, never that, but he knows how important blood is to the boy. How important family is to him.

‘Say goodbye to lil’ as-kicker for me?’ Daryl asks him, voice broken and hoarse from crying. ‘And Carl? And tell Shane… Tell him… Tell him I’m sorry, okay? I’m _sorry_.’

‘Me too,’ Rick breathes as he lets their foreheads rest against each other’s for a second. ‘And I will.’ Then he rises again, spine straight, rigid, and his eyes another shade colder. ‘Go.’

Daryl stumbles back, away from him. Grabs hold of the strap of his bow and ducks his head as he moves over to where Will is waiting for him.

Only now does Glenn seem to realize that it hasn’t worked. He’d hung back with Maggie after pleading with Daryl to stay. He’d begged. He’d cried. He didn’t understand, not any of it. He’d allowed the cop to lead the boy away in the hopes that Rick could get through to him. That their leader could get the boy to stay.

‘Daryl,’ Glenn says, far away by the car but now moving towards him.

Maggie grabs hold of his arm, holding him back.

‘Daryl!’

The boy tries not to hear it but still glances his way. Fresh tears in his eyes, making them far bluer. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats.

‘No!’ Glenn screams, fighting against his girlfriend but losing because of the wounds Will has given him. ‘No! You can’t just leave! _Daryl_!’

‘ _I’m sorry_!’

‘What am I supposed to tell Shane?’ Glenn screams back. ‘He’s waiting for you at the prison! Beth is, Carl, Hershel, Carol! They are all waiting for you! What am I supposed to tell him?’

‘He’ll understand,’ the boy says even though he’s not so sure. He steps up beside his dad. Gun in his holster, Rick’s clip in his pocket, the pack on his back. With a shrug, he pushes his bow higher onto his shoulder.

Will grins down at him. Curls a possessive arm around his son’s shoulders before kissing his hair. 'Come on, son.’

Daryl nods and lets himself be led away. Leaves crush beneath his boots, twigs snap under Will’s, but all Daryl hears is Glenn screaming his name.

 

 


	32. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for this chapter; mentions of suicide, child-abuse, death of a very young child, graphic violence, graphic gore. 
> 
> Reminder of the general warning; Will is back; racism, (racial) slurs, foul language, child-abuse everwhere, okay? okay. 
> 
> Thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

The woods feel strange. The wind is gone, hiding over the horizon, leaving the leaves on the ground for others to disturb. Except that nothing has taken to the job. There are no squirrels scurrying up the trees, no rabbits shooting away beneath the bushes and even the birds have decided to take another path in the sky today. They don’t rest on the branches of the young trees, they don’t search this ground for worms or ants.

Daryl looks around. It’s just him and Will.

Right now, he hates that Will has taught him how to walk without making a sound. It means that his dad is even better at it than he is. Daryl keeps glancing over to make sure that the man is even there.

His grip on the bow tightens.

He never thought he’d miss Rick’s shadow when out hunting. The cop had been getting better at it, but he was never completely silent. Picking up the whistles Daryl had used to communicate with his brother out in the wilderness behind their trailer park, practicing whenever Daryl’s walk was too relaxed for any game to be nearby.

They’ve been trying to catch something for hours now.

His muscles ache. He’s hungry.

Will is leaning against a tree behind him, taking another piss.

‘There’s nothing here but mosquitos and ants.’

‘Patience, my boy,’ Will drawls as he relieves himself. ‘Sooner or later, a squirrel is bound to scurry across your path.’

‘Even so,’ Daryl says, staring out into the woods before him, ‘that ain’t much food.’

‘Yeah? More than nothin’.’

‘We’d have better luck going through one of them houses we passed back on the turnoff.’ Daryl raises his bow and stares down the sight, adjusting it a little. The bow is all scratched up from the times he’d thrown it aside in order to grab his knife and take a walker down. He hopes Will won’t notice. He’d always been going on about how he’d paid good money for the thing. There will be hell to pay, Daryl knows.

‘Is that what your new friends taught ya?’ Will asks and Daryl can hear the sneer in his words. ‘Hmm? How to loot for booty?’ He’s zipping up his pants as he comes to stand beside his son. ‘Is that what officer piggy did?’

Daryl ignores the jab at Rick and pushes himself away from the tree. ‘We’ve been at it for hours. We should find some shelter, then set up some traps. Light a fire ‘fore it gets dark. We could look near the stream. Try our luck with some fish?’

‘What the hell are you talkin’ about, boy?’ Will asks him. ‘What kinda messed up order is that? Couple of weeks and ya don’t remember nothing I taught ya, huh? I think you’re just trying to lead me back to the road now. Give me over to that prison?’

‘They got shelter,’ Daryl sulks. ‘Food. Might not be a bad idea.’

‘For you, maybe. Ain’t gonna be no damn party for me.’

‘Everyone will get used to each other.’

‘They’re all dead. Makes no difference.’

Daryl lowers the bow and stares at the ground before him. He thinks about Glenn, bleeding and limping and screaming his name. Maggie, whose eyes had been so empty the last time he’d seen her. And Shane, who’s waiting on somebody who’s not coming back. He wonders how they’re holding up. Whether they’re huddled in their cells, mourning their losses and licking their wounds, or whether Rick is rallying them to fight. That he has Judith on his arm and Carl leaning against his side, that he’s talking to Hershel about the wounded, about the wounds they can’t even see. Maybe Shane is at the gate, waiting, stalking, his old temper flaring as he waits for the Governor to show his damn face.

‘How can ya be so sure?’ Daryl asks.

‘Right about now, he’s probably hosting a housewarming party where he’s gonna bury what’s left of your pals.’

The boy knows that his father is watching him. He doesn’t flinch at the words but something inside his chest tears and bleeds.

‘Rule one about campin’?’ Will asks when he’s not getting the rise out of his boy like he wanted to.

‘Near fresh water,’ Daryl mutters. He aims a mean kick at the rock and it thuds away.

‘That’s right. So we’re gonna go to that stream, now. Might be a house nearby, get us some shelter for the night, huh? A fire to roast our fish on. How’s that sound?’

Like his own goddamn idea, Daryl thinks darkly as he spits into the bushes. ‘Sounds good, dad.’

‘Yeah,’ Will reaches out and runs his fingers through the boy’s hair. ‘Now stop thinking about those dumb city slickers back at that damn prison, okay? We’re not goin’ back. We don’t need ‘em. It’s just gonna be you and me again, like the good old times, huh?’

Daryl looks up at his dad and nods.

‘Missed ya,’ Will says.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Will frowns a little, ‘’course I did. You’re my blood.’

Daryl shifts his weight to his other foot. ‘What happened?’ he asks, rubbing a nervous hand over his nose just to hide behind something. ‘After ya cut off… After the roof?’

Will breathes in deeply and lifts his stump. The metal gleams in the sunlight. ‘I found a medical supply warehouse. Fixed myself up good. Made this thing later, of course. Didn’t have no time for all that shit, was damn near bleedin’ out. Got out.’

‘How?’

‘Luck and God,’ Will laughs but he sobers when Daryl’s lips don’t curl upwards. ‘Went back the way I came, right? And lo and behold, there it was; that damn cube van. Just waitin’ on old Will, keys and everything in it.’

‘Ya took it.’

‘’course I did! Had to get back to you, didn’t I? Didn’t matter how. And shit, didn’t give a damn about who had to walk their ass all the way back to camp. Hoped it was that nigger, man. He could have used the exercise, if ya get what I mean, eh?’ He nudges Daryl between the ribs with his elbow.

Daryl steps away from him. Frowns. ‘Ya never came back though.’

‘Told ya,’ Will says as he avoids looking at his son. ‘I was damn near bleedin’ out. Took a wrong turn somewhere, didn’t notice until I almost ran outta gas. It was bad, a’right? Stopped by the side of the road, get my bearings, ya know? Passed right out.’ Will shoots him a grin, ‘might have been those damn painkillers, I dunno. Don’t matter anyway. Some guys from Woodbury stumbled upon my ass, took me back to theirs.’

‘And you just stayed there?’

‘I’d chopped my own damn hand off,’ Will says, snarls almost, losing his patience with all the questions now. ‘Gonna hound my ass for takin’ a breather, now? Jesus. Stop lookin’ like a puppy that got kicked out of the car. Come on,’ he starts to head back the way they came, towards the stream. ‘Let’s hook some fish.’

 

 

They go back south. Just a little bit. They cut through the forest because Will doesn’t want to use the roads. Daryl had thought about arguing, saying that they’re far enough away from Woodbury and the prison to risk it and that it would be a hell of a lot faster than moving through the woods, but he decided against it. Will doesn’t like that sort of input. And Daryl’s too happy to have him near again to start something that will end in his back bleeding all over the forest floor.

The banter they share is familiar. Will’s bitching about the world and Daryl hums in agreement.

Every once in a while, Will pulls him close for some loving. A kiss to his temple or a smack to the back of his head.

There’s no doubt it, Daryl knows that Will has missed him something fierce. That part of the story had been true, at least.

‘Smells to me like the Saugahatchee Creek.’

‘But we didn’t go west enough,’ Daryl objects as he checks the sun to make sure. ‘If there’s a river down there, it’s got the be the Yellow Jacket.’

Will laughs. ‘Ya have a stroke, boy? We ain’t never even come close to Yellow Jacket.’

‘I’m tellin’ ya,’ Daryl says, ‘we didn’t go west. Just a little bit south. That’s what I think.’

‘And here’s what I _know_ ; that’s the Saugahatchee Creek.’

The boy sighs and hangs his head for a second. ‘Fine.’

‘I may have lost my hand, but you have lost your sense of direction, boy,’ Will sneers from where he’s stumbling through some bushes. He curses under his breath and bats the metal stump to get rid of something snagging on his shirt.

Daryl uses the forest floor to his advantage. The ground is sloping so he just slides down it, tilting his boots just so and occasionally grabbing hold of a tree when he goes too fast. It’s easier because he’s smaller, he thinks as he ducks under a branch.

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ Will curses as he stumbles again.

Daryl snorts and shakes his head. Or maybe the old man had just became a city slicker himself.

‘The fuck you’re laughin’ at?’

‘Nothing,’ the boy says quickly.

‘Nothing, huh?’ Will echoes with a nasty glare. ‘Looks they not only put muscles on ya, but also a bigger mouth. Now, I don’t like that none, ya hear me?’

‘Sorry, dad.’

‘ _Sorry_ , _dad,’_ Will parrots mockingly as he continues his way down towards the stream. ‘Pussy.’

 Daryl hangs back for a second. He holds onto the tree, rubbing his thumb on the rough bark until splinters dig into his skin. It’d just been an inside joke. He didn’t mean to be mean, he’d just found it funny that Will…. He sighs and pushes some strands back under Glenn’s baseball cap.

Carl teases him all the time. From the way he eats, all fingers and messed-up roadkill, to the way he talks, with the accent and how he swallows his words instead of saying them, to the way he bites his thumb when he’s nervous. Just like a baby.

He teases Carl too. About how the boy can’t hunt for shit and would get lost in his own damn backyard, about how he’d been doing his homework while Daryl took down his first walker, about the way he looks at Beth these days. Sometimes he would take it too far. The words turning hurtful without him even realizing it and there had been a couple of angry clashes between the two of them until Rick taught his son to say something very simple; _I don’t think that’s funny, please stop_.

And Shane had taught him to stop when asked. Without threatening with a whooping when he didn’t get it the first time and still told Carl to stop being a damn pussy.

A sudden noise snaps Daryl’s attention back to the woods around them. ‘You hear that?’ he asks as he slides down to stand next to Will, frantically looking around to see if he can catch the source of the noise.

‘Yeah,’ Will huffs. ‘Wild animals gettin’ wild.’

‘No,’ Daryl objects, ‘it’s a baby.’

‘Oh come on,’ his dad laughs skeptically. ‘Why don’t you just piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining, too? That there’s the sound of a couple of coons making love, sweet love. Know what I mean?’ He glances at his son. ‘’course ya don’t, never got your dick wet. So you just take it from me, okay? I know those sounds.’

Daryl ignores him and starts to run down the last slope to get to the body of water. When he reaches it, with Will hot on his heels, he sees the river and the bridge. The cars and the truck and the walkers streaming towards the middle, trapping two guys on top of a large vehicle. They’re shouting and firing their guns, only drawing more walkers in from both sides. A woman is screaming from inside one of the cars. There’s a baby who cries. One of the men has been driven to the very edge of the bridge. He tries to back away from the walkers but there’s nowhere to go anymore.

Will laughs and whistles sharply. ‘Hey,’ he calls out with a leer. ‘ _Jump_.’

Daryl grips his bow tighter and starts to head over to the bridge.

‘Hey, boy,’ Will grabs his arm and yanks him back. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Gotta help them!’

‘No, we don’t. I ain’t wastin’ my bullets on a couple of stranger that ain’t never cooked me a meal or fellaciated my piece. That’s my policy. And that makes it yours, too.’

‘The fuck?’ Daryl snarls as he tries to get away. The screams behind him are getting more desperate. Only one of the guns is still going off. Maybe the other one ran out of bullets, or maybe the other shooter had joined the other side of the fight. He twists around, trying to see the guys on top of the truck, but Will shakes him roughly. ‘Let go! We can help them, dad. There’s a _baby_!’

‘So? What the hell is wrong with you? Nine months and ya forgot everything I taught ya, hmm? This is the new world, son. I don’t know what those damn pigs have been puttin’ into that tiny fuckin’ brain of yours, but ya don’t survive this shit storm by payin’ people a kindness. That’s gonna get ya killed.’

‘Let me go! _Let me go_!’

‘Oh no,’ Will laughs, ‘no, no. I’m gonna teach you a valuable lesson. Come here,’ he wrestles Daryl’s bow from his shoulder and then turns him around. Metal stump pressing against the boy’s chest, his hand on Daryl’s chin, forcing him to look up at the bridge.

‘The fuck, dad? Let me fuckin’ go!’

‘You’re gonna watch. And you’re gonna learn. Look, look! That could have been you.’

Up on the bridge, one of the men loses his footing. Something must have grabbed hold of his leg, tugging him off the truck. There are screams, so desperate and scared that Daryl can’t help but press back against his father in horror. He watches how walkers tear the man apart. ‘Stop,’ Daryl whispers. ‘Please…’

‘No. Two more to go.’

The other man runs out of bullets too but he manages to stay out of the walker’s hands. He dances on the spot, kicking at heads and hands, but he manages. He’s still screaming though. Daryl can’t understand what he’s saying, it’s another language. Spanish, probably. It sounds familiar enough but he’s never learned the words.

The woman is still locked in the car. Her screams are getting louder by the second, echoing those of the man.

Daryl can’t see the car from down here but he imagines walkers clawing at the windows and shivers.

Will hugs him to his chest but doesn’t let go of his chin.

It takes hours. At least, that’s what it feels like. Daryl watches the man fight the walkers and he listens to the screams of the woman until they suddenly stop.

The baby is still crying.

It takes another minute for that to stop too.

The man screams, cries, rages with useless fists against the walkers. He stumbles back towards the edge and for a moment Daryl thinks that he might take Will’s advice and jump after all. He could make it, Daryl guesses. The water is deep there. But then the man turns and just walks off the truck, into the arms of the walkers. Blood sprays. Walkers decent on the body like vultures and rip it apart. Daryl watches. The legs are torn off, the chest ripped open. From this distance, it’s just a red stain that gets bigger and bigger until it’s covered by the dead, but Daryl remembers what Dale’s wounds had looked like and doesn’t need the reminder. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, trying to keep the tears and bile down.

‘Nothing we could have done,’ Will whispers into his ear. ‘They were stupid enough to get stalled with no way out. See? There’s a lesson there. Never do that. Ya always have to have a way out, ya hear me? Always.’

‘Could have been us.’

‘What?’

‘Their way out,’ Daryl nods, ‘it could have been us, helping them.’

‘What were you going to do? Hmm? Take on a couple of walkers? Pssh. Last time ya tried that, ya almost pissed your pants. And that’d been one your size, these were all grown, hmm-hmm-hmm. Would have eaten ya alive, boy,’ Will ruffles his hair. ‘Come on, let’s wait for those walkers to get movin’ again and then we can see what that nice Spanish family left us, huh?’

 

 

Daryl walks over the bridge. He steps over the bodies of a couple of walkers and then slowly makes his way over to the truck. The blood is still wet. It sticks to the nose of his boot, seeps into the profile and makes a disgusting noise when he moves through it. He wrinkles his nose at the smell.

One of the bodies has been ripped to pieces. Bones are scattered on the hot asphalt, bits of meat still clinging to them but otherwise eaten bare. The ribcage is near the back of the truck, emptied of organs and with the ribs visible. The head has rolled under the vehicle. One of the ears is missing.

Daryl stares at it. He wonders whether it’s going to reanimate. Probably. The one back at the quarry had, anyway. So he takes his knife out, ducks and crawls under the truck to stab it in the brain. It’s the least he can do. When he tries to shimmy back out, something grabs him by the ankle, and for one horrible moment, he thinks that it’s all going to end there.

‘Seriously, what the fuck are ya doin’?’

‘Jesus,’ Daryl breathes as he aims a kick at Will’s hand, trying to get his dad to let go of his ankle. ‘Gotta be the brain, right?’

‘Dude’s head was safe and sound there. Wouldn’t have bothered us none.’

That’s not why he did it.

‘We have to end them, right? Same as with a bad bolt, you said!’

‘Hell,’ Will shakes his head, ‘now you’re just makin’ shit up tryin’ to be a good Samaritan. Fuckin’ lyin’ to your old man now, too. Your momma raised ya better than that.’

Except she didn’t. He can barely remember her. If someone taught him something about lying, it was Merle pressing his finger to his lips in their bedroom, stifling his giggles as they heard their old man rage inside, trying to find the clicker which his brother was hiding behind his back, just after Merle shouted back that he hadn’t seen the damn thing. It was a teacher asking about bruises and that little frown which told Daryl that he needed to get better at it, fast. It was Merle, always Merle, sometime laughing and sometimes shaking him so hard that his teeth rattled in his head, telling him that they stuck together and Daryl could lie to the whole wide world for all he cared but never to him.

Daryl watches how his father crosses towards one of the cars on the middle of the bridge. The back is open, a trail of blood leading over the baggage and backseat. As he slowly follows his dad, he sees that the driver’s seat is now just a mess of blood and tissue. The windows are covered in bloody handprints, someone hitting the glass trying to get out.

‘Now, what’s this,’ Will mutters as he starts to pull the baggage out of the back, ripping the bags open with his good hand and rummaging around in them.

Daryl leans against the window and looks inside the car. The blood and gore doesn’t bother him anymore. He’s seen too much of that to care, even though the screams of the woman still rings inside his ears. But when he leans close, he sees that there’s something stuffed between the woman’s feet, right near the gas pedal. A blanket that used to be white, wrapped around a tiny body.

Fingers on the cold glass, almost covering the handprints. He tries to lean closer, his breathing suddenly picking up. The baby, he thinks hazily as he tries to get a look. The woman must have tried to get her as far away from the walkers who’d gotten in through the back.

He opens the door, crawls onto the passenger’s seat and reaches down to touch the blood-soaked blanket. The baby doesn’t move.

His fingers brush over the blanket, pulling it aside.

It was a girl. Pink hat now barely covering the brown tuffs of hair, skin sickly pale now that her heart isn’t beating anymore. He chokes on his saliva as he sees the wound. Eyes flitting around until his gaze lands on a bloodied knife on the floor of the car, right next to the baby’s head.

With a jerk, he pulls his hand back. He scrambles out of the car, throwing the car door closed so he won’t have to look at her anymore. He stumbles back, loses his balance and falls on his ass.

Will looks at him and lifts an eyebrow. He’s eating a power bar. ‘The hell?’

‘She stabbed her.’

‘’course she did.’

Daryl frowns, ‘what? No. The woman in the car, she stabbed her baby.’

‘Yeah, of course she did,’ Will says as he squats down again to go through another bag. ‘What? Ya think any parent would let their child be ripped to pieces while still alive?’

Daryl breathes through his nose. His boots scrape over the asphalt, he lets his fingernails dig into the palms of his hands but he can’t stop the question from spilling over his lips. ‘Would ya do it to me?’

'Hmm?’

‘If there were no way out, would you stab me in the head? Before… Would ya?’

Will sighs and straightens. He leans on the car, the stump landing on the metal with a chilling _thunck_. ‘Why’s everything got be a philosophical debate with ya?’ he asks.

‘Ain’t. Just a question.’

‘A’right,’ Will nods. ‘And here’s just an answer, okay? You listen good, now. That ain’t ever going to be us. We ain’t like those people. Hell, those people roll over first patch of rough they hit. Let ‘em. Kick their heels while you’re at it, they ain’t shit.’

Daryl stares at him. ‘Answer the question.’

‘Careful,’ Will warns.

‘No, answer the question! If it’s us and there’s no way out, would you do it to me?’

The man drags his arm off the car with a horrible scraping sound of metal on metal. He stalks over and grabs his boy by the collar, yanking him to his feet. ‘Now you listen to me. What’s the answer going to prove, hmm? Yeah, I’d put ya out of your damn misery before it even started ‘cause I fuckin’ love ya, ya stupid little punk. That’s what ya want me to say, right?’ He shakes Daryl. ‘Ya don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about. Want me to make a bullshit promise about endin’ ya? Think that’s what it means to love someone? Hell no. I’ve put you on this goddamn earth, boy, and yeah, I ain’t no gold-star daddy, ‘right? But I love you. And if it all goes to shit, ya better be man enough to do it yourself because _I ain’t doin’ it_.’

Daryl stares at his dad. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

‘Now I don’t care what kind of sick suicide-pact y’all been promising each other back at that goddamn prison, but that ain’t what family does, okay? That ain’t lookin’ out for each other. It ain’t _mercy_ , it ain’t a _kindness, and it sure as hell ain’t love_! Letting other people do your dirty work. Pssh. If it ends, it’s because _you_ end it. Don’t make no one else carry that weight.’

‘Is that what mom did?’

Will blinks, stunned. ‘What?’

‘The fire,’ Daryl breathes. ‘Was it an accident?’

The slap is as predictable as it is surprising. The force behind it drives Daryl to the ground. He splutters, chokes on his own spit. He didn’t have time to press his tongue up against the roof of his mouth and now he’s bitten on it in his surprise. The tang of blood coats his tongue again. He grimaces at the overly familiar taste.

Will is breathing heavily. Hand clenching and unclenching at his side. ‘You’re going to sit here,’ he says, voice deadly cold. He takes a deep breath. ‘You’re going to sit here,’ he repeats, ‘and not move a goddamn muscle while I go through their shit. After, we’re going to find some goddamn shelter and then we’re going to fuckin’ sleep. And all that while, you’re not going to open that fuckin’ mouth of yours, do you understand me? Not one peep out of you. Holy shit. You got me, boy? Did I make myself absolutely fuckin’ clear?’

Daryl nods.

‘Good,’ Will growls. ‘And when we get some shelter? Oh, you best be bracin’ yourself, ‘cause there will be hell to pay for what ya were implyin’ just now.’

Daryl squeezes his eyes shut and presses his lips together. He sits and he breathes and he tries not to think about what’s in store for him once they find a safe place. After a while, he opens his eyes again and scoots back so he can lean against the safeguard. He plucks at his boots, glances up at the car with the bloodied windows and scoffs. He’s sitting on an exposed bridge, surrounded by dead bodies, with no way out if walkers decide to make a return visit, and he’s scared of his own daddy. He lets his head thud back against the metal. This isn’t the first time he’s been scared of his daddy, of course. It’s just that, before, there hadn’t been any place to go.

Sure, his mom’s old friends welcomed him with open arms but ending up there too often would only raise questions he didn’t want to answer. He’d ran away once to that ranch but that had ended with him bleeding on the kitchen floor so he’d never done it again. He didn’t have too many friends who would let him come over unannounced and the ones that did often had the exact same problem he had, so they weren’t much use in that regard.

He wishes Merle was here. The man might have been rough and coarse, but at least Daryl would have had nothing to fear while he was around. A slap, maybe, just a clip across the back of his head that would tell him he’d been treading on thin ice, but never anything else. Not from Merle himself, and certainly not from anyone else either. But that was Merle before he went to jail. Before he went away, before the dead started walking, before everything that’s happened in the meantime. That was Merle in the old world. He doesn’t know whether his brother has changed. He doesn’t even know if he’ll ever see him again. If they ran into each other now, would they still be brothers?

It doesn’t matter, Daryl reminds himself. He’s gone. _He’s not here_.

He looks at the car that’s right in front of him. And he can’t help but wonder whether Merle would have helped that family.

He simply doesn’t know.

He knows one thing though _._ Shane would have .

Shane and Rick and Glenn and Maggie and Carol and Hershel and Carl and even Beth.

They all at least would have _tried_.

And none of them would have made him watch and listen to the screams.

Suddenly he realizes that he has missed his dad. But not Will. It’s a horrible realization. One that chills him to the bone. He’d missed someone who knew him, who had been raised just like him, who wouldn’t be scared to come too close to his Dixon blood because they were already tainted by it. He’d missed his dad badly. The man who would always have his back, who would look out for him, who would offer a shelter from the shit storm their lives have become. The gentle touches, the ease of communicating with someone he’s known ever since he’d opened his eyes. He missed the good times. And had forgotten all about the bad ones.

About the fear that’s now curling around his spine again, the dread of another beating that makes him swallow his words, becoming more the version of himself from before the quarry and the CDC and Hershel’s farm. From before Glenn. Before Shane. Before Rick, even, and Carl, too.

He tries to think of that old saying, what was it again? Something about absence. And the heart. How it grows fonder. Nobody had ever mentioned that that’s because the heart _forgets_.

‘Didn’t I tell ya to sit your little ass down?’

Daryl realizes he stood up. ‘I’m going back.’

Will straightens with a nasty scowl on his face. ‘What?’

‘Ya heard me fine.’ He checks his bolts and then swings the band over his head so his bow rests on his back. He draws his gun, checks the bullets and slams Rick’s clip into the magazine. ‘You could come with me,’ he tells his dad with a glance. ‘Want ya to.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘I’ll go on my own.’

Will scoffs at first but then just stares at him. Confused and a little stunned when he realizes that his son isn’t joking around. ‘You’re kiddin’ me, right? What? Those damn pigs means so much to you, you’d pick them over your own blood?’

‘No. Yeah. I mean….’ Daryl shakes his head. ‘Just come with me.’

‘You don’t make the rules here, boy. Shut your mouth and sit back down. I didn’t fight my own people to have you ditch my ass.’

‘I ain’t ditchin’ ya!’ Daryl shouts, angry and upset when it feels like his heart is being ripped into two pieces. ‘But I ain’t ditchin’ them neither. They kept me alive all winter, looked after my sorry ass when you were havin’ a damn tea party with that fuckin’ psycho back there!’

Will scoffs again. ‘You’re a Dixon. You don’t need no piglets looking after your ass.’

‘Do,’ Daryl says simply because he knows he would have never made it without Shane and Rick.

‘Ahw no,’ Will moans as he slumps onto one of the car doors. He rolls his eyes. ‘Those freaks get into your pretty little head? You were born for this world, boy. You’re tougher than all of them combined. What’s that bunch of pansy-asses, niggers and democrats got on you? Nothing. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly such a damn-‘

‘ _You left me behind_!’ Daryl screams, unleashing the anger that has been building inside of him for months now. ‘Fuck your bullshit story about taking the wrong turn. Fuck your dumb excuse about needing a breather. Fuck you! You left me behind!’

‘Careful,’ Will warns with his hand wandering down to come to rest on the buckle of his belt.

‘No,’ Daryl steps forward, into the man’s space. ‘I ain’t afraid of that no more. I did learn, just like how ya wanted me to, and I do remember. The old world is _gone_. But I lived through this one. Outside of walls, on the run, fighting every single day in the damn hope to see you again. To find Merle. And ya know what? I _survived_. I’ve killed so many walkers, I lost count. I’ve killed people too. For you. And if you take that belt out now, I swear to God I’ll make you pay for it. I know you’d win that fight, but hell, I’d make you work for it.’

Will stares down at him.

‘I love you,’ Daryl breathes, ‘ _so_ much. You’re my blood. You’re my _dad_ , for fuck’s sake. But that prison? That’s where I belong.’

‘Don’t do this.’

Daryl shakes his head and takes a couple of steps back, ‘I might be the one walking away, but you’re the one that’s leaving. _Again_.’

Will frowns and looks a little lost. As close to heartbroken as Daryl has ever seen him. ‘Dare,’ he says softly. ‘I love you.’

‘Then come with me.’

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I glance at the word-count of this thing and just think; 'but how?!' 
> 
> The answer is always you guys. Thanks for the great comments, I love hearing your thoughts.


	33. Sticking together

 

* * *

 

 

Gunshots lead him home.

For one horrible moment, he thinks they are too late. He breaks out into a run, darting between the trees and not worrying about whether Will is keeping up with him. He hears those soft footfalls behind him, echoing through the woods, just a second behind him in order to have his back. He breaks the tree line just as a jeep drives off into the distance.

The gates are destroyed. There’s a van in the middle of the yard, surrounded by snarling walkers. Hershel is right in there with them, firing his gun and still standing. He’s too far away for Daryl to be any help.

His gaze is drawn to the fence close to him. He doesn’t have time to wonder why Rick is outside of the fences. The cop is struggling with three walkers, one so dangerously close to his face that Daryl loads his bow and takes aim.

It’s a risky shot.

He hesitates for a second.

Will’s hand on the small of his back, his breath on Daryl’s cheek as he checks how his son has lined up his hot. ‘You got it, between heartbeats now. Hold your breath. It’s a close one.’

The bolt flies and kills the walker. The tip almost touches Rick’s nose.

Will laughs and clips his son over the back of the head, ‘good one. Stay back, use yar bolts.’ He darts forward, grabs a steel pipe from the ground and thrusts it into a walker’s head. It leaves Rick enough time to deal with the other walker, stabbing it with the barrel of his gun. More are incoming, but Will and Rick move so their backs are against each other and never panic.

Daryl reloads quickly and takes another one down before it can reach for Rick.

Another bolt, another walker, and Will flashes him a grateful grin.

A car comes to a halt beside Hershel and Daryl sees how Glenn and Michonne hurry to get the old man to safety. The inner gate is still up. It closes behind the car and Daryl can see a flash of Carl with his sheriff’s hat.

When he look back again, Rick is stabbing the last walker. The man’s brown shirt is ripped open, revealing his pale chest. There are bruises on his skin. Some black, some blue, but none of them already fading into that comforting yellow of disappearing pain. The man flinches and grimaces as he straightens up and brushes his sweat-soaked curls out of his dark eyes. He staggers a bit, tired, as he looks at Will.

Will grins at him. The gaze flickers to the bruises. ‘The hell happened to you, sunshine?’

Rick looks at Daryl. ‘Shane,’ he croaks, a tiny smile causing one of the corners of his mouth to curl upwards. ‘Dare,’ he breathes as he reaches out to the boy. ‘Thank God.’

Daryl gives him a shy grin and claps their hands together. ‘Just in time, huh?’

‘Just in time,’ the cop echoes. He pulls the boy towards his chest, hugging him for a brief moment. Then he turns towards the fence again and watches how the yard fills up with walkers. ‘Back to square one.’

‘Nah,’ Will spits onto the ground. ‘This is an easy fix, the gate up there is holding fine so the rest of your group is a’right. Got the van right there, present from the Governor. Let’s use it to block the second gate, let my boy take out most of the walkers from the tower.’ He nods as he surveys the area, ‘temporary fix though. This is just him ringin’ the doorbell. You drive the van, I got your back,’ he glances at the cop. ‘Gonna let me in?’

Rick swallows with some difficulty. ‘For now.’

‘Let’s not pretend we’re doing each other any favors here,’ Will says softly, stepping into Rick’s space. ‘I didn’t wanna come here in the first place, but my boy’s awfully fond of you guys. So I’m just going to wait, okay?’

‘For what?’ Rick asks.

‘Until y’all are dead and he quits his crying over all y’all,’ Will grins. He reaches up and pats Rick on the cheek mockingly. ‘In the meantime though, I’ll help ya out. Watch your back, hmm? Hate to see my baby boy in tears. I’m sure you understand that, huh? Father to father.’

Rick works his jaw but nods haltingly. ‘Yeah,’ he cocks his head a little to the side, ‘yeah, I understand that.’

The plan is simple enough and conveyed by a lot of shouting and arm gestures from Rick to Glenn. The others will save their ammo, trying to lure the walkers over by hitting the fences with spades and sticks so they can take them out. It works until Rick slides into the driver’s seat of the van and starts the engine. The loud rumble lures the walkers back to them.

Daryl has climbed into one of the towers and takes the walkers out near the gate with his bolts.

True to his word, Will takes care of the ones near the van when Rick parks and gets out.

With the gate blocked and no new walkers coming in, Daryl fires his last bolt and quickly makes his way down, drawing his knife. Slowly, they move through the field. He sticks to his father’s right hand, feeling the fingers brush over his shoulder and back as if the man is constantly checking his position. Blood gushes over his hand and wrist as he jabs the walkers in the head. It takes a long time. By the end, Daryl’s whole body is screaming due to exhaustion and pain. His muscles vibrate as he staggers towards the gate.

‘I got ya,’ Will murmurs as he draws the boy close enough to let him lean against this frame. ‘Damn, ya did good out there.’

‘Told ya, done it before,’ Daryl mutters as he wipes his nose on his shoulder. The gate rattles when Carl pushes it open. The boy runs over to jump into his dad’s waiting arms.

‘Holy shit,’ Glenn breathes. He staggers forward a little, eyes on Daryl. ‘You came back.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl bites on his lip and wobbles on his feet. Most of the group is looking at him. It unnerves him. Carol presses her hand to her lips as she chokes back her tears and Maggie is so relieved that she sags down on one of the tables. Hershel looks a little more calculating, but that’s because his gaze is lingering on Will instead of him. Beth beams at him. There are two people standing behind Glenn who Daryl doesn’t know. A guy, broad and tall, wearing a beanie despite the heat of summer. A woman is standing next to him, lean and proud, with a sniper rifle in her hand. They share certain features. Daryl wonders whether they’re related.

He looks back at Glenn, ‘just… I’m sorry, okay, for… I didn’t mean to, but…’

The Korean strides over and engulfs him in a fierce hug. He’s lifted clean off the ground and wraps his legs around Glenn’s waist, holding on tightly and burying his face in his friend’s shoulder.

‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’ Glenn chokes out, nails digging into the boy’s sides. ‘If something would have happened to you…’

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl mutters into his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Me too,’ Glenn gently puts him down again. He takes Daryl’s baseball cap off and runs his fingers through the sweaty, dark hair of the boy in order to brush it out of his eyes. ‘You’re still wearing it,’ he laughs when he waves the cap a bit before pulling it back over the boy’s hair. ‘It looks better on you anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl grins. ‘It does.’

Glenn flicks his nose playfully.

‘Daryl,’ Maggie drags herself up from the bench and walks over to claim a hug as well. He lets her, wraps his arms around her slim waist and leans against her frame for a second. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’

Tears prick into his eyes again. The whole long walk back to the prison, he’d wondered what everyone would do once he’d made it back. He’d feared that they wouldn’t even open the gates for him, that they would just send him away again and rage that he’d made his choice. But now Maggie kisses the top of his head and rubs his back comfortingly. He can’t help but tighten his hold on her.

‘ _Will_.’

It’s Shane’s voice that cuts through the soft murmurs of the group, welcoming the youngest Dixon home. Daryl reluctantly lets go of Maggie to look at him. The former cop comes striding over from the other side of the courtyard, a dark scowl on his face.

Will is leaning against the fence, his one hand tucked into the pocket of his faded jeans. His gaze is on Daryl, soft and fond, but it hardens when he glances up at the approaching figure. He pushes himself away from the fence and dips his chin. ‘Shane.’

‘The fuck is he doing here?’ Shane snarls as he throws a look at Rick. ‘We’re letting snakes into the nest now?’

‘Brother-‘ Rick starts but the other cop won’t let him finish.

‘What the hell do you want?’ He snaps at the oldest Dixon.

Will frowns a little and rolls his shoulders back. The hand slips out of his pocket. ‘Easy now.’

That only enrages Shane. ‘What do you want, you sick fuck? What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Taking a breather after saving officer friendly’s ass out there,’ Will answers. ‘A little more gratitude would be nice.’

‘ _Gratitude_? If you expect anything other than a bullet in your brain after what you did to Glenn and Maggie, I’m about to help you out of that dream world of yours, you son of a bitch.’

‘Let’s not do this now, brother,’ Rick says as he walks over, Carl clinging to his side. He reaches out to grab Shane’s arm, fingers digging into his skin. He holds him back. ‘We’ll figure this out.’

Will rolls his eyes and leans back against the fence again. He looks at the metal stump thoughtfully. ‘Ya know, ain’t no secret or surprise that I don’t want to be here. Hell, you sorry folks left me up on the roof of a building to die like an animal while my boy was waiting for me back at the camp. I don’t know what ya sick fucks told him, but let’s not forget the facts here, a’right? Y’all left me to die. But now,’ he grins at Shane, ‘I ain’t an unreasonable man. Did something I shouldn’t have,’ he nods at Glenn and Maggie, ‘got mad, is all. And if it were just me? Yeah, I’d be out there right now, tryin’ to get a clean shot on either one of you.’

‘Dad,’ Daryl says, stepping forward, eyes wide, ‘don’t.’

‘But it ain’t just me,’ Will says with a glance at his son. ‘He’s always been the sweet one. Always dragging strays home. Got his momma’s heart, that one.’

Daryl smiles shyly and his dad flashes him a true smile, honest and open.

‘Now I’m willing to let bygones be bygones,’ Will say with a shrug.

‘You can’t possibly expect us to-‘ Shane starts.

‘We’ll think about it,’ Glenn’s voice cuts through the noise, sharp and almost cold. He reaches behind him and Maggie grabs hold of his hand, rubbing soothing circles into his skin. The dark eyes look at the boy, who’s standing between him and his father. ‘We’ll think about it,’ he repeats, a little softer. ‘You can come in for now, but you’re staying in another cell block. I don’t want you sleeping in the same one as us,’ his grip on Maggie’s hand tightens.

‘Glenn,’ Shane protest. ‘Think about what he did to-‘

‘I know _exactly_ what he did,’ Glenn snaps at the cop. A glare and Shane falls silent. The look softens as the Korean turns to the boy. ‘Have you eaten anything since you left?’

‘No.’

‘Come on,’ Glenn waves him over. ‘Let’s get something in you, okay? Beth? Can you cook something up for him?’

‘Sure,’ the girl beams as she turns on the spot and marches back into the prison.

Glenn leads his wife and the boy over to the entrance. Daryl hesitates there, he turns but comes face to face with Hershel. The older man smiles down at the boy. A hand reaches out to softly touch the spots on his face, the angry red marks which will be bruises later. The fingers trail down and tug at his collar.

‘Anything else?’ the man cocks his head to the side, ‘just bruises? I heard about what happened in the pit. He got you good.’

Daryl nods as he looks away. ‘’s just bruises.’

‘Are you sure?’

He shrugs. ‘Ribs hurt somethin’ fierce,’ he mutters.

The skin around Hershel’s eyes wrinkles when he smiles. ‘Go help your father get settled, then come and find me. I want to have a look at those ribs. Make sure nothing is broken.’

‘They ain’t broken,’ Daryl rubs at his nose, ‘know what that feels like. Ain’t that.’ The smile fades a little, making Daryl think that he’s said something wrong. ‘I’ll come by though,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘Sure. Sorry, sir.’

Hershel looks like he wants to say something else but swallow his words. He nods. ‘See that you do, son.’

Daryl flashes him a small smile before darting past the man, holding on to the doorpost and leaning out again.

Will is still near the fence. He’s talking to Rick, voice low and heads close together. The cop is shaking his head, gestures at the horizon and then puts his hands on his hips to see what the redneck has to say. Will just shrugs at first but then sighs and draws something in the dust with the toe of his boot.

Shane is standing at Rick’s right shoulder. He’s not looking at whatever it is Will is drawing. Instead, he’s glaring daggers at the man.

Daryl grins and runs back to the three men. He bumps his shoulder against Shane’s side and squints up at him, ‘hey.’

Shane looks down at him. And then ignores him.

Daryl stares up at him, shifts his feet restlessly and then carefully bumps his friend again. ‘I said hey…’

‘Yeah, I heard you.’

Daryl’s mouth goes dry. He blinks, takes a step back and brings his hands up to grab his bow tightly, knuckles turning white on the strap. When his gaze drifts to the side, he sees that Will is watching him closely. He swallows, gapes a little at the ground.

‘Dare,’ his dad says as he shoulders past Rick. ‘We’ll finish this later,’ he mutters when the cop starts to protest. ‘It’s too late now, he won’t come tonight. He needs to mobilize the town first. Women, children, people who ain’t ever held a gun. Trust me, he’s not gonna be knocking on your door tonight. Sleep easy. Might be the last time in a long while.’

Rick slowly dips his head.

‘Gonna show me around a bit?’ Will asks his son.

Daryl nods, a little dazed. ‘It’s this way…’

Will follows him. After a couple of steps, Daryl glances over his shoulder to look at Shane. The other man has his back to him.

‘Hey,’ Will mutters. ‘China-man looked mighty pleased to see ya.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl answers as he bites his lip. ‘He’s Korean though.’

‘Korean, huh? Okay,’ his dad nods. ‘I’ll try to remember. Or I’ll just call him rice-muncher, ‘s easier. Cover all them bases, ya know? Thought there were two kinds of Korea anyway. How can anybody just be _Korean_? Gotta pick a side, ‘s what my daddy always said.’

Daryl shakes his head and shoves his father. ‘ _Stop_ ,’ he moans.

‘Never,’ Will laughs back, hand on his son’s shoulder and massaging it gently. ‘Y’all cleared this whole prison?’ He whistles, impressed. ‘We thought about it, back at Woodbury. I thought it couldn’t be done.’

‘We did it.’ A hint of pride bleeds into Daryl’s words.

‘Yeah,’ Will say as he looks around. ‘You sure did, kid.’

 

 

It’s a couple of hours later when Daryl makes his way to his cell. For now, Rick has decided that Will should stay in cellblock D. They’ve spend most of their time roaming around the prison, Daryl showing his old man the ropes and the way while pointing out the newest members of their group. Nobody comes to shake Will’s hand, but Daryl can’t really blame them. Beth looks curious enough, but a stern look from Hershel has her scurrying away to help Carol with Judith.

Daryl slips into the cell he shares with Carl and puts his bow in the corner, rolling his shoulders back with a groan. He’s been on his feet for hours and is glad be able to put the weight down.

Carl is sitting on his own bunk, feet on the dirty matrass and eye glued to one of his comics.

‘Hey,’ Daryl beams.

‘Hey.’

Daryl waits but nothing follows the short greeting. He shrugs and moves to throw his pack onto his own bunk, only to find that there’s a mountain of clothes and blankets on it. He wrinkles his nose, ‘the fuck? What’s all this junk?’

‘It’s not junk,’ Carl snaps. ‘Just stuff we got left over. Extra blankets and our winter gear.’

‘What’s it doin’ on my bed?’ Daryl grouses as he moves up the small ladder to dig around in the clothes. ‘And where the hell is all _my_ stuff?’

‘Gave it to Hershel.’

Daryl jumps down the ladder again and glares at the boy, ‘what do ya mean, ya gave it to Hershel?’

Carl shrugs without looking up, ‘I wanted to throw it out but he said it might come in handy, so…’

‘What were ya going to throw it out for? That’s my goddamn stuff, ya idiot!’

‘You left.’ Carl finally looks up, jaw clenched and eyes cold. ‘Same thing as we did with my mom’s things. And Axel’s just now. He died, by the way, or hadn’t you noticed?’

He hadn’t, if he was being honest. In all the commotion surrounding Will’s arrival at the prion, he hadn’t even noticed that they’d been missing one of their members.

‘When?’ he just asks.

‘Just before you came back. Got shot in the head by the Governor. Shane dragged the body away while you fixed the fence and got rid of the walkers.’

‘Yeah, you’re welcome by the way,’ Daryl snaps because he feels guilty that he hadn’t noticed Axel’s absence, but he’s also mad because of how Carl is acting now. ‘What hell is wrong with you? I came back, didn’t I?’

‘You still left,’ Carl says stubbornly as he looks back at the comic, pointedly flipping a page. ‘Traitor.’

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl breathes as he grabs his pack and bow.

‘Fuck _you_!’ Carl snipes but the Dixon boy is already gone.

Daryl storms down the set of stairs and into the common area. He throws his bow onto one of the table and doesn’t care that there’s probably another scratch marring the paintjob now. Michonne is on the floor, doing some sit-ups while Carol is preparing a bottle for Judith.

Shane is sitting at another table. He’s cleaning their guns.

Daryl stalks over. ‘Carl got rid of my stuff!’

The cop glances up, raises an eyebrow and turns back to the guns.

‘You’re not even going to talk to me now?’ Daryl asks, slamming his hand down on the concrete and narrowly missing some gun-parts. ‘ _I came back_!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Shane warns him. ‘Judith is taking a nap.’

‘Judith is always taking a nap, she’s a goddamn baby!’ Daryl shouts, his voice ringing through the entire prison. ‘I came back. We went north and we hit the Yellow Jacket, right? There was this bridge, and some guys, like, Spanish or something, and there were these walkers and-‘

‘Yeah, I don’t want to hear it, bud,’ Shane cuts him off.

Daryl falls silent instantly. He stares at Shane. Then nods, a nasty scowl starting on his face. ‘Were just words, huh? You’re full of shit.’

Shane closes his eyes and shakes his head.

‘No? Pssh. Almost got me fooled, ya stupid fuckin’ pig!’

‘ _Daryl_!’ Hershel’s voice silences him before his rant can truly start. The man looks angry. Disappointed. ‘Get in here.’

The boy grits his teeth but slinks away into the semi-darkness of the man’s cell. He paces until his way is blocked by the old man on his crutches. He throws himself on Hershel’s bunk, crosses his arms in front of his chest defensively and scowls.

‘Take your vest and shirt off. I need to have a look at those ribs.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You promised.’

‘Didn’t.’

The man sighs and sits down on a chair that’s placed beside his bedside table. A small smile, tired, mars his face. ‘Not since Maggie was a teenager have I had to deal with such a stubborn child.’

‘Ain’t a child no more.’

‘Daryl.’

There are tears burning in his eyes. The sensation starts to feel far too familiar. He ducks his head so the old man won’t see. He shivers. He lets the nail of his thumb dig into the pad of his index finger. Again and again until it hurts. Jagged white lines turning red. He hopes it will bleed and scar. That he will always remember how he almost got fooled.

‘We’re so glad you came back,’ Hershel says softly. ‘Shane is glad you’re back, too. But when you make a choice like that? To leave? You hurt the ones you leave behind.’

‘Weren’t a _choice_.’

‘Of course it was, and nobody blames you. Not even Shane,’ Hershel drags his chair closer to the bed. He leans forward, hesitates to touch the boy before him. ‘He was upset when Rick came back without you. He… They fought. I thought he was going to leave him bloody. He was so mad.’

Daryl shakes his head because none of that matters. None of that is real to him because he wasn’t there. He’s seen the bruises on Rick’s chest, but Shane still won’t even talk to him. Bruises don’t mean anything to him. The spots blooming on his ribs, on his face, they’re not love, he thinks. That’s what Glenn kept saying. And he fears he might be right.

‘You need to give him time,’ Hershel say now. ‘He’s confused.’

But there’s nothing confusing about this mess, Daryl thinks bitterly. He came back. That is all.

‘He _loves_ you.’

Daryl is not so sure anymore, because he’d seen Will in the fighting pit and had been so goddamn happy to see him again. That is love, he thinks. Despite everything, despite the people chanting for his death, despite Will beating him into the ground, he loves his dad. _Loves_ him. Loves him enough to stand up to him, to come back and trust his dad to follow him. That is love, too, he thinks. His dad, raging and angry and still following him for his sake. To face the demons inside the prison that took his blood, to face his own mistakes, to bear the consequences at last while still holding his head high.

‘Tell me what you’re feeling,’ Hershel pleads.

Daryl scoffs and laughs at the same time because it’s all fucked up. He doesn’t know. He’s so happy and he’s so sad and he’s _hurt_ , but that has nothing to do with his almost-broken ribs. Tears drip down his cheeks. He shakes his head, brings his hands up to cover his ears because nothing Hershel will say will make this right. It’s all too fucked up for even the old man to fix.

Hershel seems to understand that, at least. He moves to sit next to the boy. An awkward hop and then he lowers himself on the bunk beside him. Hesitant hands on his shoulder, like he’s not sure whether the boy will snap at him, too.

But Daryl doesn’t snap at him. He’s too tired to put yet another fight. Instead, he turns towards the man, throws one leg over the man’s thighs and buries himself in that broad chest. He feels Hershel’s beard tickle the side of his face but doesn’t mind. Desperate fingers curl into the man’s shirt as he hides his tears in the fabric. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says, sobs, cries. ‘I never wanted…’

‘I know,’ Hershel says as he wraps his arms around the boy hiding in his lap. ‘We all know.’

 

 

The stranger is sitting at one of the round tables when he emerges from the cell again. The man is counting bullets. Neat little piles. Dark eyes roam over the boy for a second, calculating but not unfriendly. He’s big, even bigger than Merle had been. Muscles bulge as he moves, but he still moves fluently, silently, and his touch is delicate when he handles the ammunition.

Daryl sizes him up. ‘Who are you?’ he asks after a couple of moments of silence.

‘Tyreese,’ the man sits back a little and dips his chin.

‘The lady, she your sister?’

A smile graces Tyreese’s features as he nods. ‘Yeah. That’s Sasha. A firecracker, that one.’

Daryl scuffs his boots on the concrete. ‘How’d y’all end up here?’

‘The wall is down on the other side of the prison. We had a group. One of us got injured. Bit. We had to find a safe place. Stumbled upon this prison. Carl found us in the lower levels, saved our lives. Rick and Shane let us stay.’

Daryl tucks his hands into his armpits and looks down at his boots. Then he glances back up. ‘Ya said a _group_. Three people?’

‘No,’ Tyreese shakes his head. ‘There were two others. They… they had other ideas about this place.’ The man hesitates for a second. ‘They wanted to take it.’

Daryl just looks at him.

‘Ben, just a boy, and his father. Rick and Shane kicked them out after we told what they had been talking about.’

‘Ya ratted on your own group?’

Tyreese looks back at the bullets. ‘It was just us and whatever was left of your group. Shane would have been difficult to take out, but there were four of us. They were talking about killing Carl. Beth. Carol.’ He shakes his head again. ‘That wouldn’t have been right. These are good people.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’re Daryl, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Daryl glares at him.

‘Only good things,’ Tyreese smiles. ‘About your crossbow, they say you’re the best hunter in town.’

‘Yeah, well, not too many of those around anymore, so…’

He laughs, a low rumble. ‘True. Still…’

Echoing footsteps announce the arrival of Rick. He has Judith in his arms, a blanket wrapped around her to keep the little girl warm. He glances at Tyreese, nodding a little to acknowledge him before he turns to the boy. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

‘Hershel wanted to check me over.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing.’ Daryl sits down on one of the table, his feet on the bench. ‘All good.’

‘Is it?’ Rick sits down beside him. One of his long legs pressed against the boy’s shorter one. ‘I talked to Shane earlier.’

‘So?’

‘Hey,’ the cop carefully reaches out and scratches at the back of the boy’s neck, just below the baseball cap. ‘Talk to me.’

‘I’m done talkin’ to everyone. Won’t make a lick of difference.’

‘Okay,’ Rick says as he strokes Judith’s cheek, smiling down at his daughter, ‘maybe not, but it can’t hurt, right?’

Except that it does, all the damn time. He opens his mouth, or someone else does, and it all just gets worse and worse and worse.

‘I know Judy wants to hear it, anyway. She missed you.’

‘Are you fuckin’ deaf?’ Daryl snarls as he ducks away from the cop’s hand and off the tabletop. ‘I said I was done talkin’.’ He takes off running. Out the common area, down the hall, through the gates, the doors, the corridors until he slams into cellblock D. Up the stairs and into the last cell on the very end.

Will is reading a book. Brow furrowed as he looks up. ‘Why’re you stomping around like a damn elephant?’

Daryl doesn’t answer. He just throws himself onto Will’s bunk and worms around until his dad opens his legs a little and lets the boy crawl onto his chest. He hides his face into his dad’s side, breathing him in through shuddering breaths.

‘Well, make yourself fuckin’ comfortable then,’ the father says with a roll of his eyes. ‘What’s wrong now?’

And Daryl tells him. Voice shaking because he’s angry and sad, all those things.

But Will laughs at him. Raises an eyebrow skeptically. ‘And ya thought they were gonna throw ya a damn party? Hmm-hmm-hmm, that other think came hard and fast, ey? Knocked ya right on your ass.’ He wraps his good arm around the boy’s shoulders.

‘You were right,’ Daryl mutters. ‘They’re all stupid. Dumb fuckin’ city slickers who don’t know nothing. You were right,’ He looks up at his dad, ‘We’re just gonna wait it out, right? And kick their heels when we get the chance.’

Will sighs softly. His hand strokes his boy’s cheek. ‘Yeah? Gonna kick Carl’s heals now, are ya? And Beth’s? You’re gonna leave Maggie to the walkers. Just like that, hmm?’

‘Yeah.’

The fingers on Daryl’s cheek tighten a little. Will shakes his head for him. ‘No, ya ain’t. All these years I’ve been hollerin’ ya ain’t a real Dixon and look at you now. Hello,’ he smiles. ‘There you are, Daryl _Dixon_. You know what makes us special?’

‘What?’ Daryl breathes.

‘We’re all heart. You know, men like Shane, for example, they’re a little bit of both, right? Brains and heart. They get mad, sure their heart stirs a bit, but there’s always that little voice inside of them, tellin’ them when something really ain’t good. Tellin’ them to stop when it’s been enough. You see,’ Will shifts a little, sits up straighter, ‘that ain’t a fool-proof thing, of course. Sometimes something happens and they get mad. Or sad. Or they get downright scared, okay? Makes so they can’t hear that voice for a second. They do something stupid anyway, like not talking to ya no more, sendin’ ya away. Yeah,’ Will grins, ‘I heard. That Carol? She’s a real sweetheart, brought me dinner. Brought me up to speed, too. You cozying up to pigs now?’

Daryl just stares at him, unsure of what to say.

Will’s grip on his face loosens. He rubs a thumb over his cheekbone. ‘Someone has been lookin’ after my boy while I was away. And not just keepin’ you fed and all that shit,’ the blue eyes look at Daryl curiously. ‘Nah, he took good care of you. Him and the rice-muncher, I’m guessin’, huh?’

‘ _Glenn_ ,’ Daryl whispers.

‘Yeah,’ Will sighs. ‘ _Glenn_. I’ve seen grown men at the gates of Woodbury after months of being out there. Was nothing left of who they were. Survival machines. Animals. Had to put some of them down, they were just _gone_. But here you are,’ the father smiles, ‘twelve years old and the king of the apocalypse.’

The boy hides his face and shakes his head because that’s not how he feels.

‘And still cryin’ like a pussy because some pig didn’t say _hi_ to ya.’

Daryl snorts and stomps his dad.

‘You’re too sweet for this world,’ Will mutters as he kisses his son’s hair. ‘Ain’t sure whether I want your heart to harden or not. Stuff like this? Shane bein’ a dick? That’ll pass. That’s small stuff. Ya shouldn’t let that get to ya. Couple of days – hell, if he even lasts that long – and he’ll be crawling back to your side. That little voice inside his head will come back online and it’ll tell him he’s bein’ a jackass, a’right? Or I will. Either way, he’ll come to his senses soon enough.’

‘Ya think so?’ Daryl mutters, plucking at the buttons of Will’s shirt.

‘Yeah.’

‘How can ya be so sure?’

Will hugs him close and bats his hand away. ‘He’s been lookin’ after your ass all winter. A blind man can see he cares about ya. He’s just gotta realize that just because I’ve got my boy back, don’t mean he lost his, right? Don’t get me wrong; you’re _mine_ ,’ he growls while playfully biting down on Daryl’s ear and tugging at it. ‘ _My_ blood. But the more people watchin’ your ass, the better. Even if it is goddamn _Shane_ , of all people.’

Daryl snorts and leans on his dad’s chest, looking him in the eye. Blue meeting blue. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

Will smiles. That rare, genuine one. He presses their foreheads together. ‘Dixon’s stick together.’

‘Nobody kills us but us.’

The smile widens, turns wicked. ‘Damn straight.’

 

 


	34. Moral high ground

 

* * *

 

 

It’s strange to see Will actually _trying_.

Daryl is on guard duty in one of the watch towers when he spots his dad near the fences with Shane and Rick. The three men slowly walk the perimeter. Sometimes Shane will pause and tug at the fences, searching for a weak spot, while Will and Rick walk on. The second cop is talking with his hands a lot, gesturing to the prison and the woods, to something in the west, to Woodbury, but Will just nods every once in a while, one hand stuffed into the pocket of his jeans, the metal stump gleaming in the sunlight.

There’s an automatic riffle slung over his shoulder. Rick had given it to him earlier this morning.

If he didn’t know any better, Daryl would think he’s looking at three friends. But he does know better and he knows those three men. Shane is the most obvious about his discomfort, never stepping up to stand beside Will and always hanging back. He doesn’t seem to be adding much to the conversation, but at least he listens when the Dixon talks.

Rick moves cautiously. He always keeps Will in his sight and Shane close enough to be able to intervene should it be necessary. His right hand rests on his python, but Daryl can’t tell whether that’s because of Will or the walkers and dangers lurking beyond the fences.

Of course Will had noticed that too, but he tries to ooze relaxation and ease as he walks along the perimeter. He seems to be answering all of Rick’s questions while mostly ignoring Shane’s stalking in the background. He stays half a step behind the cop, letting him lead and silently concurring that he’s in their home and not his own.

Footsteps on the ladder and a couple of seconds later Carl crawls into the watchtower. He looks a little surprised to find Daryl standing there and Daryl immediately suspects that Carol switched their duties so they had no choice but to run into each other. She was supposed to relieve him instead.

The boy doesn’t seem to know what to do. He glances at the sniper rifle that’s leaning against the wall next to Daryl. He looks like he thinks about just snatching that up and marching to the other side of the tower.

‘Hey,’ Daryl says to break the ice a little. He, too, is not sure what to do or say.

‘Yeah, _hey_ ,’ Carl bites back. ‘Well, I’m here, so you can go.’

The youngest Dixon snorts and turns around again, leaning on the banister so he can watch the forest.

Carl shifts his weight uneasily behind him. ‘If you’re just going to stand there, _I_ ’m going to leave. There’s no point in both of us being on watch.’

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Daryl says as he follows a couple of birds that dance above the tops of the trees. ‘I’m sorry that I left, okay? I’m real sorry, but if it’d been you and your dad, you would have done the exact same thing so I don’t get why you’re givin’ me hell for it. You’d have followed Rick, ain’t no doubt about that.’

‘That’s because it’s my dad!’

‘And Will’s mine, so what’s your fuckin’ point?’

‘I don’t mean - ,’ Carl growls behind him. He searches for the right words. ‘I don’t mean as in _my_ _dad_. I mean as; he’s my dad. As the person. It’s _Rick_. I’d follow him, because he’s Rick.’

‘Bull,’ Daryl mutters.

‘I heard about what he did to you in that pit! Dad says he beat you into the ground, that he was going to feed you to walkers!’ Carl stalks over and grabs Daryl’s shoulder, whirling him around so they’re face to face. ‘I’ve seen your back. I know what he does.’

‘Ya don’t know shit!’

‘I do! I _know_!’

‘Yeah? You know how he fuckin’ arranged all that shit just so he could get me out of that damn fightin’ pit, huh? Did Rick tell you that? He got me _out_! Don’t think for one goddamn second that you know anything about me, or him. Yeah, he used to beat me silly when he had a drink but-‘

‘He wasn’t drunk back at quarry!’

‘Just stay the fuck out of our business, ain’t no concern of yours! What the fuck would you know about all that, huh? He ain’t a bad person, no matter what all y’all say. You don’t know him. Just because we ain’t like your goddamn picket-fence neighbors, don’t mean nothing!’ Daryl breathes hard through his gritted teeth. ‘He’s my dad. He’s staying. Best get used to it.’

Carl scowls at him. ‘Why’d you come back? If he’s so perfect, why didn’t you just leave for good then?’

‘He ain’t perfect, but he’s _tryin’_!’

‘He beat Glenn almost to death and threw a walker at him!’

‘Why do you think you gotta fight his fight for him, ya stupid brat. Glenn let him stay!’

‘For now.’

Daryl glares at the other boy. ‘He’s stayin’,’ he repeat with a growl, ‘ _for good_.’

‘He’s scum.’

The punch lands right in the softness of Carl’s belly, causing him to double over and gasp for breath. The other boy tries to recover and land a punch, but his coordination is off, obviously not used to a fist-fight, and Daryl easily dodges it. He grabs hold of the arm, steps around the boy and twists it painfully until Carl is forced to his knees with a cry. Daryl guides him down, makes sure the other boy’s knees don’t take too hard a hit and steps forward to breathe in his ear. ‘Take it back.’

‘No.’ Carl tries to glare at him but can’t twist around enough to face him.

‘ _Take it back_!’

‘No, what’re you going to do? Break my arm? Dammit, let me go.’

Daryl knows he won’t hurt his friend like that, and his friend knows it too. So he lets go of the arm, puts a rough hand in Carl’s hair and rubs his knuckles over the scalp. So hard that it has to hurt. Daryl knows it does because that’s what Merle had always treated him to whenever he was being obnoxious. He scoffs when he pulls away again. ‘Look at ya. On your fuckin’ knees like ya belong. Who’s scum now?’

‘You’re psycho,’ Carl breathes as he rubs a soothing hand over his scalp. ‘That _hurt_.’

‘Pussy.’

‘Trash.’

Daryl glares at him as he moves back to the banister to check the perimeter. ‘Want to go another round? I can go all day.’

‘No,’ Carl mutters as he shifts to sit on his ass rather than his knees. He scowls while he picks at his fingernails. ‘I just don’t understand. He _is_ scum.’

‘Careful,’ Daryl warns and shivers because that’s what Will always says right before he crosses the line.

‘You’ve got Shane, and Glenn, and Maggie. My dad, Hershel, everyone! Why would you put up with that piece of shit? It doesn’t make sense, you were… you were _happy_ without him!’

‘That what you think? That I knew my dad had cut off his own damn hand and made it out of Atlanta, was now roaming the country side somewhere without me, and that I were _happy_? Damn. You really don’t know shit. Stop opening your mouth and sprayin’ your bullshit everywhere. Don’t wanna hear it.’ Daryl hunches his shoulders and leans on the metal. ‘He’s my dad, and you don’t have to understand how we do things, okay? You don’t know him like I do.’

‘Tell me then.’

Daryl looks back at the other boy.

Carl shrugs. ‘My dad’s a cop. He helps people. That’s a good thing. When I was small, he’d let me sit on his knees in the car when we were on backroads and let me steer, telling me that he was teaching me how to drive. We had this radio in our car, right? It had all these numbers on it, like, so you can search for stations. At every red light, he’d tell me to enter the code so it’d go to green. I’d smash buttons until it did and he’d tell me I’d done a good job. He once came to one of my school plays in his uniform,’ Carl grins at the memory. ‘Made me the coolest kid in school for a whole week. He was half an hour late, but he came.’ The boy cocks an eyebrow, ‘your dad ever did anything like that?’

Daryl works his jaw. His dad never came to school, not for any damn play they had to do and not for any parent-teacher conference either. Usually it was Merle, in his twenties and sulking, listening to his teacher prattling on about how Daryl really should read more at home. He doesn’t have any stories like Carl’s. Hell, he hasn't lived the same life as the boy. But he still has fond memories.

He bites his lip, shrugs, scuffs his boots. ‘He would take me camping sometimes. Would put all those blankets on the back of the car so I could see them stars. He taught me how to read them. Told stories about them, like, how they got there.’

Like Orion, whose father sacrificed his only animal to feed the gods and was granted his wish of having a child, and became the best hunter to walk the earth. The hunter who, high on his own success, wanted to kill all the wild animals on the planet and was smacked down by the goddess Gaia and her mighty scorpion. How Orion has no rest, not even among the stars, forever haunted by the beast.

‘Other shit, too. Took me huntin’. Learned me how to ride a bike, shoot my bow, all that shit dads do, okay? He’s just a _dad_. _My_ dad.’

‘But he beat you.’

‘So? Look at you, ya never had someone put his hands on ya and you were on your knees in under two seconds! He taught me how to take a hit, okay, but he helped me back up too. You’re actin’ like he took his belt out every chance he got! Weren’t like that, man. Didn’t grow up in your town, in your neighborhood. Grew up in a damn trailer park. Ya had to fight for your place. He made sure I knew how.’ Daryl takes a calming breath. ‘Look, we’re never goin’ to agree, okay? Let’s just forget about it. I came back. End of story.’

‘Let bygones be bygones,’ Carl mutters behind him, echoing Will’s words.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says.

‘Fine,’ Carl gets to his feet and leans next to him against the fence. ‘That doesn’t mean I suddenly like him. He’s scum, okay? And so are you.’ He knocks his shoulder against Daryl’s, ‘but I like you. You’re my best friend here.’

Daryl scoffs and shakes his head without looking at the other boy.

‘You are,’ Carl laughs. ‘And you’ve got to teach me that move someday.’

‘Shane taught me.’

‘Yeah, guessed that, ‘s a cop move, okay? Restrain and hold. The knuckles were mean though.’

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter, ‘’s because that was a Dixon addition.’

‘Scum, all of you,’ Carl grins, ‘I’m telling you’ The grin fades slightly. ‘I’m sorry about your stuff. I wasn’t really going throw it away, you know. It’s just - I got mad when dad said that… well, doesn’t matter anymore.’

‘Yeah, well, next time you touch my things, ya best be ready to lose a hand.’

‘Fine,’ Carl kicks him. ‘So, are you – I mean, all that stuff on your bed, we can just throw it into another cell, or do you want to bunk with your dad? I don’t care, you know, but…’

Daryl lifts an eyebrow.

The other boy blushes a bit and flashes him another grin, ‘it’s lonely without you bitching about everything above me. And, you know, it’s _our_ cell block. Like – C, that’s u, all of us.’

‘Stop being such a girl,’ Daryl laughs. ‘Yeah, I’ll bunk with you, if it’s all right with Will. Wanna paint my damn nails, too? Have a gossip session when the lights go out?’

‘Why are you always such an asshat?’

‘Hey,’ Daryl smirks as he backs away towards the ladder, ‘you want to bunk with me, I was fine sleepin’ in Will’s cell but I don’t want Rick houndin’ my ass because I made his baby boy cry again.’ He pretends to wipe away tears, ‘boo-hoo, Daryl’s so mean to me, daddy, he threw a dead squirrel at me and I screamed like a little girl.’

Carl looks outraged for a second. ‘I’d just woken up and I wasn’t expecting to find a _dead animal_ on my pillow, staring at me. It was – fuck you,’ he shakes his head and laughs when he realizes that he’s being baited again. ‘Shut up.’

‘Hey,’ Daryl jumps down a couple of steps on the ladder and thumps his fist on the floor to get Carl’s attention . ‘Remember the candy Shane found in that office near the warehouses? Bet you already ate everything.’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Pig, just like your daddy,’ Daryl leers. ‘Anyway, I’ve got some left. Share after dinner?’

‘ _Yeah_! Err, I mean, sure.’

‘Yeah, no need to be all grateful about it,’ Daryl rolls his eyes, ‘see ya after your watch.’

‘See you, Dixy.’

Daryl flips him off just before he slides down the ladder and runs to catch up with Will, Rick and Shane.

 

 

The only thing that Daryl hates about the prison is the fact that it echoes. Sounds are bounced around, amplified, until it’s almost deafening. It’s especially annoying when that sound is Judith’s crying. The little girl is in Beth’s arms. The blond girl walks her up and down the room, bobbing her and swaying her gently but none if it seems to help. She talks and sings and soothes but Judith is too upset to listen to any of it.

Daryl and Carl are sitting in a corner, munching on their shared candy.

Michonne is sitting a couple of feet from them. She’s polishing her sword. The metal gleams in the rays of sunlight streaming in through the high windows. There’s a nasty scowl on her face. She must hate to have to listen to the little girl’s cries, too.

‘- bought a horse,’ Carl is saying next to him, all giddy excitement as he jabs his elbow into Daryl’s ribs. ‘Like – a miniature horse, but still. It was so cool.’

‘The fuck she’d need a miniature horse for?’ Daryl frowns as he digs around in the small bag for his favorite piece of candy.

‘I don’t know, she was the daughter of the mayor, so they probably had money to waste or something.’

‘’s stupid.’

Carl rolls his eyes, ‘it was just a story. _Sorry_.’

‘Dumb story,’ Daryl murmurs with a shrugs. He glances at Beth who starts to look frustrated. ‘What’s up with your sis anyway? Are all Grimes’ crybabies?’

The boy jabs his ribs again, a little more viciously now. ‘Shut up. I don’t know, it was worse when I tried to take her, so I’m just hanging back. She’ll settle down in a minute.’

‘Can’t be too soon.’ Daryl looks at Michonne again, who’s gritted her teeth. He gets up, knees popping as he does, and walks over to her.

She looks up at him, a little suspicious.

He holds out the bag to her. ‘Want some?’

She narrows her eyes, ‘what is it?’

‘Candy.’

She lifts her chin, ‘you got chocolate?’

‘Got what I’m offerin’,’ Daryl says, impatient and shaking the bag. ‘Candy, no chocolate.’

The woman eyes him for a moment. Then she reaches out and takes a piece of the sweet stuff, popping it into her mouth. The dark eyes meet Daryl’s light ones and she give him a hesitant smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘Whatever,’ the Dixon shrugs as he dives back into the corner he’s sharing with Carl, leaning against the other boy, putting his boots high up against the wall and resting his head on the other boy’s knees.

‘Get off me,’ Carl moans but he doesn’t shove his friend away.

‘Hey, Dare? Ya in here?’ Will walks into the common area and the mood inside the room shifts immediately. Michonne grips her sword a little tighter, eyes on the man at all times, while Beth just glances at him warily as she tries to get Judith to calm down. ‘Ah, there ya are,’ he crosses towards his son and squats down next to him. His brow furrows a bit when he sees that Daryl is half in the lap of Carl, ‘the hell are ya doin’?’

‘Eatin’ candy, want some?’

Will glances at the bag. ‘No,’ then the blue gaze shifts to the other boy. ‘Hello, Carl.’

Carl sets his jaw and just nods a little, not meeting the man’s eye.

‘Hey,’ Will reaches out with his hand and taps Daryl’s knee to get his attention again. ‘Saw that your sight is off.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl winces. ‘Had to throw it down when a walker came at me, kinda fucked it up. I’m real sorry, couldn’t get it back the way… don’t matter, just aim a little different now, makes up for it.’

‘Until you panic and forget to correct for it,’ Will says. ‘Mind if I have a look? Where is it?’

Daryl sits up quickly, eager, ‘it’s on the table. Thanks, dad,’ he scrambles up and follows his father, climbing on the table to sit with him while Will inspects his bow. The movements are a bit awkward now that he doesn’t have two hands anymore, but he manages to take aim smoothly after a little balancing. He hums under his breath.

‘Did a number on it.’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl scratches at his nose, ‘it’s just, sometimes I didn’t have a lot of time and I had to – I swear I was careful with it, but-‘

‘Hey,’ Will frowns as he stares down the sight, ‘fuck that. I’d rather have you break this thing to pieces than be a second too late with grabbin’ your knife. You know that. Think I can fix it though, ain’t sure,’ he murmurs, ‘but hell, got nothing else to do anyway. You took the tools with ya?’

‘Of course,’ Daryl grins as he grabs his pack and starts to unload his equipment for his bow. He watches how Will goes through the stuff and is giddy with the thought of his bow working properly again. It’s been a bitch to adjust for the way his sight got wrecked. He balances one of his bolts on his fingertip while his dad works.

It doesn’t take too long for Will to put the screwdriver down with an irritated sigh however. He turns around to Beth, who is still tending to a crying Judith. ‘What the fuck is wrong with her? Can’t ya take her outside or something?’

‘And bring a herd down on us? Besides, we’re not allowed to go outside with the Governor and everything,’ Beth snaps back, flustered and with heated cheeks. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, okay? She’s just upset. Leave her be.’

‘Where’s her daddy?’

Beth sighs and pushes a few strands of blonde hair behind her ear. ‘Rick’s clearing the lower levels with Glenn, Shane, Tyreese and Sasha. Maggie is on watch with Carol.’

Will nods and looks at the baby. With a sigh, he stands up, ‘Dare, give me your vest.’

Daryl shrugs out of it automatically and hands it to his father.

Will wraps it around the metal stump and then walks over to Beth. ‘Come on, hand her to me now.’

Michonne looks up with a dark look on her face while Beth turns slightly to the side, hiding the screaming, little girl from view. ‘No, she’ll settle down soon.’

Will rolls his eyes, ‘she’s been raisin’ hell for over ten minutes, look at her. She’s gonna make herself sick actin’ up like that. Come on, blondie. _Beth_ ,’ he corrects quickly, ‘Give her to me, Beth. Promise I won’t drop her.’

Beth hesitates for a second but glances at Daryl, who’s just looking on curiously. ‘Are you sure it’s okay with your hand…?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure, Beth,’ Will gives her a small smile and steps closer, ‘come on.’

And Beth carefully transfers the girl to the man’s good arm. ‘You got her? Are you sure? Is she –‘

‘Hey, girly,’ Will rumbles.

Judith falls silent and stares up at him with big, wet, blue eyes.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Will laughs, ‘you wantin’ your daddy something fierce, huh? Now I ain’t no pig, mind, but I got the voice, huh? That’s okay, that’s okay,’ he says as he carefully sits down next to his son on the table so he can hold Judith in his lap. ‘You’re done cryin’ for now. That’s right.’

Beth sags down on a chair. ‘Thank goodness,’ she breathes, running her hands through her clammy blonde hair, ‘I thought she’d never stop.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Will grins at her.

‘You’re good with her,’ Beth smiles back.

‘Nah,’ Will says, ‘she’s just shocked, ain’t ever seen me before, have ya? But that voice is kinda nice, huh? Yeah. All that rumblin’ going on around ya reminds ya of your daddy, huh? He’ll be back soon,’ he tickles Judith’s belly and the little girl gurgles at him. ‘Dare was just like that. Sometimes nothing would settle him down but being put on my chest while I were talkin’.  Gave his mom some peace of mind and apparently he didn’t mind me narratin’ NASCAR races, so it worked out good for us, huh?’ He gently nudges his son and Daryl ducks his head shyly.

‘Stop,’ he mutters, feeling embarrassed.

‘ _Dixon_.’ Rick slowly walks down the set of stairs. There’s blood on his shirt, splattered on his neck and cheek, causing his skin to look even paler and eyes darker. His hand is resting on his python. The heels of his boots clang on the metal, echoing through the prison, chasing the faded cries of his daughter. The machete taps against his thigh as he moves, muscles fluid beneath his skin, almost predatory. Daryl rises. His heart hammers in his throat at the sight of the cop. The dark eyes on his father, pale lips a tight line, fingers curling around the metal of his gun in a silent threat. There’s hatred in the way he tilts his chin a bit higher.

‘Grimes,’ Will nods.

‘Rick,’ Beth jumps up, looking terrified. ‘I didn’t – she wouldn’t stop crying and you were still inside and I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry. He hasn’t-‘

‘It’s fine, Beth,’ Rick says after throwing a glance her way, dismissing her easily. ‘Because Will is going to hand me my daughter now. Aren’t you?’ He looks at Will as his boots hit the final step and then the concrete.

The oldest Dixon snorts and slides off the table. ‘Of course,’ he crosses the room, Judith gurgling against his chest. ‘What’s her name?’

Rick works his jaw for a moment. ‘Judith.’

‘Judith, hmm?’ Will steps up close to the father and transfers the baby girl to his waiting arms. ‘Ain’t she precious?’ He flashes Rick an easy grin as he steps back and removes the vest from his stump. He throw it back at Daryl, who catches it. ‘She were raisin’ hell. Got sick of it.’

‘Yeah?’

Will looks away. Then back at Rick, their eyes meeting. ‘Just told Beth, Dare used to cry like that. Breaks my heart.’ He turns on the spot and walks back to the table, plopping down at it and getting back to fixing Daryl’s bow.

Daryl thinks about the baby they had heard at Yellow Jacket. How he hadn’t even recognized the sound at first, how he’d made Daryl listen to how the dead had silenced the cries of her mother after the girl had gone deadly quiet already.

Rick looks at him sharply.

Daryl makes sure his expression doesn’t betray his thoughts.

‘Think ya might have fucked it up too bad, Dare,’ Will murmurs as he prods at his bow again. ‘It’s a little bit better this way but we might have to think about getting’ ya a new one. Can’t be that hard to find around this place, lots of huntin’ to be done in them woods, just like back home.’

Daryl nods and fiddles with one of his bolts, letting the tip dig into his thumb.

‘Hey, by the way, did ya bring my bow back with ya?’

‘No,’ Daryl mutters as he squints at his dad through his bangs. ‘Left it in Atlanta. At the quarry.’

Will frowns, anger simmering in those blue eyes. ‘Why the fuck would ya leave it there?’

He digs the bolt deeper into his thumb, partially hoping that it will split the skin. ‘I don’t know. I just thought that if ya came back, that, you know… It’d be there for ya. If ya ever came looking for… I don’t know.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t matter none,’ his dad says and it sounds a little forced. ‘That thing was probably too heavy to carry around, and it wouldn’t do me any good with just one hand. Too much hassle. Thought maybe you could use it, but... Doesn’t matter.’

A noise upstairs attracts Daryl’s attention.

Shane is leaning against the banister, elbows on the metal and shoulders hunched. The dark hair is slicked back and glistening, he probably just washed it after they’d cleared the lower levels. There’s a scowl on his face. His brown eyes are trained on Will as he works his jaw angrily. It takes him a couple of moments to realize that Daryl  is looking at him.

The bolt digs even deeper into his skin.

‘Cut that out,’ Will snaps as he reaches out and takes it away from him.

Shane glances at the father once more before disappearing into the darkness of his own cell.

 

 

It’s hours later when Daryl makes his way to Cell block D to get his stuff. He’s spend the rest of the afternoon with Glenn on guard duty. They hadn’t really talked much. That was fine with Daryl. He liked that, that Glenn would just let him curl up in a corner and leave him be. He’d carved a figure from a branch, nearly nicking his own fingers but never drawing blood. It’s something Will had done when he’d been younger. When they had still lived in the house, he’d had a whole row of figurines on his window sill. Wolves, dogs, tigers, ducks, alligators, even a giraffe that had to be propped up against a lion because his head was a bit too heavy. Every time Will had left on one of his hunting trips with his buddies, he’d come home with a new figurine for Daryl.

It’s harder than it looks, Daryl has found, but it’s something to keep him busy.

Now he’s walking through the last corridor, making sure to quiet his footfalls. It’s late already. Darkness haunts the prison, only chased to the corners by the moonlight that streams in through the high windows. He hopes that Will is already asleep. He doesn’t know what Will will say to him choosing to bunk with Carl instead.

A soft glow coming from Will’s cell tells him that his father is still awake. What catches him off guard, however, is Shane. The cop is leaning against the bars of the oldest Dixon’s cell, arms crossed in front of his chest and a nasty scowl on his face. He’s talking, voice low and rough.

Daryl slinks away into the shadows and sits on the cold stairs. He wraps his arms around his legs and lets his chin rest on his knees. He listens.

‘- making the rounds,’ Shane says. ‘Trying to play nice. But if you screw this up? Mess with Daryl? If I see a single bruise on that boy, I will slit your throat while you sleep, man.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not much you can count on in this world anymore, but you can count on that. I’ll make you pay for it. I’ll fucking kill you.’

The bunk creaks and Daryl can imagine how Will slowly sits up. A soft thud and the man is probably bracing himself, the metal stump coming to rest on his bed as his good hand curls around the edge. ‘So you’re the bad cop, hmm?’ There’s a glimpse of a sneer in Will’s voice. ‘What’s the problem, officer? Your partner gave me the go-ahead after I saved his sorry ass. He’s okay with me stayin’ here for good. Hell, let me hold his little girl. Weren’t that a precious sight now? Know you were watchin’ me.’

Shane’s fingers tighten on his own biceps.

‘You got a thing for old Will now?’ Daryl can’t see his dad from this angle but he knows that he’s moving his eyebrows suggestively. ‘I’ve hunted all my life, never had a pig tryin’ to sneak up on me before.’

Shane’s hands relax.

Will switches gears. ‘Ya know, a little birdy told me something real funny. That little girl? Judy? She yours, man?’

Something tightens in Shane’s face, souring his vague smile into a grimace of annoyance.

‘What’s that like, huh? Another man raising your blood, holdin’ your little girl? Nah,’ Will grins when Shane’s grimace registers, ‘that little birdy weren’t Dare. He keeps his secrets. But old Will ain’t stupid. Everyone knows ya were bangin  officer friendly’s wife back when it all went to hell. Nine months later and see what happened.’ He’s laughing now, ‘are ya even sure whose it is? She went straight back to bangin’ him, so… or did she keep ya on the side?’

Shane sighs and looks away.

‘Is your bed empty now?’ Will asks, leers, grins. ‘Is it cold? Probably not with the way you’re always followin’ friendly around like a bitch in heat. Are ya keepin’ his bed warm now he can’t fuck his own goddamn wife anymore? Two peas in a pod, I bet.’

Daryl expects an explosion of anger. He bites on his fingernail.

But Shane just looks at Will again while his shoulders roll back and his posture relaxes. ‘You’re pathetic,’ he says with a little huff of laughter. ‘Jesus. You have no idea how many times I’ve dragged people like you into the station, back in King’s County. So high on whatever fucked up thing they were brewing and still ranting up at storm. With your slurs and insults and dumb-ass comments on everything. I used to get _so_ angry. The sheriff would tell us greens; _don’t let them get to you_. And I just thought; _how_? The older ones would just throw them into the drunk tank, let them stew for a bit and then let them go again. Never bothered them. It took me years to realize why.’ Shane cocks his head to the side. ‘It’s always the same bullshit. The same slurs, the same dim-witted comments, the same ignorant, racist, homophobic bullshit that just spews out. You can’t really help it, of course. It’s who you are. A simple minded piece of shit.’

‘Maybe,’ Will allows as the bed creaks and he gets up. ‘But get off your moral high ground. You saw an opportunity and ya took it. You left him to die, ran like a pussy when things got tough and then nailed his wife first chance ya had. I might be a racist son of a bitch but that’s just _wrong_ , man. And that ain’t even all of it. Hmm-hmm-hmm. Gotta admit, gotta give ya some credit for havin’ the balls to look him in the eye and still call him _brother_.’

‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes,’ Shane nods. ‘I failed my family, my blood. That’s something I’ll never forgive myself for. But you would know all about that, right?’

‘Sure,’ Will answers, stepping into Shane’s space and thereby Daryl’s field of vision. ‘I know I failed Dare. Merle, too. Tallulah for sure. But at least I’m not bein’ a little bitch about it now. I’m here to make up for it, because Dare wants me here. So why don’t you just take your goddamn morals and speeches and shove them somewhere the sun don’t shine? I might be all the things you accuse me of being, but don’t ever insinuate that I don’t love my boy.’

The two men size each other up. The tension between them crackles and Daryl bites down on his fingernail harder.

‘Let me tell you something else,’ Will says softly, his chest almost touching Shane’s, ‘you come in here on your goddamn high horse, callin’ me a piece of shit, threatenin’ to slit my throat? Hmm. Don’t think I won’t do the same to you. I’ve seen the way ya look at my boy. He’s sweet a’right.’

Shane rolls his eyes and takes a step back, ‘first my own partner, now your _kid_? You’re fuckin sick, man.’

Will’s hand shoots out, grabs Shane by the neck and squeezes hard enough to make the cop gasp for breath. ‘Ain’t like that. I know it ain’t like that with you,’ Will growls. ‘’cause if it were, you’d be begging for death right now.’ The hold slackens, allowing Shane to take big gulps of air. ‘And I thought scum like me couldn’t rile ya up no more, huh?’ He taps Shane’s cheek mockingly.

‘Touch me again, and you’ll lose the other hand,’ Shane snarls as he rubs at his neck.

‘You make Dare feel like a worthless piece of shit again, and I’ll beat your ass into the ground.’

‘What?’

‘Ya heard me fine,’ Will says as he steps back out of Shane’s space and leans against the other bars. ‘You really think he had a _choice_? Gonna blame a kid for wantin’ to be with his dad when shit goes down?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But you’re givin’ him the cold shoulder anyway. Teachin’ him a lesson, huh? That our love is conditional. I already taught him that, you dickhead. But my condition is _blood_. What’s yours?’

‘I don’t-‘

‘Of course you have one,’ Will says, ‘everyone does. All that unconditional bullshit? Lies, man.’

‘You think you know anything about love?’ Shane snarls back viciously. ‘He thinks that taking the belt to his back is love! You should have fucking seen him out there, he was begging for it, it was disgusting, you fucking asshole! It’s taken me months to teach him not to lash out at anyone trying to get close. He was just starting to trust all of us and you just shit all over that!’

‘ _You_ turned your back on him.’

Shane reels back, ‘it wasn’t like that. I love that kid.’

‘Words,’ Will sneers dismissively. ‘ _Bull_.’

‘Fuck you,’ Shane breathes, ‘I took care of him for months! He can’t possibly think that I don’t…’

‘He’s a _Dixon_ ,’ Will cuts in, eyes flashing darkly as he folds his arms in front of his chest. ‘Think I don’t know my own kid? That I need him crying on me all night to know that he’s butt-hurt over some cop ignoring the shit out of him? He’s _mine_ , Shane. And ya best remember what I said. Hurt him like that again, and I’ll beat your ass into the ground.’ Will nods and pushes himself away from the bars, ‘now get out, you piece of shit. Just because my boy tolerates ya don’t mean I have to. Get the fuck out of my cell block.’

Shane opens his mouth but closes it with an audible click before turning on his heels and storming out. He walks right past Daryl, who is hiding in the shadows. He doesn’t even notice him in his hurry to get out.

The boy sits there for a couple of minutes, listening to his own breathing and heartbeat. He’s frowning, still biting on his thumb. Blue eyes look up when Will walks out of his cell.

The man is carrying Daryl’s pack. He throws it onto the floor next to the boy. ‘Heard what ya wanted to hear now?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Didn’t mean-‘

‘To sit there for ten minutes, listenin’ to my business? Sure ya didn’t. Shane might be deaf, but I heard ya come in.’

Daryl hunches his shoulders and looks at his pack, ‘ya kickin’ me out?’

‘No. Best buds with Carl again, right? Practically purrin’ in his lap this morning, best not be what it looked like,’ Will says with a warning glance, but there’s a smile tucking the corners of his mouth up.

‘Ain’t,’ Daryl assures him as he rubs at his nose to hide his own smile.

‘Good, ‘cause I love ya, but that’d be crossin’ a line. Now, get gone.’ His tone softens a bit, ‘be with your friends. Come find me in the morning, okay?’

‘Of course.’ Daryl hoists his pack onto his shoulders. ‘Thanks, dad.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Will waves him away. ‘Now give a man his privacy. Got important business to attend to,’ he smirks as he cups himself through his jeans.

‘Gross,’ Daryl laughs. ‘See ya!’ He runs back to their own cell block. Hershel and Shane are sitting at one of the tables, heads close together as they talk softly. They glance his way when he comes running in. Daryl jumps soundlessly onto the stairs, holding on to the metal railing as he stops in his tracks. He wobbles on the balls of his feet for a second. ‘Good night, Hershel,’ he says with a nod. He brings his thumb up to his mouth to gnaw on the nail. ‘G’night, Shane.’

‘Sleep well, Daryl,’ the older man answers easily.

Shane works his jaw. Fingers twisting nervously as nods, gaze darting away. 'Yeah,’ he rubs the back of his head, ‘yeah… good night, Dare.’

Daryl waits before dashing up the stairs again, swinging himself around the corner and ducking into his own cell.

Carl is still up, half-hidden by the shadows. He sighs with relief when he spots the youngest Dixon. ‘He give you any trouble?’

‘Called ya scum,’ Daryl lies as he climbs up to his bed and falls into his pillow.

‘Yeah right. Hey,’ Carl kicks his bunk. ‘One, two, three?’

‘Fuck no,’ Daryl moans as he curls up on his side. ‘Tired, man.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

Daryl sighs and drags himself closer to the edge of his bunk so he can lean down and look at his friend. ‘At breakfast?’

Carl perks up, ‘yeah!’

‘Good. Shut the fuck up for now, okay? I’m serious. Fuckin’ tired.’

‘Pussy,’ Carl says in his best imitation of Will.

Daryl flicks him off and rolls back to the center of his bed. He drags the blanket over his shoulder, curls it around his fist and rests his hand against his chin. It hides the smile on his face.

 

 


	35. The window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The heating in my apartment broke down, so y'all are getting a (slightly) early update so I can sleep under a million blankets instead of waiting around until midnight.
> 
> -waves-  
> Thanks for all the comments. You are the best.

 

* * *

 

 

The window they had is lost.

They can’t run anymore, even if they wanted to.

Daryl listens to the conversation between Rick, Shane, Glenn, Michonne and Hershel. They’re trying to decide on what their next move is going to be. The old man thinks that they should have ran yesterday, tail between their legs, but Rick doesn’t want to give the prison up. Everyone knows that the Governor is coming for them, especially after Will pitches in from his seat at the dinner table with a tale about how twisted the man is.

Daryl is hiding in his cell. He’s on Carl’s bed and twirls one of his bolts between his fingers. He’d checked them this morning to make sure that none of them would break when fired.

Carol slips into the room, leaning against the bars as she looks down at him. ‘Haven’t had a chance to say; I’m glad you came back.’

Daryl shrugs and gestures to the fighting that’s going on downstairs. ‘To what? All this?’

‘This is our home.’

He watches how she gingerly sits down on the chair beside him. Her gray hair is growing out, some patches darker than the others. It matches her eyes. He likes that. ‘It’s never going to get better,’ he says as he looks down at his bolt again. ‘They ain’t ever going to get along.’

‘That’s not true,’ Carol says but she doesn’t sound so sure.

‘Is,’ he nods as he tilts his head back against the concrete behind him. ‘Glenn called him a snake just now. Rick’s angry. Shane _hates_ him.’

‘Everyone hates him, sweetie.’

Daryl presses his lips together. ‘Not me.’

‘No,’ Carol smiles, ‘not you.’ She looks away from him. ‘You remember Ed, right? My husband?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy plucks at the hole in his jeans. His knee is sticking out. ‘I remember him.’

‘He wasn’t a very nice man. A bad man, actually. And I always knew he was bad,’ Carol nods as she gazes at the concrete floor. ‘But every time he did what he did, I just thought; maybe it will get better if I’m better at following his rules. They always changed though. And he never told me until after I broke them that they had changed.’

Daryl swallows with some difficulty. He shivers and tugs his knees closer to his chest, looping one arm around them. He presses his thumb to the tip of his bolt.

‘I tried leaving a couple of times, but I always came back to him because there just hadn’t been another option.’

The boy closes his eyes and rests his forehead against his knees.

‘People who tried to help always told me that one day I would just get up and leave. That I would have a revelation. Sudden strength.’ She scoffs at that.

Daryl tilts his head to the side and cracks his eyes open, looking at her through his lashes. ‘Ya did though.’

The woman sitting on the chair next to him isn’t the same one who had allowed him to steal her daughter’s black marker back at the quarry. She’s stronger now. She speaks her mind more and doesn’t even flinch when Shane rages or Rick snaps, no longer scared of men and their tempers. Maybe it’s because she knows that they will never hurt her.

Or maybe because she’ll make them pay in kind if they do.

‘Ed died,’ she says with a breath of laughter. ‘There was no other choice but to get tough for Sophia, I wouldn’t call that a big revelation. Not like you had.’ She looks at him now. Blue eyes almost gray but still warm somehow. She’s smiling faintly. ‘You stood up to him,’ she says when he doesn’t open his mouth. ‘Told him _no_. _Not this time_. You have no idea how proud I am of you. I wish I could have done that for Sophia.’

‘Ain’t the same,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Maybe not,’ Carol allows, ‘but I’m still proud of you. It’s hard to choose yourself over someone you love.’

Daryl shrugs and scratches at his cheek. ‘He’s going to change.’

There’s pity in her smile now. ‘Do you really believe that?’

‘Yeah. He’s tryin’ real hard.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I am,’ Daryl closes his eyes again. ‘I know I am.’

Carol smiles at him, reaches out to stroke his dark hair. He flinches at first but then relaxes into the touch. ‘Don’t let him bring you down. He’s your dad, but he’s not good for you.’

‘He loves me.’

‘That’s his only redeeming quality,’

‘Well,’ Daryl grins, ‘he’s got a way with words, too.’

Carol laughs, ‘oh, he’s a real poet, I’m sure.’

The boy chuckles a bit and ducks his head before glancing back at the woman. ‘Hey, thanks.’

‘For what?’

Daryl shrugs and looks away, a little embarrassed. ‘Checkin’ in, I guess.’

That makes her smile fondly again. ‘That’s what we do. You know you can come and talk to me any time, right? I know things might be a bit confusing and complicated for you right now, but sometimes it helps to talk to people. Other than Glenn or Shane, I mean. People who understand.’

‘Yeah,’ he nods and squints up at her. ‘Thanks.’

She nods and leaves.

He’s not sure whether he will ever take her up on the offer. Of course he knows what kind of man Ed used to be and he has a good idea about what he had done to his wife, but he doesn’t believe that Carol will truly understand him. Just as he doesn’t really understand her. Everyone might depict Will as the same kind of abusive asshole Ed used to be, but Daryl knows they’re wrong.

Whenever Glenn, Shane, or now even Carol imply that what Will is doing is abuse, Daryl can’t help but feel angry. Because that’s not what going on.

And he is, for sure, not some damn _victim_.

Not like Carol was, anyway.

 

 

Andrea comes to see them.

It’s a strange reminder of the situation they are in. The past days, all Daryl has worried about is how everyone reacted to Will being among them. He’d barely given the Governor any thought except for the couple of hours he’d been on watch duty.

But the Governor is gearing up for war.

She pleads negotiations, a peaceful resolution, there’s room for them in Woodbury, they’ve lost so much already, but stony silence is the only answer she gets. Wary glances, nobody really wants to meet her eye now that she’s on the other side.

A hug from Carol, but Shane awkwardly side-stepped her before shielding Daryl from view with his larger body when she wanted to reach for him. A glare and she backs away, trying to go for Carl when it registers that Lori is no longer among them, but the boy looks away and moves to sit with his best friend.

Rick, too, won’t accept her sympathies. That angers her.

She tries to shift the blame to Will. Lashing out about why he is among them and they treat _her_ as the odd man out, but the father counters easily with a smirk at his son, very aware of the fact that he’s only tolerated because of Daryl.

Daryl is not really sure how to feel. She was one of them first, so he’s really glad to see that she’s doing well, but she’s also with the Governor now. _Philip_. He hates that she uses his given name. He remembers how Will had spun a story about her being with the Governor. Maybe he hadn’t just been trying to get a rise out of Michonne after all.

‘Next time you see Philip?’ Will asks as his gaze lingers on his son. ‘Ya tell him I’m gonna take his other eye.’

He wants a war, he’s got one.

Rick’s eyes are cold when he stares her down. ‘We’ve got nothing to talk about,’ he says when she refuses to help them get back into the town.

The door to the cell block slams closed behind him.

 

 

Daryl sits on the floor at Will’s feet. He’s leaning against his father’s leg, head against his thigh and eyes half-closed. Will is slowly carding his fingers through his son’s hair, stroking it gently as the two Dixon’s watch Beth.

The girl is sitting a couple of strides away from them, in the middle of the cellblock. One of their lamps illuminates her face. Soft light which still causes stark shadows to dance over her features as she sings. One fist keeping the rhythm on his thigh, a hesitant smile curling around the corner of her mouth.

Her voice seems to fill the entire prison.

Shane is on the other side of the room. He’s holding Judith in his arms while he talks to Rick and Hershel. Their voices so soft that it doesn’t distract people from Beth’s singing.

Glenn and Maggie are sitting on the stairs. The Korean has his hands wrapped around a cup like it’s keeping him warm. He’s staring at a spot on the floor, lost in thought. His girlfriend is watching her sister, eyes a little brighter now.

When the song is winding down, Shane passes Rick his daughter. They part ways with a small nod. The cop walks over towards the Dixon’s. He stops halfway, hesitates for a moment, works his jaw, but squares his shoulders and marches on.

The fingers in Daryl’s hair still.

The boy pretends not to notice the cop standing right in front of him and peeks through the man’s legs to catch sight of Beth, who sings the last couple of notes.

‘Daryl.’

‘She’s almost done, man,’ the boy mutters.

Shane sighs and sinks to one knee so they’re on eyelevel.

‘Girl can sing, I’ll give her that,’ Will rumbles as his fingernails dig into Daryl’s skull in a silent warning. ‘Now show some damn respect, the man is tryin’ to talk to ya.’

‘Fine,’ Daryl glares at Shane. ‘How may we help, officer?’ Will snorts above him and Daryl leers at the cop.

Shane grits his teeth. ‘I just want to talk to you for a minute.’

‘Then talk.’

Shane glances up at Will.

The man smirks back at him. After a short moment, he pushes himself away from the wall and shakes his leg to make Daryl sit on his own. ‘As much as I like havin’ ya kneelin’ in front of me,’ Will says to Shane, ‘ain’t much of an exhibitionist. I’m gonna turn in for the night.’ He aims a soft kick at his son. ‘Don’t stay up too late.’

‘I won’t,’ Daryl nods. ‘Night, dad.’ He watches how his father disappears into the darkness of the corridor, finding his way by moonlight only. When he is gone, he glares at Shane again. ‘What do ya want?’

The cop sighs as he shifts so he sits next to the boy, their shoulders pressing together.

Daryl moves to the side so they don’t anymore.

‘I’m sorry if I hurt you,’ Shane says. He tries to catch Daryl’s eye but can’t because the boy refuses to look at him. ‘Please talk to me.’

Daryl laughs bitterly, ‘ _now_ ya wanna talk? Didn’t have nothing to say to me yesterday or the day before. Didn’t want to hear it, you said.’

‘Yeah, and I-‘

‘Even Glenn still talked to me!’ Daryl hisses, ‘and my dad beat him up real good, almost got him killed, he didn’t do nothing to you! _I_ didn’t do nothing to you!’

‘I know and it was wrong of me to ig-‘

‘Don’t want to hear it,’ Daryl cuts in stubbornly. ‘I don’t give a damn.’

Shane closes his eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply before opening them again. ‘Yes, you do. You’re angry because you’re hurt. And it hurts because you give a damn, okay? _Hear me out_ ,’ he says sternly when the boy opens his mouth again. ‘I say my piece and then you say yours, okay?’

Daryl glares at him.

‘ _Okay_?’

‘Fine, yeah,’ Daryl snaps back, ‘ _okay_.’

Shane rubs at the back of his neck and looks at Rick who kisses Judith’s forehead. ‘You left with Rick for Woodbury and that was hard. Normally it’s me on the frontline, right there with my partner. That’s okay because that means I can help but now….’ He shakes his head. ‘Had to sit and wait. Not really my strong suit, you know?’

Daryl fights a small smile despite himself.

‘But I thought; all right,’ Shane nods, ‘he’s got Rick with him. Oscar, maybe Michonne will look out for him, too. So I thought; that’s good. They’re gonna find Glenn, Maggie, pull them both out and get back here. Nothing’s going to happen to him. Shit goes down? He can handle himself. He’s smart, he’s quick. He’s gonna be fine.’

Daryl nods.

‘And then Rick came back and you weren’t there. Glenn all beat up, Maggie in tears, and Rick’s only explanation was; he left. Got so angry, man, gave him hell for letting you go off with Will.’

‘Saw them bruises,’ Daryl murmurs as he squints up at the cop.

‘Yeah,’ Shane scratches at his cheek. ‘I just couldn’t understand. _Will_. When I look at him, all I see is this dumb sack of shit who beats kids and makes them think they deserve it. I know, I know,’ he says when Daryl opens his mouth again, ‘let me finish, then you get to say your piece, okay? That’s how this works.’

The boy frowns but still nods.

‘I know it wasn’t like that, but it felt like – okay, look, I just – I thought that…’ Shane thumps his head gently against the wall in frustration. ‘It felt like you ditched us,’ he works his jaw for a moment. ‘Me, I mean. Like you didn’t give a damn and then you came back and suddenly _I_ was the sulky twelve year old who didn’t want to say that he was hurt, okay? There. I was a sulky, jealous twelve year old.’

‘Two year old,’ Daryl corrects, ‘’cause I’m twelve and I were talkin’ to ya fine.’

Shane takes another deep breath. ‘ _Fine_ ,’ he says with a small smile as he breathes out again. ‘A two year old then. A two year old who loves you, though. That’s not just words. And it’s not bull.’ He shifts a little, ‘and we don’t need to go through all of it again, okay? I get it. He’s your dad and you love him and that’s… that’s fine. But we love you, too. We’re your family, too.’

‘’s why I came back,’ Daryl mutters with a nod. He doesn’t want to think about how the reason _he’s my dad_ is starting to sound worn-out and more like an excuse every single time. He hates how it’s his only excuse, too. ‘We were out there, something real messed up happened, right? And I just… I just wanted to go home.’

‘I’m really glad you did. And I’m sorry for the way I acted.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’

‘Okay,’ Shane echoes slowly. ‘Now you say your piece.’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Don’t have anything to say. I didn’t ditch all y’all and I came back. We’re good, right?’

‘I don’t know, are we?’

The boy nods. ‘Yeah, we are. It’s just,’ he ducks his head and looks at his fingernails, ‘it’s weird right now, with my dad, and you, and Glenn all here. No matter what I do, I’m always pickin’ a side, right? Like, if I sit with my dad, or if we’re walkin’ the rounds and I don’t sit with you at dinner then…’

‘Hey,’ Shane says, ‘you don’t have to worry about that. You want to spend as much time as possible with your dad, catching up? I get that, of course I get that. It’s not about taking sides. I promise we won’t get mad or hurt or whatever if you sit with Will. Just don’t shut us out.’

‘Like how you did with me?’ Daryl asks with a small grin.

‘Yeah, wise-guy,’ Shane bumps their shoulders, ‘that shit hurt, right?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy says as he sags against his friend’s shoulder, leaning against his frame.

The cop wraps an arm around his chest, ‘I’m sorry, Dare.’

‘Already said that.’

‘That’s because I mean it,’ Shane murmurs as he kisses the boy’s dark hair. ‘I love you.’

Daryl watches how Carol manages to convince Beth to sing them another song. It starts out a little shaky but she finds her voice after a couple of lines. Another country song about dark whiskey and smoky bars and sprawling fields. He likes those best.

He looks up at Shane, ‘same.’

 

 

The next day, Rick takes Carl and Michonne out on a run for guns.

They come back with a whole stash.

Michonne is leaning against the car when Daryl runs back from opening the gate for them. Rick and Glenn are already carrying the guns inside while Shane talks to Carl. The woman looks at the youngest Dixon and tilts her chin a little higher.

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she says.

‘Yeah?’ Daryl wipes his nose on his forearm. ‘Where?’

‘Right here.’ She opens the trunk and lifts out a brand new crossbow.

The boy gapes at it. He hurriedly closes his mouth when he sees the smirk on the woman’s face. ‘That’s – that’s a Stryker Strykezone 380.’ He tries to say it nonchalantly and with a shrug but fails miserably. ‘That for me?’

‘I heard your dad say that you’d messed up yours.’

‘I didn’t really mess it up but-‘

‘So you don’t need it then?’ Michonne asks as she turns to put it back in the trunk.

‘No! I – I mean, yeah. I’d – you know. I’d like to have it, if… I’d like to have it.’

‘Good, because this thing is heavy and I had to drag it for miles and miles and – kidding,’ she laughs when she holds it out again. ‘Here. It’s yours.’

Daryl takes it with slightly shaking hands. He stares at it in awe. Brand new and shiny and more expensive than any present he’s ever had. Bolts with fierce green fletchers, still shiny and perfect. He puts the bow against his shoulder, stares down the sight and marvels at the new options on the weapon. It’s a little bigger than his old one, mostly because it’s double bladed but it’s all black and he loves it.

‘You like it then?’

Daryl looks at her, a little suspicious. ‘Yeah. Thanks. What do you want in return?’

Michonne shrugs, ‘you gave me candy, I give you a kick-ass bow.’ She pats his shoulder as she breezes past and heads towards the prison. ‘That’s how the world works now.’

 

 

There are negotiations.

Rick, Shane and Hershel are gone for an entire day and they’re still going to war when they get back.

Rick is on edge. He stalks around the prison, clutching his sniper rifle. He talks to Shane in corners, foreheads almost pressed together until their arguments get too heated and they have to break apart before one of them gets hurt.

‘Something is brewin’ a’right,’ Will murmurs as he observes the two cops. ‘They’re fixin’ to go do something and it ain’t gonna be pretty.’

‘What do you think it is?’ Daryl asks as he looks up from his dad’s back. The older Dixon is sitting at one of the round tables, elbows on his knees as he leans forward. Daryl is sitting behind him on the table top. There’s a black marker in his hand.

Angels chase demons on his father’s back now.

‘I dunno,’ Will admits. ‘Look at them. Shane is all worked up but Rick’s calm. He knows that, whatever it is, it needs to be done.’

‘Shane is trying to talk him out of it?’ Daryl frowns as he draws a serpents tail over one of Will’s scars. The marks are still clear against the pale skin, never having lost their angry red color. Daryl wonders whether his are that noticeable. He’d seen them only a couple of times back in the trailer park. In the reflection of car windows when he’d been out with his friends, shirtless under the Georgia sun, or in their small bathroom as he stood on a crate of moonshine and twisted around to try and catch a glimpse. He can’t remember them being this red.

‘Seems like it. Look at Rick. Hmm-hmm-hmmm. Officer Friendly is in deep shit.’

‘We all are,’ Daryl murmurs.

‘Not us,’ Will rumbles. ‘Never us, remember?’

‘I promised Shane we’d look after them,’ Daryl leans against his father’s broad shoulders, ‘can’t cut and run no more. They _are_ us. Glenn, Maggie. Carl, everyone.’

‘ _Right_ ,’ Will drawls but he doesn’t sound convinced. His sharp blue eyes are still on Shane and Rick.

‘ _Dad_.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I heard ya. How’s the tattoo comin’ along?’

Daryl wrinkles his nose as he leans back to study his work. ‘Fucked one of the angels up. Made a devil out of it, but it looks kind of weird.’

That makes Will laugh. ‘Ain’t that the story of our lives, huh? Got all devils on my back now, you tryin’ to tell me something, boy?’

‘No,’ Daryl grins back, ‘there’s one angel left, got a fucked-up nose though, sorry, couldn’t get the face right.’

‘Ya messin’ up my back? Ya got anything right?’ Will asks as he twists out of his seat and turns on his son, his good hand reaching for him, grabbing his shirt and yanking him clean off the table. ‘Think I’m gonna walk around with an angel with a busted up nose? And some sort of trans-angel? Do I look like a fool to you, boy?’

He jostles Daryl hard.

‘ _Will_!’ Shane pushes Rick aside and runs over. ‘Let him fucking go!’

But Daryl is laughing, pawing at his dad’s chest as he pretends to try and escape his clutches. ‘I got one of them devils right, dad! It looks bad-ass, don’t worry about it!’

‘I got a transvestite angel on my back thanks to you!’

Daryl giggles and changes tactic. Instead of trying to get away, he throws his arms around his dad’s neck and pulls himself close. This way, Will can’t jostle him without making himself stagger. The man laughs at his antics.

‘Ya damn spider monkey,’ he growls into his son’s neck, playfully biting at his ear. Then he glares at Shane, who is just standing there. ‘What the fuck do ya want, Walsh?’

Shane looks at Daryl, who is grinning and still clinging to his dad. Then he meets Will’s eye. ‘Rick needs to talk to you. Alone.’

‘Is that right?’ Will hums. With one smooth move, he turns his boy upside down, muscles bulging as he hoist him onto his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. It’s a move clearly practiced over the years. His good hand grabs hold of Daryl’s belt to steady him. ‘What does he want?’

‘Something about the defenses, I think,’ Shane says as he looks away.

‘Sure.’ He pulls Daryl back over his shoulder until the boy lands safely on his feet on the bench next to them. His face flushed and eyes shining wickedly. ‘Go see if anyone has a chore for ya to do, hmm? Gotta report to the deputy.’

 

 

The mattresses have been ripped open. There’s stuffing everywhere. Whatever meager possessions had been in the rest of the cells are thrown around the entire area. Books, clothes, the remains of the mattresses. Shadows chase the boy’s echoing footsteps as he cautiously makes his way towards the last cell. A hesitant hand on his new crossbow, fingers still finding their appropriate places on the weapon as he brings it up to his shoulder.

There’s a ripping sound coming from the last cell. More stuffing is tossed into the main area.

Daryl frowns and side-steps towards the cell. He lowers the bow when he sees that it’s Will who is ripping his bedding apart. ‘What are ya doin’?’ He asks and smirks a little when Will flinches with surprise. He hadn’t noticed him come in. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ Will says as he sags into a corner, almost hidden by the shadows. ‘Just lookin’ for some crystal-meth.’

Daryl wrinkles his nose.

‘I know. I shouldn’t mess my life up when everything is goin’ so sweet, right?’

The boy laughs and shakes his head, ‘ya still pissed about them angels? They will be gone by tomorrow, ain’t real ink anyway.’

Will doesn’t answer. He just sits there, one leg drawn up and the metal stump resting on his knee. It catches the moonlight and reflects in his own blue eyes. The wife-beater he’s wearing is dirty, yellowed by his sweat and his jeans have ripped at the knees. He plucks at the threads with his good hand, a habit the boy shares whenever he’s bored.

Daryl sits down on the metal bunk. It’s cold to his touch now that there’s no bedding on it anymore. He scuffs his boots on the concrete floor.

‘You’re just goin’ to sit there like a sack of shit?’ Will asks, tilting his head back so it can rest against the wall behind him.

Daryl shrugs, ‘did my chores. Just came to see what you were doin’. What did Rick want?’

Will sucks on his teeth and looks away.

The boy stills his feet, ‘dad? What did he want?’

The father turns his gaze back on his son. ‘If there’s one thing I hate in this whole goddamn world, it’s people stickin’ their nose where it don’t belong.’

Daryl laughs softly, ‘what, he was all up in your business?’

Will grunts as he gets up, pushing himself away from the wall with his good hand. The metal stump comes to rest on the bed above Daryl. The sound of metal on metal chills Daryl’s blood.

He knows he’s made a terrible mistake when he looks up into his dad’s eyes. They’re cold. There’s not a trace of this afternoon in them, not the laughter and not the love. He feels bile rising in his throat as his hands start to shake. His dad had been looking for drugs. Maybe he’d tried to find alcohol first, but Daryl knows there isn’t any in the prison. It doesn’t seem like he has found any drugs either.

Daryl remembers what used to happen when they ran out of beer back home.

He glances at the open cell door.

‘Run and I’ll break your fuckin’ legs,’ Will breathes. ‘Play time is over.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Daryl says quickly, gaze snapping back to Will’s eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘But ya still fuckin’ did, huh? Jesus Christ,’ he mutters, rubbing at one eye with his thumb. ‘Let me tell ya something about this happy family ya found yourself. They ain’t what they seem to be, a’right. Some fucked up shit is going down, but it’s same old, same old. Blue collar pussies thinkin’ they’re tigers. Preachin’ their morals and then comin’ up with a plan like that. Shit, son.’

Daryl stares at his dad but doesn’t dare to open his mouth. Anything will set his dad off now, he knows.

‘Rick,’ Will spits the name out with a grimace, ‘but fuckin’ Shane too. He’s worse, even. Little snake knows what Rick hasn’t figured out yet. Knows his _brother_ ain’t got the spine for it. He’ll pussy out of it, just you wait.’

Daryl frowns but bites his tongue.

‘ _If he changes his mind, he changes his mind_ ,’ Will mocks in a tone that reminds Daryl of Shane. ‘Right. He’ll change his mind and we’ll lose our damn window of opportunity. _Again_. But that’s why they called old Will down there, oh yes. You see, they like to keep their hands clean. They need people like us. People to blame.’

Daryl pulls his feet onto the bunk so he can hide behind his own knees.

Will stares him down. ‘One of these days, they’re gonna scrape us off their heels like we were dog shit.’

Daryl shakes his head. He has trouble maintaining eye contact with his dad. He can’t help but flinch every time Will’s hand moves or the stump scrapes over the bed above him. He’s bracing himself without being told.

‘Not you, hmm?’ Will tilts his head to the side. ‘They sure love you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Daryl whispers. He presses himself back against the wall. ‘Dad, I’m real sorry.’

‘What for?’

Daryl looks at his dad’s hand, at the wall, at the floor, anywhere but at those cold eyes and the way out. His breathing is quickening, coming in short, panicked pants. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I just – I don’t know.‘

Will leans back a little, rocking on the heels of his feet. His gaze is calculating. ‘Never wanted you,’ he says. ‘Had enough to worry about with Tally and then Merle. We tried once more, after him, ya know? To have another. Didn’t work out. She woke up in the middle of the night, blood all over our fuckin’ sheets. Doctor said it weren’t our fault, these things happen,’ Will scoffs and looks away, ‘like we didn’t just lose our baby girl. Like that just _happens_ ‘nd ya just gotta swallow it ‘nd move on.’

Daryl stares at his father.

‘Never again, I thought,’ Will nods, pain written all over his face. ‘Not even for me, ya know? May have been my blood inside her, but…’ he shrugs, ‘’s different for a mom, I think. I ain’t never seen the girl, never felt her move neither, she weren’t alive for me to begin with, but to see your mom like that? Nu-uh. Never again. And then, goddamn fifteen years later when I thought all the piping was too rusty to work properly, there ya were.’ Will looks at him, ‘and she called ya a _miracle_.’

The boy feels tears stinging in his eyes.

‘And ya were. This goddamn beautiful baby boy with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen,’ Will nods, ‘but all I could think was; why _you_? Why did you make it and she…’ He closes his eyes, sighs and rubs his thumb over his forehead. ‘Took me years to love you. And I know I’m all kinds of fucked up, but I love you.’

Daryl rubs one of his cheeks dry on his shoulder and nods.

‘It was easier, with the booze, ya know? First to forget, and then to make anyone hate ya as much as ya hate yourself.’ Will lets his head hang for a moment. ‘But now I know why ya made it. You’re a fighter. Never thought ya were a Dixon, too sweet and soft, but you’re still here.’ He kneels before the bed and reaches out with his good hand.

Daryl flinches when the fingertips ghost over his cheek. They smear the tears over his skin, rubbing the salt in.

‘My little king of the apocalypse, hmm? You’re going to rule this world, boy. No matter who tries to strike you down, no matter what other evils will be unleashed upon you, you will come out on top, do ya hear me? Because Dixon’s don’t bow. And we don’t beg.’ The fingers dig into his cheek. ‘You’re going to make it, all the way to the end of all of this. Promise me.’

Daryl nods.

‘ _Say it_.’

‘I promise.’

‘You found good people here,’ Will nods. ‘Don’t fuck it up, okay? Whatever happens, don’t fuck it up.’

‘I won’t,’ Daryl breathes even though he’s not sure what his dad is talking about.

‘Get up,’ Will gestures with his good hand.

Daryl slides off the bunk and is surprised when his dad scoops him up in a bone-crushing hug.

‘I love you so fuckin’ much, Dare.’

‘I love you, too.’

Will nods and buries his face into his son’s neck. He breathes in deeply, once, twice, before he puts his son back down again. He can’t quite meet his eye. ‘Okay,’ he says, voice unsteady and rough. ‘Piss off now, I got things to get on with. Just… just remember what I said, okay?’

Daryl nods and backs away cautiously. He’s not sure what’s going on and fears that Will might change his mind and give him a whooping after all. The whole conversation has left him rattled. He needs to put his hands on the wall as he makes his way out of cell block D. Fingers scraping over concrete, biting at his flesh as he presses down too hard.

When he’s in the corridor, he throws one last look at the cell block of his father. And then runs away.

 

 

Four hours later, he’s running again. Through the woods this time, bow on his back and wind tugging at his hair. He ducks under a low branch, jumps over a tree trunk. His boots nearly slip away from under him due to the mud. He catches himself, hands digging into the earth before he dashes forward again. His lungs ache already. There’s sweat running down his neck. It’s cold though.

He can hear Shane yelling his name back at the prison. The faint rattle of the gates tell him that someone has come down from the prison itself to shut them after the cop.

Leaving the gates open had bought him some time. He’d gotten Rick’s keys while they had searched for Will and Michonne, but instead of searching for him in the boiler room like Rick thought he was going to do, he’d ran straight to the gates.

By the time Shane had caught up with him, the cop had been too late. Daryl had already unlocked the gate, throwing it open while stuffing the keys into his back pocket and making a run for it.

Shane had no choice but to stand guard while waiting for someone to take his place and lock the gates behind them.

And now Daryl has a head start.

Rick had told them about the deal he’d wanted to make with the Governor. Michonne for their safety. That they were going to hand her over in exchange for a peace agreement. Daryl had listened silently, not as shocked as the rest because he’d scoffed at the mere notion of Rick handing anyone of them over for something so feeble as a _promise_. He knew Rick would never go through with it. If anyone of them ever fell in the hands of the Governor, only the Lord knows what he would do to them. Rick would never allow that to happen.

He’d felt sick right after that thought.

 _Some fucked up shit is going down_ , Will had said. _He’ll pussy out of it, just you wait_.

_that’s why they called old Will down there_

Wil has taken Michonne before Rick could pull the plug on the deal.

Daryl is running as fast as he can. Maybe he can get there in time to stop him.

The woods flash by. Trees and squirrels and branches and bushes and walkers and streams and birds and – none of it registers. Sometimes he sees Michonne’s obvious tracks where she was pushed forward or had dug her heels in, where she’d slipped and where she was made to wait.

They’re harder to track on the concrete. There, pure instinct drives him forth.

He knows where the meeting point with the Governor was, he knows where his dad is headed.

The stars might not be out to guide him, but he knows this land.

He breaks the tree line, panting hard, and spots Michonne.

She has just beheaded a walker and finishes him off.

‘Where’s my dad?’ Daryl shouts as he runs up to her, ‘ya kill him?’

She shakes her head. ‘He let me go.’

‘Why?’ Daryl pants because he doesn’t understand.

‘He said there was something he had to do on his own,’ she says now. ‘He has a car.’

‘Fuck,’ the boy gasps for breath as he leans on his knees. ‘Son of a bitch. What the fuck is he gonna do?’

‘Kill the Governor,’ Michonne answers. ‘Or die trying, at least.’

Daryl’s head snaps back up. ‘ _What_?’

‘He wanted to give us a shot. He told me to get back to the prison and make sure to be ready for what’s to come.’

‘Fuck that,’ Daryl snarls as he pushes himself forward again. After a couple of steps, he hesitates and turns around. ‘Don’t take the roads, lot of walkers there, stick to them woods. Try following my tracks back, okay? If ya run into Shane, tell him to quit followin’ me.’

She dips her chin.

And then he’s off again. Through that spot of houses, hopping over a low fence, propelling him forward by sheer force of will. He tears through the woods, his own heartbeat matching his pounding footsteps. There’s panic clawing at his lungs, squeezing them until he can hardly breathe. His hands shake.

It takes him a long time to get to the meeting point.

Some sort of barn, a bunch of round metal tanks.

He stops running, lets momentum carry him into the fray of walkers. Most of them don’t notice him. A bolt takes care of one that’s too close for comfort. He walks past and yanks it back out of the woman’s skull. It had been feeding on someone armed to the teeth.

The Governor’s men, Daryl thinks as his gaze slides over the area. There are so many fresh bodies that he doesn’t even bother trying to count them all. Bullet holes in the chests, in their heads, bellies ripped open by the dead afterwards.

He walks into a small clearing.

He stops walking.

His hands stop shaking.

His lungs stop, too.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t do anything but stand there and watch.

Watch as Will slowly raises his head. Skin cracked, eyes bloodshot and no longer that mystifying blue. Blood gushes over his pale lips as he bites down on an organ, crushing it between his teeth. He looks at his son, seems to look at him, before he staggers to his feet.

Daryl watches.

 

He’s too late. Far too late.

Will has already turned.


	36. Little king

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warning: Suicidal thoughts and actions, references to child-abuse.

 

* * *

 

 

The sky is white.

Endless clouds with empty promises of rain and an easier summer. He remembers those days back in the trailer, when he was young enough to be amazed by the seasons only to find out that a Georgia spring only lasts for a couple of days. Days like these. With the cold of winter still in the air and earth, but summer blowing in from the South, ready to devour them all in heatwave after heatwave once it hits home.

That same biting wind ghosts through the leaves above him. He watches the various shades of green, stark against the white backdrop. He wants to reach out, up, wants to touch the green but knows he can’t reach it. Instead, he digs his fingers into the cold earth beneath him. Grass kisses his fingertips, tickles his wrists, licks his cheek.

The rest of the group had always complained that the world is now too quiet. Without the traffic and the people and the sheer electricity humming in the air, he supposes it should be quiet. But it’s not. It’s louder, far louder, because it’s crushing him. That silence - there’s just nothing left – it leaves him alone with his own lungs and heartbeat. The sound his jaw makes when he grits his teeth, that soft groan of muscles and bones when he rolls his left shoulder.

He hears the air rush through his nose, down down down into his lungs, filling him with the cold threat of summer.

Of course, even silence doesn’t last these days.

A walker shuffles past him.

Daryl closes his eyes so he doesn’t even have to see its shadow. He listen to how the feet drag, those growls and snarls and moans that don’t even sound human anymore. It’s the third one to come by. The first one caused him to freeze, terrified, but by the time the second came along, he’d already made the deal.

If they find him, they find him.

If they don’t, they don’t.

So he just closes his eyes and waits and the walker passes him.

He’s not sure whether he’s disappointed. He supposes he must be. Or shouldn’t be.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t feel a thing.

When the walker has shuffled off, away, Daryl rolls to his side.

He opens his eyes and stares into Will’s.

Empty and bloodshot and no longer that brilliant blue he can see in any mirror. The skin has a sickly white color, too pale to belong to any good Southern boy who grew up to chase squirrels up trees like a mad dog. He lifts his hand, reaches out, traces that sharp cheekbone. He knows his dad used to be handsome. He’d seen it in old pictures his mother’s friends had given him and in the way Will always had some girl to warm his bed when he felt like it. Merle at twenty five was growing into his dad’s features. Easy grace and a sharp tongue, the bluest of eyes and a wicked grin to win any heart for a night.

Daryl knows his eyes are blue, too. That he has more grace than the two oldest Dixon men combined, but his tongue twists around words differently and most of the time not at all. His grin is too cruel sometimes, so used to having it smacked right off his face when it is that he rarely checks himself. Not until younger kids cower in fear when they see it, or older kids try to match it and end up biting the dust.

He wonders what he will look like when he grows old.

He wonders whether he’ll grow old.

His fingertips touch the wound on his dad’s cheek. The blood is cold but still sticky. A perfect gaping hole where Daryl’s knife had entered forcefully.

His dad’s face is a mess of stab wounds. Only his eyes have been spared, even though they’re not the same anymore.

Daryl feels sick as he looks at what he’s done. He’d just wanted it to stop. Will, to stop.

His dad had been trying to get to him, dragging himself forward and trying to snap at his hands. Daryl had tried pushing him back, over and over and over until one shove had landed Will on his back.

He hadn’t hesitated.

The knife, once, twice, so many times, so deep that he had to pull the blade out with a grunt before slamming it back into the brain again.

There’s still blood on his hands.

He doesn’t care.

The walkers leave him alone because Daryl is almost curled into his father’s frame. They can already smell death on him. They think he’s one of them.

He thinks they’re probably right.

When everything is quiet around him again, so goddamn _quiet_ , he reaches down to his belt and takes his gun out. He hadn’t used it before, hadn’t even thought about using that to end his father, only later coming up with the excuse that it would have been too loud. The weapon feels heavy when he lifts it out of the holster Rick had found him.

It drags over his belly, his chest. He pushes it up against his neck, over his chin and lets it come to rest on his lower lip. The coldness of the metal causes him to shiver. He open his mouth, letting the barrel touch his tongue and teeth.

He flips the safety off.

The sky above him is still white. Not the blinding kind either. Just that stretch of dull whiteness.

Everything is muted, now.

He can barely feel the gun in his mouth, can’t taste the metal or gunpowder.

It worries him a little bit that he can’t feel anything at all. There’s no crushing pain inside his chest, no cold fingers that curl around his lungs so he can’t breathe, no desperation causing his eyes to burn with tears. No terror making his heart stutter, no anger curling his fingers into fists.

Instead, there’s a faint sense of amazement. A little voice in the back of his head that tells him that he’s the last Dixon standing and who would have ever thought _that_ , huh?

He frowns a little, tongue pushing against the barrel as he breathes through his nose.

He’s the last one.

He’s never known his grandparents. His parents didn’t have any siblings.

His mom had burned. His dad…. He swallows around the gun, painfully, and squeezes his eyes shut. Merle is just gone.

Just him now.

_my little king of the apocalypse_

Daryl slowly removes the gun from his mouth. His jaw aches when he closes it. Faintly, he can hear his dad laughing at him. That cruel laugh that always told him he was being pathetic, the one that was usually followed with a kick to his ribs or knees, which ever would cause him to double over in pain.

Opting out, Jenner had called it. Maybe he had been trying to be delicate, something Will hadn’t bothered with when he’d spat in Daryl’s face that he was never going to agree to some suicide-pact even though he told his son that he’d better man up and do it himself if it came to that.

_Nobody kills us but us._

He knows he can’t do it.

The voice of his dad might be already fading, but his legacy is branded on his back. That is how he learned. And one of the first things he learned was that nothing good ever comes from hiding or trying to evade your punishment. He’d tried it. Not just once either, multiple times because he’d thought that he just needed to be a little faster next time, a little smarter. He remembers that first time he’d tried to crawl under the couch just to get away from that belt, those boots. The second time when he’d made it all the way to the door before a hand had curled around his throat, the third time when he’d gotten out, away, and then had to come back because there was nowhere to go.

He remembers learning that lesson. Remembers the blood, how sore his throat had been after screaming for minutes, the way his fingernails had broken on the kitchen tiles when he’d tried to claw his way towards safety. Most of all he remembers how it had gotten easier over time. When he learned that it would be over quicker if he just sat still and did as he was told. That if he actually braced himself, the pain wouldn’t be riddled with surprise and shock, that everything would hurt less if he just nodded when his dad asked him if he was ready. That even that hated question could be seen as a kindness, in just the right light.

Daryl sits up. His boots scrape over the grass as he bends his knees.

There’s no point in running.

He thinks about the last time he’d talked to his dad. The love in those dangerous eyes, sharp tongue uncurling around the  proud words.

With a grunt, he gets to his feet. His dad had been right. He _is_ a fighter, not some damn pussy opting out.

He reaches up and adjusts Glenn’s baseball cap. He wears it backwards because he hates how it impedes his vision otherwise. It keeps his sweaty hair out of his eyes. It’s getting longer now, almost touching his eyebrows if he pulls at his fringe.

His gaze wanders over his surroundings. All of the bodies have been stripped of their weapons. There are no walkers in sight anymore.

He checks the sun and wonders what’s taking Shane so long. The cop has been here before, knows the way here, but Daryl figures that the guy must have stuck to the roads instead of cutting through the forest like he had done. Shane can’t track for shit and his sense of direction is questionable at best.

Daryl kneels besides his father’s corpse and takes his hand in his own. The skin is cold. It takes him a couple of minutes but eventually he manages to tug the wedding bands off his dad’s finger. Both of them silver, plain and probably cheap. The broader one, which had belonged to his dad, is all busted up, little scratches marring the surface, even a little dent where he’d gotten it stuck in a piece of machinery at his work. The other one is smaller, thinner, but just as plain. No engravings, no jewels.

Daryl likes that.

He presses both rings into his palm, curling his fingers around them. They warm to his touch.

It’s the only jewelry Will had worn so he has to search the other bodies. Eventually he finds a guy who had worn a small silver cross around his neck. He tosses the cross but keeps the chain.

Putting it on proves to be a little difficult. He struggles with the small clasp, nails snagging on the lock a couple of times before he manages. The necklace is long enough so the rings come to rest on his breastbone.

He goes through Will’s pockets and comes up with a crumpled package of cigarettes and a zippo lighter.

With one of the cigarettes in the corner of his mouth, he grabs a branch from the ground and moves to another walker. He cuts the man’s shirt up to create a strip of cloth that he can wrap around the branch. He’s seen people do that in movies and knows it will go faster with gasoline, but he doesn’t have that. Instead, he just lights the fabric. It takes a little while before the fire catches.

He watches how the flames start to breed. Then he walks back to his dad.

And puts the branch on the man’s chest.

Then he sits down again, further away this time. He lights the cigarette and watches how his dad burns.

 

 

Shane arrives just when Daryl starts to head back.

The cop is drenched in sweat, eyes wide and an automatic gun raised as he steps into the clearing. Nervous eyes search for a threat. The gaze comes to rest on the charcoal body behind the boy.

‘Dare –‘ Shane starts, lowering the gun and taking an unsteady step towards him.

‘Took ya long enough to get here,’ Daryl says as he rubs at his nose with his wrist.

‘What happened?’

‘He di-….’ Daryl swallows, works his jaw and looks away as he hoists his bow higher onto his shoulder. ‘He ain’t here no more.’ A flick of his fingers, ‘didn’t have time to dig a grave.’

‘Oh my God,’ Shane breathes. There’s horror on his face, quickly followed by anguish and then sorrow. Pity, too, maybe. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No,’ Daryl says as he walks past the stunned cop and heads towards the tree line. ‘Ya ain’t. Come on, this way is quicker. Ya took the long way ‘round again.’

‘Dare.’

The boy’s grip on his bow tightens. His knuckles go white on the strap.

‘Please look at me.’

Daryl closes his eyes for a moment. ‘We’re burnin’ daylight.’

‘I don’t care, turn around and look at me for a second.’

He can’t. He stares at the trees beyond. He knows that if he turns around now, he will run back to the cop, launch himself into his arms and hide in the crook of his neck until all of this has passed. That he will curl his fingers into Shane’s shirt and won’t want to let go.

He knows that Shane will make it better. If he turns around.

He doesn’t want it to be better, though. It’s just starting to hurt, actually. The numbness is fading into pain. That’s better, he thinks, because that’s how he learns.

He’s not sure what the lesson is, however. Maybe that he will survive this too even if he didn’t have a single moment to brace himself this time.

‘We need to get back,’ he says with a jerky nod towards the woods. ‘The Governor will be takin’ some vengeance to the prison soon.’

‘Dare, please,’ Shane darts forwards to grab his arm.

Daryl side-steps him quickly. ‘ _Don’t touch me_ ,’ he snarls. ‘Just leave me alone.’

 

 

Shane tells him he’s sorry a thousand times. He tries to get a reaction from the boy by telling him the story of how his own grandfather had died when he was young. He tries sympathy, then anger, then pity, until he settles on silence.

Daryl is grateful for that. He focusses on walking. One foot in front of the other, noticing how his laces are starting to fray instead of how every step takes him further away from his dad.

 

 

‘Leave him be.’

The words cause most of their group to scatter immediately. Sasha and Tyreese slink away with Oscar. Michonne shoots him a pitying look before disappearing. Beth carries baby Judith back into the coldness of the prison and Carol follows her after a moment of hesitation.

Everyone knows what has happened when he came out of the woods with only Shane. It surprises him a little bit that they all seem to be very sorry. Their eyes are kind, hands quick to offer him a steadying touch, a loving stroke over his cheek and soft pad to his stomach while they offer the boy their condolences.

They won’t shed a tear over Will, Daryl knows, but they feel sorry for him and that’s enough.

Shane follows him. A protective shadow in the corner of his eye as he makes his way to his own cell. He’s very careful not to look at anyone. When he gets there, he throws his pack in the corner, kicks his boots off and climbs onto his bunk.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Shane says softly. ‘Please talk to me.’

‘He’s dead,’ Daryl says. ‘What do ya want me to say?’

‘Anything. I want to help, please let me. I know you’re so hurt, Dare, I just…’

‘I’m not,’ Daryl breathes as he puts his head on his pillow. ‘I don’t feel a thing.’

That’s a lie because there’s something burning in the pit of his stomach, in the tips of his fingers, in his spine. It hurts, everything is starting to hurt now.

‘Okay,’ Shane says softly. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl rasps even though he doesn’t.

‘Okay,’ Shane says again as he dips his head in a soft nod. He reaches out and pulls the blanket over the boy, tucking him in. ‘I’ll be in my cell. Come and find me if you need me, or send Carl to fetch me. There’s no shame in needing someone, Dare. And there’s no shame in being sad. It’s okay. We all understand.’

Daryl closes his eyes.

‘I love you, bud.’

Daryl nods. He listens how Shane reluctantly walks away. The footsteps stop right outside his cell, however. He hears how the cop sinks down on the floor, just around the corner, and settles down to wait.

Carl never comes to sleep in his own bed. He hears him talking to Rick a couple of cells down the row and figures that the other boy is bunking with his old man. Their voices mingle, high and low wrapping around each other as they quietly talk to each other.

Bitterness coats his tongue. He bites down on it, tries to swallow the feeling of jealousy but can’t quite manage. With his eyes tightly shut, he listens to how the prison settles down for the night.

Glenn comes to see Shane. Their voice hushed whispers. Daryl catches some words, _Will_ , of course, but also his own name and then _burned_. He tries not to listen, doesn’t want to remember. After a long time, Glenn leaves again.

An hour after the last shift change for watch, Daryl climbs out of his bunk and puts his boots back on. He makes sure that he doesn’t make a sound. When he steps out onto the landing, he notices that Shane has fallen asleep next to his cell. Curled up on the cold metal, on his side and resting his head on his pack.

Daryl ducks back into his cell and then returns. He drapes his blanket over his friend.

Rick is keeping watch in the watchtower. He doesn’t seem too surprised when Daryl slips in behind him. Wary eyes watch how the boy makes himself comfortable in the corner. His poncho wrapped around his shoulders, hiding most of his face except for his small eyes and dark hair. Rick doesn’t ask whether he can’t sleep. Instead, he tells him about the plan he, Glenn and Maggie have come up with for when the Governor comes. Daryl listens and nods along.

Carl, Beth, Judith and Hershel are going to wait it out near a car somewhere.

Rick hesitates.

‘I’m gonna be here for it, at the prison,’ Daryl says to make up the cop’s mind for him. ‘Ya can’t stop me. I ain’t yours.’

‘Shane won’t like it.’

‘Ain’t his neither,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘Ain’t nobody’s no more.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Rick says as he gazes out into the darkness. His voice is soft. ‘I know what you lost. I know what Will meant to you, but you’re not alone in this. You’re _ours_.’ He turns to look at the boy. ‘That’s why you came back. If you’re going to stay here with us, then you’re going to be in the boiler room with Oscar and Tyreese. They’re going to sound the alarm.’

The boiler room is deep within the prison. Rick is trying to keep him away from the actual fighting.

Daryl nods. ‘Whatever you say goes, right?’

The cop offers him a small smile. ‘Not anymore, remember? It’s a democracy now. It can’t all be on me.’ The smile grows a fraction. ‘And what I say goes has never been true when it comes to you. You will still have to convince Shane and Glenn.’

‘Told ya; they ain’t the boss of me.’

‘Don’t go back to that,’ Rick says softly. ‘They’re not trying to boss you around. They’re trying to look after you. Everyone is.’

He knows that. Both Glenn and Shane always listen to his opinion and arguments, and they always try to find the middle ground whenever they do clash on something. Whether it’s him wanting to hunt alone and then settling for letting Rick tag along after Glenn’s offer of a compromise, or the fact that he wanted to be on guard duty and negotiated with Shane until he’s allowed to be up here for two hours instead not at all.

Daryl tugs at the necklace until he can hold the rings in his hand. He slips his dad’s on but it’s too big.

‘You’re not alone, Daryl.’ Rick walks over and kneels down before him. He doesn’t reach out to touch him, something Daryl is grateful for, but he does meet the boy’s gaze head-on. Unblinking and unafraid. Blue meeting blue in the darkness. ‘Please think about this. Think about why you want to be here at the prison.’

‘I can help,’ the boy answers immediately.

‘I know you can,’ Rick nods.

‘Want to protect our place.’

‘Of course.’

Daryl bites on his thumb, glances away when he sees that Rick is waiting for more. He shivers. ‘Gonna make him pay.’

‘You’re angry,’ Rick says. ‘Of course you are. Don’t let it blind you. This is going to be dangerous. We don’t know whether it will work at all. There are so many things that could go wrong, and it only takes a second, Daryl. One second and it’s all gone. _You_ will be gone.’

‘Don’t care.’

‘That’s why I don’t want you there.’

‘Ain’t optin’ out,’ Daryl looks back at the cop. ‘My dad took out most of their trained guys. I’m smart. I’m fast. No more kid’s stuff, that’s what ya said back at the farm. I can do this.’

‘I know you can.’ Rick nod and stands back up. He looks down at the boy, hands on his hips, fingers brushing over the python for reassurance. ‘That’s not as reassuring as you might think.’ He walks back to the banister to continue his watch. The wind carries his final words away.

 

 

‘I should be staying behind with you.’

Daryl looks up from his pack. He’d been stuffing his spare jeans into it, the last thing to be packed up before they leave. The rest of his meager belongings are already tucked away. The picture of his mom safely wrapped up in one of his shirts, the tools for his bow stashed on the bottom. He glances at Carl, who is sitting on his bunk, his own pack between his legs.

The boy is nodding. ‘I should be here.’

‘And leave your sis to God and chance?’

‘Beth will look after her. And Hershel after them both.’

‘A one-legged man and a girl who’s hardly ever shot a gun before. That your game plan now?’

‘They’d be fine.’

Daryl snorts his disbelief and shakes his head before closing his backpack.

‘Why does it always have to be you?’ Carl asks, a little sharply. ‘You went to Woodbury, you went after Will by yourself  and now you get to stay here. It’s not fair!’

Daryl folds his arms and leans against the wall with his shoulder. He quirks one of his eyebrows up. ‘Ain’t fair that I got to shoot people up? That people were rainin’ hell down on me, too, tryin’ to put me six feet under? Aint nothing’s fair no more but those things ain’t something to be goddamn proud of, ya know? Fuckin’ _killed_ people, man.’

‘So? You had to!’

‘That don’t make it _right_! It don’t make it easy neither!’

‘Why are you staying then?’ Carl asks stubbornly. ‘You could come with us, wait at the car.’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘He killed my dad. I’m not stayin’ behind to have a go at his fuckin’ henchmen. If he’s here, I’ll put a bolt in his eye.’

‘So if someone else crosses you, you’re just going to let them go?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘On what they do. They run, I ain’t shootin’ them in the back. They come at me, yeah, I’ll make sure I’m still here after. But that shit ain’t easy, man. I killed guys back at Woodbury. Shane told me about a switch you have to flip, right? So you don’t hesitate, you just do it. But ya gotta flip the switch back, after. That’s what’s hard. The part that comes after.’

Carl rubs his hands together nervously. He glances up at his best friend. ‘I’ve shot a guy before. A couple of days ago, when I was on that run with Michonne and my dad. I shot a guy. He told me not to be sorry after.’

‘Rick?’ Daryl frowns.

‘No, the guy!’

‘The guy you shot?’

‘Yeah! Morgan.’ Carl rolls his eyes, ‘he was wearing a bulletproof vest.’

Daryl scoffs, ‘you tell the worst stories. So ya bruised his ribs, ain’t the same as shootin’ a guy for real. Stop it,’ he snaps when the other boy opens his mouth again. ‘Just fuckin’ listen to your old man, okay? Stop givin’ him a hard time over this, he’s just looking out for you. Think he can still shoot straight when he knows you’re gettin’ shot at? Just take care of ass-kicker and ya best keep an eye on Hershel too. I’m gonna stomp your ass if something happens to him on your watch.’

Carl sulks but stands up anyway. He narrows his eyes. ‘If you look after my dad.’

‘I’m gonna be on the other side of the prison,’ Daryl says. ‘Shane’s got him, man.’

The other boy puts his sheriff’s hat on, pulling it over his eyes. He scuffs his shoes, kicking his pack a little. ‘Okay,’ he mutters eventually. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Pssh,’ Daryl scoffs as he brushes past him, heading towards the main area where the rest of the group is waiting for them. ‘I never do that.’

‘Hey,’ Carl darts forward and grabs his arm, whirling him around so they’re facing again. ‘I’m sorry about your dad. You know that, right? I just… I didn’t know what to say yesterday. Nothing helps. Not _I’m sorry_ , not that _he’s in a better place_. They’re just gone. And it sucks.’

 Daryl looks at his feet and nods. ‘Yeah. It does.’

Carl hesitates for a moment but then slings his arm around Daryl’s shoulders. Together, they walk down the landing and the stairs to rejoin the rest of the group.

 

The attack is short and loud.

Daryl pulls the handle for the alarm when Oscar gets the power going again and they run after Tyreese to get to the roof. They watch how Glenn and Maggie lay down cover fire. Far in the distance, Daryl can see Michonne slipping back into the shadows of the woods after disabling the automatic guns on the trucks.

He never even spots the Governor. He thinks he sees a flash of him near the first car but he knows his riffle will never make the shot from this distance. So he just watches how the Woodbury people flee in a panic.

An hour later, he’s standing over their dead bodies.

There’s one woman locked into one of the cars, almost too scared to come out even after Michonne takes care of the walkers with a mighty swoop from her blade.

Karen, who leads them back to the town and makes the guy on the wall stop shooting at them. Daryl ghosts at Shane’s elbow, ready to bolt or fight. The guy looks at him, recognizes him.

‘You’re Will’s kid.’

‘Not anymore,’ Daryl says. ‘He’s dead. Your boy killed him.’

The guy pulls a face, ‘sorry to hear that. He was one tough son of a bitch. And so are you.’

‘You know a woman named Andrea?’ Rick asks as he steps closer to the man, shielding Daryl from his view. ‘Karen says she hopped the wall, going for the prison. She never made it. She might be here.’

‘Everyone knows Andrea,’ the guy says. ‘She’s not here.’

‘She has to be,’ Rick says as he pushes past the guy and enters Woodbury.

 

 

‘The rest of _us_ ,’ Rick says forcefully and Andrea smiles.

Daryl watches in horror as blood seeps through her jacket from the bite. It’s so red that it looks fake. There’s sweat and dirt and blood on her, but she smiles when Michonne strokes her hair back. She’s dying, Daryl knows. There’s nothing they can do.

‘It’s good that you found them,’ Andrea tells her friend.

Michonne cries and nods.

Their conversation is just a buzzing sound in Daryl’s ears. His eyes are burning, it’s hard to swallow suddenly and it’s too hot in this room. He nearly chokes on his own saliva, his own sadness as he watches how Rick passes Andrea his Python.

A hand gently guides him towards the door.

Andrea wants to do it herself. And only Michonne will have to watch. Wants to watch.

Daryl walks out into the corridor. His hands are shaking. He’s shaking, all over. He’s hot and cold and feels sick. He takes a few stumbling steps before stopping.

Shane is right next to him. Arms folded in front of his chest, one tear slowly making its way over his left cheek and gaze firmly on the ground.

For a moment, Daryl hesitates. He knows the other man is hurting, too. He shouldn’t be another burden but he can’t help himself. A shaking hand reaches out, fingers find Shane’s belt, digging the fingertips between the leather and the jeans, holding on tightly.

Shane frowns and looks down at him. ‘Oh God,’ he says softly, arms unfolding, ‘come here.’ He sinks to one knee so Daryl can wrap his arms around his neck tightly and then stands up again. One arm under Daryl’s thighs to keep him in place as his free hand rubs circles over the boy’s back. ‘I know, buddy. I know, I’ve got you,’ he murmurs as he quickly walks out of the corridor, the building, out into the night. ‘It’s okay.’

Daryl cries into his neck. Sobs that wreck his entire body, leaving him gasping for air and with a blazing headache. Desperate fingers curl into the fabric of Shane’s shirt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobs. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Shane shushes, rocking him gently. ‘It’s going to be okay. Breathe, come on, breathe for me, bud. None of this is your fault. Not Andrea, not those people. And not what happened to Will. It’s not on you, Daryl.’

‘I killed him.’

‘No, no, no,’ Shane whispers into his ear.

‘He just kept comin’, and I kept pushin’ him back but he wouldn’t stop. _He wouldn’t stop_.’

‘I know, I know.’ A hand buries itself in his dark hair. ‘I’m so sorry you had to see that.’

‘He tried to bite me. I had to do it. And I did, and I just couldn’t stop. I stabbed him,’ Daryl cries into his friend’s shoulder. ‘Over and over and over, and I just – I’m sorry. I’m so _sorry_.’

‘I know,’ Shane murmurs into his skin. ‘I love you. It’s okay. It’s okay, Daryl.’

‘ I tried – ‘ Daryl gasps, squeezing his eyes shut, ‘I tried flippin’ the switch, but… I can’t. I can’t.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Shane assures him as he tightens his hold on the boy. ‘Just let it out. Just let go, Dare. I’ve got you.’

And he does. He cries until there aren’t any tears left. He holds onto Shane’s broad frame, hiding away in his neck because he can’t bear to see this world right now.

Curious people start to gather around them. They watch how the cop tries to shield the boy from their view. Some recognize him as Will’s kid, but most don’t make the connection. They don’t see the Dixon in him, don’t recognize him now that he’s crying desperately, now that he’s not covered in blood and slaying their own.

A woman hands Shane a soft blanket.

He wraps it around his boy while murmuring soft reassurances in his ear. He presses his forehead against Daryl’s temple and closes his eyes too.

Neither one of them hears the Python’s finalizing shot.

 

 

 


	37. Story time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of lightness after all the sadness. (Someone still dies tho, it's TWD...)
> 
> Hope you enjoy all the same.

 

* * *

 

 

‘Hold it still, man.’

‘I’m _trying_. Why do you read so slowly?’

‘Cause you ain’t holdin’ the damn flashlight still and I can’t see for shit!’ Daryl bumps his shoulder against Carl’s in the darkness. They’re huddled together on the boy’s lower bunk, a blanket over their legs and shoulders, a comic on the pillow in front of them. Carl is holding up the flashlight between them so they can read the pages. Sock-clad feet brush over shins as they wriggle around, trying to get a good look at the drawings on either side of the pages.

‘Fine,’ Carl sighs, ‘you hold it then.’

Daryl grabs the flashlight and holds it steady. He doesn’t mind much when Carl leans against him more now but still kicks at his friend’s foot when it brushes against his ankle.

The rest of the prison is oddly quiet. It’s the middle of the night of course, but Daryl never expected that it could still be so still when it holds so many people. The people of Woodbury had decided to join them at the prison. They cleared out more cellblocks and took them all in. It’s almost like a real community now. Everybody has got a job to do expect for most of the kids. Rick and Carl tend to their crops and animals, trying to rig up some sort of farm while Shane and Glenn organize their defenses and runs.

‘What’s that word mean?’ Daryl asks as he points at the page in front of Carl.

‘Zucchini? You don’t know what a zucchini is?’

‘Never mind.’

Carl chuckles and checks his shoulder, ‘it’s a vegetable, trailer-trash.’

‘Maybe you can grow me some, farmer’s daughter,’ Daryl snarks back. ‘Flip the page.’

His friend does as he’s told. He’s a much faster reader than the Dixon boy is, partly because he’s used to the lay-out of the comics but also because Daryl hasn’t read much in his life. He struggles with some of the words and expressions but usually Carl doesn’t mind explaining things to him, even if he teases him with it afterwards.

Carl lets his head fall onto his outstretched arm when he’s done reading, waiting for Daryl to finish too. He plucks at his pillow. ‘You remember what you said right before the Governor attacked? About how you weren’t going to shoot the henchmen? That was a lie, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says easily, fingers tracing the words on the page. ‘So? Was ages ago, man.’

‘I know, it’s just… We came across some guy. He ran into us while we were waiting by the car.’

Daryl shines the flashlight into his face, ‘that right?’

‘Yeah,’ Carl moans as he pushes Daryl’s hand down. ‘I let him go. He handed over his gun, and I let him go.’

‘Okay. Well, that’s good, right? Ya did good.’

‘He’s not here. I’ve been looking for him, but he’s not here.’

‘Could be anywhere,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘World’s a big place.’

Carl nods. ‘He could be dead.’

‘Yup,’ Daryl pops the p as he flips the page. ‘Could be a lot of things.’

‘Dare…’

‘What?’ Daryl laughs, ‘guy could be dancin’ the fuckin’ cha cha on a hilltop somewhere for all we know. Jesus. You let him live. Ain’t your fault if he went and got himself killed some other way. Who the fuck is she again?’ he asks as he jabs his finger at one of the characters on the page. ‘She the girl who stole the truck?’

‘What?’ Carl frowns as he rolls over, into his friend, to look at the picture. ‘No, that’s the one… the girl with the truck was a whole other comic, you idiot!’

‘Fuckin’ hate this black and white bullshit,’ Daryl grumbles as he bats the comic off the pillow. ‘Can’t tell anyone apart. Can we read the other one again?’

‘Ahw, you want colored pictures, Dixy?’

‘Fuck yeah, keep your eighties black ‘nd white bullshit to yourself. Where’s the one with all the sand? I liked that one.’

‘I traded it with Stanley for a candy bar,’ Carl sighs. ‘We’d already read that one, so…’

‘So where the fuck is my half of the candy bar?’

Carl smirks, ‘traded the candy bar with Michonne for another comic.’

Daryl frowns, ‘ya know she gives us shit for free, right? It’s them others who gotta pay up for stupid shit like that.’

‘She’s always bringing us stuff back,’ Carl says as he turns around so he’s on his back. ‘I just wanted to say thank you.’

‘So say it next time and stop tradin’ away my half of the candy, ya little shit,’ Daryl grumbles as he curls up, knees digging into Car’s side and their hair brushing as he claims a spot on the pillow. ‘’sides, if ya wanna be so nice, start paying _me_ some kindness. I’m out there all the damn time, too.’

‘Yeah, thanks for the million squirrels, jackass,’ Carl mutters sarcastically.

‘Saw ya stuffin’ ya damn face with my deer last night.’

Carl sighs and shifts a little on the bed, allowing Daryl to curl up more and the other boy hums his appreciation. ‘Yeah, that tasted amazing, I’m not going to lie. Are you going out there tomorrow?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl yawns, ‘stayin’ in for the day. Might even help ya out with your chores, if ya ask real nice.’

‘Pretty petty please?’ Carl mutters. ‘Dad keeps telling me that I should hang out with Patrick more.’

‘Oh, fuck, he’s back at it again? Why drag me down with ya? He’ll just start on me, too.’

‘Share the load. It’s what brothers do.’

‘ _Partners_ ,’ Daryl corrects sharply, ‘and stop stealin’ Shane’s line. He and Rick are partners. We ain’t.’

‘ _Dad_ ,’ Carl moans loudly, ‘Daryl is being mean again!’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ Daryl snorts as he dives to cover Carl’s mouth with his hand. ‘It’s the middle of the damn night! Everyone’s asleep, ya prick.’

Carl chuckles as he pushes the other boy’s hand away. ‘Fine,’ he puts the comic on the floor next to his bunk and pulls the blanket higher over their shoulders. ‘Kill the light, wanna play one, two, three?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl grunts as he flicks the flashlight off and puts it on the ledge between the bed and the wall. ‘You count down, and _don’t_ think of anything stupid, okay?’

The other boy counts under his breath and then says; ‘colored comics’ just as Daryl starts with ‘deer’.

The Dixon punches Carl on his shoulder. ‘I said don’t think of anything stupid!’

‘Just play the damn game, Dixy.’

Daryl grumbles but starts the next countdown.

They fall asleep before they end up on the same word.

 

 

The next morning, Daryl wakes up first. He’d been sleeping with his cheek pressed against the wall, one arm disappearing into the gap between the bed and the concrete which causes his shoulder to ache, and with cold feet. He sits up, rubs at his eyes before glaring at Carl, who is still asleep next to him. The other boy’s feet are wrapped up in the blanket. Daryl shifts soundlessly until his back is against the wall. He lets his feet hover over Carl’s hip and belly for a second. Then he shoves him off the bunk with a grunt.

Carl flails, yelps and crashes to the ground.

‘Wakey, wakey,’ the Dixon grins.

‘What the actual fuck, Dare!’ Carl moans.

‘Ya overslept, man,’ Daryl tells him as he scoots to sit on the edge of the bunk, planting his cold feet on the concrete. ‘Rick’s gonna whoop ya.’

‘Shit!’ The boy leaps to his feet and grabs his boots, hopping around the cell as he tries to stomp them on. ‘Why didn’t you wake me up before? You always wake me up!’

Daryl shrugs, ‘I’m not goin’ out today, done told ya. Slept in.’

‘Screw you,’ Carl mutters but he’s grinning as he does his laces up. ‘Come find me?’

‘Always do,’ Daryl nods with a matching grin.

Carl’s running footsteps echo through the entire prison. He jumps down the stairs and pauses just long enough to kiss Judith’s forehead before he dashes out to go join his father out in the fields.

Daryl stretches, rolls his shoulders and then puts his own boots on. He makes his way out slower, nodding at Beth who is looking after little ass-kicker in the shadows of the prison, and then steps into the sunshine. Out in the courtyard, they’ve build a dining area, complete with barbeque and a couple of row of tables. A lot of people are already up. He recognizes most of them but still struggles with some of their names. Rick took in a lot at the same time and while Maggie is always introducing him to people, Daryl has to admit that there were just too many new faces. It doesn’t really help that everyone always wants to talk to him. About his latest hunt, his crossbow, about the runs, about how to get in Shane’s good graces to earn a watch duty, how to get Beth to talk to them, about his dad, too, because most knew him. It always makes him nervous, the way everyone seems to keep an eye on him, but Maggie had laughed his concerns away.

Takes a village to raise a child, she’d said, and had laughed harder when he’d raged that he wasn’t a child. Case in point, she’d whispered before kissing his forehead when his tantrum was over.

He’s getting used to it now. He runs over to the little area, jumping onto the platform and swinging himself in the right direction by holding on to one of the poles.

Carol is cooking breakfast. She’s smiling fondly when he comes running.

‘Hey, Daryl!’

Daryl glances over his shoulder, ‘what’s up, doctor S?’

‘Hey Daryl!’ Another man greets cheerfully.

‘Hi, Daryl!’

‘Daryl, good morning!’

The boy stumbles, looking a bit sheepish as he waves at the people who are enjoying their breakfast before quickly darting over to where Carol is standing, hiding in her shadow. ‘Hey, Carol, smells good.’

‘Just so you know,’ she says as she prepares a bowl for him, ‘I liked you first.’

‘Stop,’ the boy grins, wrinkling his nose.

‘Learn to live with the love,’ she advises him with a quick brush of her hand through his dark hair, pushing it out of his eyes. ‘Are you going out on the run today?’

‘No,’ Daryl murmurs as he scoops his breakfast up with his fingers and sucks the food off of them noisily. ‘Promised Shane I’d stay in today ‘nd tomorrow.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. Part of the deal of me huntin’ on my own, ya know?’ Daryl asks as he squints at the woman. ‘He says I gotta rest in between, or something. Do some normal stuff, I guess. And he was kinda pissed I’d dragged that deer home myself instead of radioing him. Told him the battery had died but that weren’t true.’

Carol laughs at him. ‘He always checks your gear before you go out, you know that, right?’

‘Thought he’d quit doin’ that,’ Daryl grins back and then shrugs. ‘Figured I’d best not make him mad by sneakin’ out again.’

‘No, that would not be smart,’ Carol says with a pointed look. She clearly remembers how Shane had raged the last time Daryl had tricked one of the Woodbury people into letting him out of the gates to go hunting on his own without Shane or Glenn’s permission. ‘I’m sorry you’re cooped up for a little while, Pookie. I know you hate it.’

‘Don’t matter.’ The boy licks his fingers clean and puts the bowl back on the counter. ‘Thanks for breakfast. Is Glenn up yet?’

‘I don’t think so, him and Maggie had the graveyard shift.’

‘They asked for that one. Wonder why,’ Daryl laughs as he wriggles his eyebrows causing Carol to snort.

‘You’re hanging out too much with Shane,’ the woman laughs, cupping his cheeks with her hands. ‘Where’s my innocent baby boy?’

‘Weren’t ever here,’ Daryl grunts as he ducks away from her touch, a grin lingering around the corners of his mouth. ‘Ain’t on Shane neither, I’m a _Dixon_ , lady. Know all about _stuff ‘_ nd _things_.’

Carol presses her hand to her mouth in order to hide another laugh.

‘Daryl?’

The boy’s smile fades into a suspicious look as he steps closer to Carol again before turning back around. Another boy walks up to him, wearing thick-rimmed glasses that are just as black as his hair. He’s smiling, beaming, really. ‘I just wanted to thank you for bringing that deer back yesterday. It was a real treat.’

‘Err,’ Daryl croaks as he glances at his boots and then at the fences beyond, ‘yeah. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Do you want to hang out later?’

‘Why?’

The boy, Patrick, blinks like he’s surprised but soldiers on. ‘Because that would be fun. We could play a game or something.’

Daryl opens his mouth, ready to snap _no_ , but Carol puts a warm hand on his shoulder. She smiles at him when he glances up at her. That little encouraging smile she sometimes flashes him when he gets a little overwhelmed by all the social niceties going on. ‘That sounds like fun,’ she says.

Daryl wants to snap that he’s not a _kid_ who plays _games,_ but her fingers dig into his shoulder and he looks at his boots again. ‘Yeah, a’right. Maybe later. Wanna meet up with Shane first.’

‘Of course,’ Patrick beams at him. ‘We could play Uno, Jessy’s got a set. Maybe she’ll join us.’

‘The fuck’s that?’

‘Uno?’ Patrick asks, brow furrowed now. ‘You don’t know what Uno is? You’ve never played it before?’

‘So?’ Daryl demands angrily because from the way Carol shoots him a quick glance of surprise, it’s something most kids have done. ‘’s probably a lame-ass game anyway. I’m gonna go find Shane,’ he says before running off.

 

 

Daryl sits on the back of the truck while Shane loads it up. His eyes are on Beth and her new boyfriend. The girl laughs when the boy tells her that it’s dangerous out there, posturing a bit to seem tougher than he is. Daryl hadn’t liked him much in the beginning because he was always sucking up to him and Carl, trying to get into Beth’s good graces. He was a lot better when he figured out that that didn’t help much.

Shane leans against the metal next to him.

‘’s like a damn romance novel,’ Daryl mutters which makes the cop laugh.

‘Yeah, young love,’ Shane grins. ‘You stay away from all of that, you hear me? I don’t want to be Hershel just yet, chasing his kids around to keep them in line.’

‘Jack lot of good that’s been doin’ him,’ Daryl grins back. ‘You goin’ out to that big spot I told ya about?’

‘Yeah, just to check it out for now.’

Daryl shifts his weight a little, ‘since I found it, do I get to come? I slept in today. I’m good to go.’

Shane looks at him. ‘Nice try.’

‘Ahw, come on, Shane! I got all y’all a deer yesterday, some rabbits, too!’

‘Sucking up with your hunting now?’ Shane laughs, ‘and that’s exactly my point. You were out from dawn until dusk. Two day of rest, that’s the deal for going out to hunt. Don’t look at me like that,’ he scoffs when Daryl scowls. ‘There’s plenty to do around here. Go help Carl out, or keep watch with Oscar. Hell, Maggie could probably use some help when she’s up.’

‘Wanted to hang out with you.’

‘Doing a run isn’t hanging out, Dare.’

‘The car ride would be,’ Daryl mutters as he rubs at his nose. ‘Fine. I’ll find something to do.’

‘Good, get down from there and walk me to the gate.’

Daryl smirks and jumps off the car, landing on the gravel with a thud.

Shane leaves the debate about whether Bob is allowed to come to Sasha as he walks down the long driveway towards the gates. He throws an easy arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘We’ll hang out tonight. You’re good, though, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you put your dad’s name up on the wall yet?’

Daryl brings his hand to his mouth and bites on his thumb. He’s not sure who came up with the idea of the wall, whether it was someone of theirs or someone from Woodbury, but there’s a corridor in the prison which now displays the names of everyone they’ve lost. Written with black marker on white paint. Some have little pictures drawn beside them, others are only initials, but almost everyone has written someone down there. Lori’s name is there. Dale’s, T-dog, too. Jim and Jacqui. Andrea and Amy.

‘Dare.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Just because,’ Daryl shrugs.

‘Just because what?’

‘Figured some people would like that none,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Glenn. Maggie. Don’t want to shove it all up in their faces every time they walk by that thing. _I’m_ already in their faces.’

‘Hey,’ Shane tightens his hold on the boy. ‘Whatever your dad did to them, that’s got nothing to do you with you. They won’t mind his name being up there. You lost him. You miss him. They understand. You’ve got to give yourself time to mourn, Dare.’

‘Mourned plenty,’ Daryl says as he looks away. He can hardly remember the first couple of days after the Governor’s attack on the prison. It’s all just a blur of tears and numbness, the memories only warm due to Shane’s presence and Maggie’s soft touches. He remembers how his family had rallied around him, keeping the people from Woodbury away whenever they tried to offer the boy their sympathy.

It had taken him five days before he’d managed to walk out of the cell block with his head held high and eyes not as empty as before.

The people of Woodbury had not been sure what to make of him. A twelve year old boy with cold eyes but easy smile when around his own people. Just a kid with a powerful crossbow anchored to his back, fingers always resting on the hunting knife. A new holster holds his gleaming gun, always cleaned thoroughly by himself or Shane. Always ready.

Whispers had followed him around the prison.

 _Wild_. _Too young_. _Dangerous_.

Some of them had even protested when Shane had kneeled down before Daryl at the gates, handing him the walkie-talkie and making sure that the boy had enough water and food with him before giving a fierce hug and three words _; bow, knife, holler_ , before sending him off to hunt on his own.

Daryl is glad that Shane and Glenn let him go off into the woods. Rick wants to stay inside the gates and tend to his fields and none of the others had ever been out hunting with him, so this time he really is better on his own. Michonne often patrols the woods, making sure that the Governor isn’t looming around a corner somewhere, and while he isn’t allowed to stray too far from the prion, he loves having his freedom back. He’s spent whole days outside of the gates, tracking down various animals and sometimes stumbling upon people, too. In those cases, he usually hides and radios Shane to come and get them. Like Bob, who he had found on top of a truck only a week ago. He remembers watching how Shane had carefully approached the man, asking the questions before leading him back to the prison, summoning Daryl with a sharp whistle.

 _Glad my boy found you, man_ , Shane had mused, ignoring the surprise on Bob’s face when Daryl had appeared from the shadows to take his place at Shane’s right hand.

‘Hey,’ Shane says. ‘Whatever makes you feel better, okay? You can, if you want to. But you don’t have to.’

‘I _am_ better.’

‘You’re the best,’ Shane smiles, hugging him close as they reach the gate. They’re just closing behind Michonne, who is jumping off her horse with a smug smile. She greets Rick and then turns to Carl, who’d ran out to meet her.

‘Where’s your better half?’

‘His evil twin, you mean,’ Rick rumbles behind her with a smile. ‘He’s right over there. Daryl! Get down here.’

‘You got something for us?’ Carl asks excitedly.

Shane gives Daryl’s shoulder a light shove to send him on his way, running over to his best friend.

‘Somebody hit the jackpot,’ Michonne says as she hands a stack of comics to Carl.

‘No way!’ Carl gushes, ‘awesome! Thank you. Dare, look what she’s got us.’ He shows his friend the comics. ‘And they’re in color, too!’

‘We’re getting picky now?’ Michonne asks with a raised eyebrow.

‘No, no,’ Carl says hastily, ‘they’re easier to read, is all.’

‘I didn’t know you had trouble reading,’ the woman frowns.

‘I don’t.’

Daryl can feel himself blushing when the adults look at him. He scratches at his cheek and look at his boots, ‘I can _read_ ,’ he snaps, ‘’s just that everything looks the same in black ‘nd white.’ He’s saved from further embarrassment by the arrival of Shane, who gives Michonne a fond smile before clapping Rick on the shoulder. They discuss their plans while Daryl and Carl flip through their new comics, trying to decide which one to read first. In the end, Michonne goes with Shane on the run, even though the cop had been hinting that his partner should come along instead.

Carl puts the saddle away while Rick leads the horse into the small enclosure.

Daryl jumps onto the low fence, ‘want me to check them snares?’

‘No,’ Rick says immediately.

‘We’re gonna lose whatever is in them to the walkers.’

‘ _I_ will check them,’ the cop answers. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what kind of deal you made with Shane and Glenn. Two days, _inside_ of the gates. If you want to help, help Carl with his chores. Read those comics, maybe some books, too. Hang out with Patrick.’

The two boys share a smirk.

‘Maybe go to story time.’

The smirk is wiped from both theirs faces.

‘Dad, that’s for kids!’

Rick looks at his son and laughs, ‘yeah!’ He reaches out to stroke the horse between her eyes. ‘Now brush her down.’ The cop turns on his heels and heads towards the gates.

 

 

The chores take up most of their morning. They take care of the animals, making sure they have plenty of water and food. Daryl chases the piglets around while Carl worries about Violet. They clean the pens and later check the vegetables. They pull weeds out of the ground, make sure the earth is nice and loose, carry heavy buckets of water around to fill up the giant barrels spread across the prison’s field so others won’t have to walk all the way down to the pump when they need to water the plants.

At midday, Carl runs off to find Patrick while Daryl trudges back to the main area to get them both some food. Since Glenn has gone with Shane on the run, Daryl searches for Maggie instead. He hesitates a little when he sees that she’s sitting with some people from Woodbury. One of the women, however, leans forward to whisper something to her when she catches sight of him. Maggie turns around in her seat, her smile becoming a fraction wider when she sees him. ‘I got you a bowl, Dare. Come on, join us.’

There’s an empty spot next to her.

He wobbles on the balls of his feet for a second before slinking over and claiming the seat.

‘How is your day?’ she asks.

‘Fine.’

A woman sitting across from him lifts her eyebrow at his short reply.

He ducks his head a little, trying to curl into himself to appear smaller.

‘That’s good,’ Maggie murmurs, not at all disturbed by his answer. ‘What were you reading last night? Glenn and I saw the flashlight when we were heading out.’

‘Just some comic.’ Daryl uses his fingers to eat his food while Maggie stirs hers around with a spoon. The boy perks up a little. ‘Michonne came back.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah!’ Daryl shifts in his seat so he’s facing her, swinging one leg back over the bench as he leans forward eagerly. ‘She got me ‘nd Carl some new comics and-‘

‘Carl and me,’ Maggie corrects.

‘Yeah, yeah, she got Carl and me new comics, but you’ll never guess what she got Rick!’

The corner of her mouth twist up in a smile at his enthusiasm. ‘What?’

‘An electronic razor! She said his face was losin’ the war.’

‘Well, she’s not lying.’

Daryl snorts and ducks his head, digging into his food again. The people from Woodbury are still observing him, even though they think he can’t tell. It makes him uncomfortable, especially now that Maggie is quietly eating her food too. There’s nothing to distract him from their burning gazes. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and is just about to bolt when Carl wriggles into the seat next to him.

‘Share?’ his friend asks but doesn’t wait for the answer, grabbing a spoon from the table and digging into Daryl’s food.

‘Where’s Patrick?’

Carl rolls his eyes, ‘he went to _story time_.’

Daryl snorts.

‘You know those two girls? Like, small, blonde? Sisters.’

‘Hmmm-hm.’

‘They’re giving the walkers at the fences _names_ ,’ Carl spits out, ‘like they’re pets, or _still alive_! They’re crazy. The oldest – what’s her name? – she said they were just _different_. Can you believe that?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl says as he slouches in his seat, leaning against Maggie’s side. She reaches out absent-mindedly and rubs a comforting hand over his back, fingers brushing over his angel wings. ‘Fuck ‘em.’

The people from Woodbury frown disapprovingly but Maggie sniggers behind her hand.

‘Yeah, screw them,’ Carl agrees as he pulls the comics from his back pocket and spreads one out between them. ‘Come on, you flip the pages.’

 

 

In the end, they do go to story time just because Daryl is bored out of his mind and Carl wants to please Rick. So they slip inside the library just as some dad drops his kids off and hide behind one of the shelves.

Carol closes the book as soon as the guy leaves. ‘Today,’ she says, ‘we’re talking about knives. How to use them, how to be safe with them and how they can save your life.’

Patrick excuses himself and Daryl jabs an elbow into Carl’s ribs, rolling his eyes at the other boy’s behavior and mouthing _pussy_.

Carl just stares at Carol with wide eyes. He takes a couple of hesitant steps forward.

Just as Daryl wants to reach out and yank him back into the shadows, Carol spots them. ‘Please,’ she says, ‘don’t tell your father.’ Then her gaze flickers to Daryl. ‘Or Shane and Glenn.’

Carl dashes out of the room with a betrayed look on his face. Daryl bites on his fingers.

‘Daryl,’ she says softly.

‘Yeah,’ he gives her a jerky nod. ‘I got him.’

‘Thank you.’

He runs after Carl.

 

 

He doesn’t quite understand why the other boy is so mad. He rages about how they’re just kids, how they should be having fun and not have to deal with knives and walkers and everything beyond the gates.

Daryl listens but doesn’t say much. He plays with his hunting knife until Carl bats it out of his hands.

 

 

Zach died.

Shane tells Beth, who doesn’t cry anymore.

 

 

Daryl stares at the wall.

He uncaps Sophia’s marker, takes a deep breath and then begins.

People stop to watch him work.

He ignores them.

 

 

‘That’s beautiful.’

Daryl hunches his shoulders and stuffs his hands into his pockets. He wobbles on the balls of his feet, bites on his lower lip and then mutters a soft thanks.

Glenn puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders and gently drags him into an embrace. The Korean’s chin on the crown of his head, arms around his neck as they both look at the drawing on the memorial wall.

A falling angel.

A demon reaching out to grab their hand and haul them back up.

‘Didn’t fuck it up this time,’ the boy says.

‘No,’ Glenn murmurs. ‘You didn’t.’

 

 


	38. Grave digging

 

* * *

 

 

The alarm goes off and Daryl is already staring at the ceiling. It doesn’t take long for Rick to appear in the doorway, pushing the curtain aside and whispering Carl’s name. Judith is sitting on his arm She plays with the buttons of his shirt. The boy moans softly, pawing at his pillow before blinking against the soft early morning light that is illuminating his father.

‘Come on,’ Rick says gently but in a voice that leaves little room for negotiation.

Daryl wipes the sleep out of his eyes and sits up too. His jaw pops when he yawns. ‘Want me to take her?’

‘Yeah.’ Rick sounds grateful as he steps into the cell. ‘An hour?’ he asks, ‘Beth will come and get her later.’

‘Sure,’ Daryl mutters, ‘I’m up anyway. Let her sleep a bit.’

The father lifts Judith up onto the bunk and doesn’t let go of her until Daryl curls a protective arm around the girl’s belly, dragging her into his chest as he falls back onto his pillow. She babbles something, grabby hands reaching for her dad.

‘Hey Ass-kicker,’ Daryl mumbles sleepily and the girl perks up at the sound of his voice, turning around clumsily to paw at his face. He playfully bites at the small fingers which makes her giggle. ‘I got her,’ he tells Rick. ‘Grow me some Pop-tarts? The chocolate chip ones.’

‘Not until you say please and thank you,’ Rick smiles.

‘Please and thank you,’ Daryl echoes as he wraps his blanket around Judith’s small body and lets her snuggle up to his chest. His nose in her blonde hair. She smells of soap.

Carl sits up in his bed, rubbing at his eyes. ‘Michonne is leaving again today. I’ll ask her to look for some.’

‘Thanks. She’s always hoggin’ those m&m’s.’

‘She’s always finding them, too,’ Ricks says with a hint of warning in his voice.

‘Weren’t bitchin’,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Good,’ Rick says as he leans up to kiss his daughter goodbye. ‘Carl, get up. Now.’

Daryl yawns while Carl puts his boots on. He watches how his brother tries to tame his long hair. Their eyes meet via the mirror above their sink. Carl sticks his tongue out and Daryl laughs. They've tried to cheer their little cell up with some posters Daryl found in someone's bedroom while on a run with Shane and Glenn. There's one of a gleaming sports car, one of a wolf in the snow with blue eyes, and one of a video game neither of them has played but that looks pretty cool. They've taken one down already. It was of a famous football player, holding his helmet proudly while smiling at the camera. They only realized the guy's probably dead when they were talking about whether they could have been professional players, too. The smile had become a little creepy after that and Daryl had ripped it off the wall. Someone had given them a nightstand. They don't have enough clothes to fill the drawers, so it just functions as a holder for Carl's hat. A curtain draped over the bars gives them enough privary to read comics at night when they're supposed to be asleep.

‘Are you coming to help me later?’ Carl asks as he changes shirts.

‘No, fuck you,’ Daryl yawns. ‘Gotta do your own damn chores, man.’

‘Language, Daryl,’ Rick chides from outside the cell, something he only does whenever the boy is around his daughter.

‘Yeah, watch your language, Dixy,’ Carl sniggers as he jumps up on his own bed so he can kiss Judith’s cheek. ‘See you at noon then.’

‘Ain’t savin’ ya a seat.’

‘You always say that,’ Carl laughs as he walks out of their cell to help his father in the gardens.

Daryl curls up around Judith, ‘what’re ya lookin’ at, little lady? Ain’t gonna play no peek-a-boo anymore. You cheat, girly.’ The baby gurgles at him, spit bubbling on her lips and the boy can’t help but huff out a breath of laughter at the sight of her. Sleepy fingers stroke her blonde hair. He hums when she starts to fuss and she looks fascinated. After a couple of minutes she settles down again, bright eyes closing as she falls asleep.

Daryl dozes next to her. He dreams and sleeps and thinks. He dreams of his mother, who used to dance in their small kitchen. When he wakes up, he can’t remember what song it had been, what his mother had looked like exactly, but he knows she’d laughed and her voice had sounded as comforting as rain on their trailer roof had done. He thinks of his sister, the one who’d died before she was even born. Wonders what her name would have been, whether her eyes would have been just as blue as his, how she would have changed everything and might have been able to prevent their mother from falling asleep with her cigarettes.

He sleeps curled up around the little girl, hands on her small back so he jerks awake with every move she makes just in case she decides to get adventurous and crawl to the edge of the bunk.

An hour later, Beth breezes in to collect her. Blonde hair tucked behind her ears, jewelry jingling and shirt riding up a bit when she lifts the girl off the bed. ‘Thanks, Dare,’ she smiles.

‘Yeah,’ he groans while stretching. ‘Ya a’rigt?’

‘I’m fine.’ Beth kisses Judith’s temple. ‘I saw you’ve drawn on the memorial wall. It’s beautiful.’

Daryl shrugs.

‘You should ask Michonne for some paper,’ the girl tells him. ‘Maybe you can draw me something for my cell?’

‘Maybe,’ Daryl answers because Carol has taught him that that’s better than bluntly telling someone _no_ when they ask for something like that.

‘Or you can just do it on the wall, I guess….’

‘What if you don’t like it none?’

Beth blinks like she hadn’t even considered that. She flashes him a bright smile. ‘I’m sure I’ll love it. Thank you for letting me sleep a bit longer. See you at dinner.’

‘See ya, Beth.’

The girl leaves and it takes him almost another fifteen minutes to drag himself out of bed. He figures he’ll wash up tonight and just slips his boots on before making his way downstairs to get some breakfast. Just as his boots hit the concrete, a gun goes off somewhere inside the prison. Protocol kicks in. He dashes back up the staircase to grab his bow from his cell before jumping back down and landing hard on his feet. With a wince, he propels himself forward.

Beth comes running too with Judith in her arms. ‘Daryl,’ she pants, eyes wide and scared.

‘Yeah, I got ya, I got ya,’ the boy says as he herds her into her own cell and clangs the door shut. He fumbles a little with the keys but manages to lock her in.

‘Be careful,’ she says with pleading eyes as he passes her the keys through the bars.

‘Don’t come out until we give the all clear, no matter what!’ He shouts before running out into the common area. There, he finds Sasha, Tyreese and Hershel. ‘I locked Beth in,’ he pants as he readies his crossbow.

There’s someone screaming outside.

‘I locked the gates to the tombs,’ Tyreese says.

The gun goes off somewhere on the other side. Again and again and again.

‘Hershel, you’re on guard,’ Sasha snaps, ‘go, go , go!’

Daryl, Tyreese and the girl run outside. Through that heavy door, into the sunlight. Others are running over, too. Daryl spots Glenn and Shane, but Rick’s also making his way towards the cell blocks.

‘Walkers in D,’ Glenn shouts.

‘What about C?’ Rick screams back.

‘It’s clear,’ Sasha says, ‘we locked the gates to the tombs. Hershel is on guard. We followed the plan!’

‘It ain’t a breach,’ Daryl supplies as he darts past the adults, lighter on his feet and much faster. He can hear the echoing footsteps behind him, recognizing Glenn’s light thread and Rick’s boots as well as Shane’s thundering. He slips around corners, shoving people out of the way as they flee past him in hysterics. Up staircase, through corridors.

He’s the first one to duck into Cell block D.

It’s absolute chaos.

No one has followed the protocol here. All the cells are open. Kids are screaming, scrambling to get away from walkers who are ripping their parents and friends apart. Men and women do nothing but cry and stare and scream. There’s one guy standing near the door who’s firing a gun. The sound causes Daryl’s ears to ring. He’s not even hitting any of the walkers, he’s a bad shot and it just riles the things up more.

Daryl grabs the gun out of his hands.

‘Daryl!’ Rick holds his hand out for the gun and the boy throws it at him before darting past a couple of people towards the end of the cell block. They’re just standing there, hands pressed to their mouths in horror.

‘Are ya bit?’ Daryl shouts.

The woman shakes her head and the man just stares at the boy.

‘Get the fuck in your cell,’ Daryl snarls as he shoves them inside, yanking the door shut. ‘Lock yourselves in, goddamnit!’ He turns and sees that Rick is herding people out of the cell block, frantically checking whether they’ve been bit or not. Shane is running up the staircase to get to a girl who is trying to fight one of the walkers off. He draws his gun and shoots it before it can bite.

A little boy has fallen while trying to get away from a walker. He's crying hysterically while he tries to scoot backwards, too confused to actually get up and run for his life. Daryl runs to him, slamming into his smaller frame and picking him up as he goes. He turns, stumbles a bit but manages to shoot one of his bolts into a walkers eye. ‘Here,’ he passes the boy to a woman near one of the cells. She takes him.

Daryl throws his bow onto his back and draws his knife.

Glenn slays a walker near the stairs as Rick carries a crying girl out of the block.

Carol herds another child into a cell before hurrying over towards a man who has been bit.

Shane is upstairs still.

‘Come inside,’ the woman who had taken the boy from him is now tugging at his shoulder. ‘Come, we need to lock ourselves in.’

‘ _Now_ you’re followin’ the goddamn plan? Jesus Christ, lady,’ Daryl snarls as he pulls himself away from her. ‘Best let go!’ He thunders up the stairs, jumping over a body at the top, and makes his way towards the end of the landing. A walker ambles over, growling and snarling, but he aims a mean kick to the knees and it falls over, making it an easy target. His knife doesn’t slide in as easily as with the ones outside. These are fresh walkers. He grunts with effort but manages to hit the brain. People are still screaming and crying, but Daryl only hears Rick’s commanding voice over the chaos.

‘ _Check all of them, every cell!_ ’

Seconds later, he shouts again.

‘Are we clear down here? Are we safe?’

‘Yeah,’ Tyreese and Sasha echo.

‘Daryl!’ Shane is standing on the other side of the landing and gestures to the cells. ‘Check every one of them.’

He dips his chin in a nod. There’s a girl at his feet, young and with a pink shirt on. He kneels down, checks her vitals and then her head, finding a bullet hole near her temple.

Rick comes running up the stairs just as he moves towards the next body.

Glenn joins them too, skipping a couple of cells to start in the middle. A walker takes advantage of that by grabbing hold of him as he walks by. The Korean struggles, falling against the wall.

‘Get down,’ Daryl warns as he takes aim.

Glenn lets go of the walker and does as he’s told.

The bolt finds its target even through a set of bars. A flash of pride floods Daryl as he darts forward to help Glenn to his feet.

‘Thanks,’ the Korean breathes as he accepts the helping hand.

The sudden silence in the cell block feels strange, scarier than all walkers combined. There are bodies everywhere. Empty eyes stare at him. Some are now a glassy blue, brown or green, while others are red with the disease. Blood drips from the landing to the concrete floor. It's the only sound before Daryl walks over to one of the slain walkers next to him. Familiar black curls are matted by cold sweat and the natural blush has faded into a sickly waxy color. when Daryl kneels down to inspect him further, he sees the bullet hole in the forehead. There's blood all around his mouth and on his hands. 

'It's Patrick. He must have turned,' he says as he looks up at Shane. There's a lump in his throat. 'He was my friend.'

 

'I'm sorry, buddy,' Shane says. He holsters his gun before cupping Daryl's face gently. 'Are you okay?'

 

'I'm fine.'

Shane looks sad. 'Of course you are.' He looks around the cell block. ‘We have to check all the bodies. I want you to wait outside for us, okay?’

‘I can help.’

‘Daryl,’ Glenn says as he looks at him with tired eyes. ‘Listen to Shane. Wait outside for us.’

The boy sighs and nods, dragging himself away from Shane’s touch. He stops next to Rick, who looks dazed and confused. There’s a tiny knife clipped to his belt but it’s for cutting leaves off plants and growing them again. Not for ending people.

Daryl holds his hunting knife out to the former cop.

Rick takes it with a trembling hand. He doesn’t thank him.

 

 

They think it’s the flu.

Daryl sits down outside of the cell blocks, in the shade of the large building, and tries to clean his hands with the red rag that’s always sticking out of his back pocket. It doesn’t do much good. The blood has already dried and won't come off easily. He tries using his own spit but just creates a bigger stain on his skin. The sun is shining brightly. It warms his boots and jeans, but the rest of him is hidden in the shade. He knows he should go find Maggie to let her know everyone is okay, but he can't get up for some reason. Instead, he just watches how people drag bodies out of the prison. There are trails of blood that lead down to the fields where they've made their graveyard. He wonders how many graves they will have to dig today.

Carl, Maggie and Michonne come walking up the path leading from the gate to the prison. He knows Maggie had been on guard in one of the towers, but Carl must have ran to help open the gate for Michonne. The boy's head snaps up when a door opens somewhere down the line. He starts running and jumps into his dad's arms.

 

‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ Rick reassures his son, hugging him for a brief second before pushing the kid away from him, ‘but back away.’

‘Was Daryl inside with you?’ Maggie asks. She’s supporting Michonne’s weight. The other woman seems to be favoring one foot.

‘Yeah,’ Rick nods as he wipes sweat from his brow. ‘He’s fine. He’s _fine_ ,’ he adds hastily when Maggie takes an alarmed step forward. He explains the situation, how they think Patrick died from an aggressive flu strain and attacked the cell block. That they’re going into quarantine until they know more. Glenn and Hershel are okay, he tells her, but they were in there.

Daryl spits on his rag and cleans his fingernails. He watches how Carl, Michonne and Maggie disappear into their cell block. Rick just stands there, breathing the fresh air in and looking a bit lost. Then he squares his shoulders and turns around to head back. He seems surprised to spot Daryl on the other side of the block. ‘Here,’ he holds out the hunting knife when he’s reached the boy. ‘Thank you.’

Daryl takes his weapon back.

Rick sits down next to him. ‘I don’t mean for just the knife. If you hadn’t been there, a lot more people would have died.’

‘Was all of us.’

‘Yeah I know,’ Rick nods tiredly. ‘I’ve spend weeks trying to make a farmer out of you, too, and…. Shit. I’m glad you were there, Dare.’

Daryl laughs softly, remembering Rick’s attempts. First gentle persuasion, then a firmer hand until the cop had raged that he had to give it a try until Shane had dragged his partner out of the room before he could get into a fist-fight with the twelve year old. Carl had taken to the new job with glee. He had never been allowed to go out on runs while they had been out on the road, and now that they were staying in one place, the boy had become bored quickly. Farming proved to be his escape.

Daryl, however, had dug his heels in, saying he wasn’t going to be no damn farmer when he could hunt or keep watch or go out on runs with Glenn and Shane.

‘You try to do what’s best for everyone,’ Rick murmurs. ‘I thought I could keep you safe. Lori was so worried about Carl turning cold. And I could see it happening. How pulling the trigger became easier and easier, that it stopped bothering him. I knew I had to do something.’ The cop sighs and waves a vague hand towards the sprawling fields. ‘I thought making a farmer out of him could reverse that. Make him grow things instead of cutting them down. Show him that we can build something here.’

‘He ain’t cold,’ Daryl answers as he picks at his fingernails. ‘And I ain’t neither, just because I don’t like to grow things.’

Rick looks at him.

‘I don’t like this either,’ the boy mutters. ‘Cutting down them walkers? Ending people like that? Those were our people. Patrick was my friend, too. If I have to, I’ll do it. Won’t lose a wink of sleep either, but,’ he scratches at his cheek, ‘I don’t _like_ doin’ it.’

‘Good,’ Rick says softly. ‘You shouldn’t. And I know you don’t, really, I know, Daryl. It’s just… You’re a good kid, Dare. I’m scared you will lose that.’

‘Won’t.’

‘You’re out there so much. You were in there before all of us.’ Rick bites on the inside of his cheek. ‘You can’t believe that that doesn’t change you.’

‘Doesn’t make me bad, though.’

‘I know,’ Rick says quickly, ducking his head  to catch the boy’s gaze. ‘You _are_ good. It’s just… We worry, okay? Not just Shane and Glenn. All of us. _I_ worry. We want to protect you from all of that, and then this happens and…. I was so glad you were there, and then I felt sick. You’re not supposed to have to do things like that.’

‘Everything’s different now,’ Daryl says with a shrug. ‘Was just glad I could help.’

‘Carl doesn’t do those things.’

‘ _I ain’t Car_ l,’ Daryl bites back, a little harsher than he had intended. ‘Look,’ he sighs when he sees Rick flinch. ‘It’s good that he doesn’t have to do that, okay? I get that. But we ain’t like all them other kids. We know what’s out there. That it’s dangerous. They don’t get it. Just look what happened in there. Even the adults just… froze. Can’t do that. If he had been there, with his gun, knife? Hmm. He would have done the same thing I did. That’s _good_. All those damn Woodbury people? They don’t get it and I’m sick of them lookin’ at me like I’m some savage. Don’t you start, too.’

‘I don’t look at you like that.’

Daryl presses his lips together and nods. ‘Then stop lookin’ at me like I’m some helpless kid.’

Rick shakes his head, ‘no, that ain’t it either. I’m worried because you’re _not_ some helpless kid.’

Daryl groans and draws his legs up, hiding his face behind his knees. ‘Ya don’t make a lick of sense, Friendly.’

The door behind them opens and Shane steps out of the building. He smiles when he spots the boy, ‘there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘Needed some air,’ the boy explains.

‘Yeah. You heard about the quarantine? You understand what that means?’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘Good,’ Shane turns to Rick. ‘We’re going to hold a council meeting. Are you coming?’

Rick stands but shakes his head, ‘I’m not part of the council. I’ll help the others carry the rest of the bodies out.’

Shane opens his mouth like he wants to say something but changes his mind. He just sighs and shakes his head. Then he turns back to Daryl. ‘I want you to stick close to our group, okay? Do you want to stay with Beth?’

Daryl gets to his feet too. ‘Nah,’ he spits on the concrete, ‘I’ll come with ya.’

‘All right,’ Shane nods. He holds the door open for him.

 

 

It’s not the first time that he’s at a council meeting. Nobody looks surprised when he slinks into the room near the library. Shane takes his seat next to Carol while Daryl grabs a chair and drags it over to where Glenn is sitting. He puts it down backwards and slides onto the seat, curling his arms around the wood and resting his chin on the backrest. Small eyes follow the conversation, gaze darting to whomever is speaking.

Carol about how Patrick was fine yesterday and died overnight. How they have to separate every who has been exposed.

Shane about how that’s everyone in that cellblock, all of them, too. Maybe more.

Hershel that the sickness is lethal, but that they don’t know how easily it spreads.

They’re going to use Cell block A, death row, despite Glenn’s muted response that that isn’t much of an upgrade. It’s clean, at least.

Coughing in the hallway leads them to Karen, who seems to be showing symptoms. David from the Decatur group is sick too, she says.

Glenn hurries off to get him.

They’ll have to call another meeting later. Daryl shoulders his bow and bumps his shoulder into Shane’s side. ‘Y’all get A set up, I’ll start on digging them graves, okay?’

Shane nods distractedly, worry marring his face.

‘You wear gloves and a mask,’ Hershel warns.

‘Pookie,’ Carol calls just as he wants to walk away. ‘Are you okay?’

Daryl shrugs, hoisting his bow a little higher. ‘Gotta be.’

 

 

Digging the graves is hard work. Sweat drips down his back when he drives the shovel into the dry earth. He has tied a black bandana around his face so it covers his nose and mouth but that makes it harder to draw breath. The gloves he’s wearing are a little too big for him. Blisters are starting to form on his fingers.

‘Hey, hey,’ Rick comes walking over, waving him out of the half-dug grave. ‘Give that to me.’ He holds out his hand for the shovel.

Daryl passes it to him and climbs out of the grave, falling into the grass and panting. ‘Thanks.’

‘Where’s Shane?’ Rick asks, a hint of anger in his voice like he can’t believe that his brother would let the kid dig the graves.

‘Setting up A,’ Daryl says as he tugs his bandana down so he can breathe easier. ‘Gonna use it as a sickbay. Short-handed, is all. Just helpin’ out.’

‘Yeah, you always are,’ Rick grumbles.

Daryl stares at the cloudy sky. He frowns a little. ‘You gonna help us figure this out or what?’

‘I screwed up too many times. Those calls you got to make, I start down that road…I almost lost my boy. Who he was.’ Rick shrugs, ‘whatever else this place needs, I’m here for it.’

‘Shane needs you there,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Partners, right? Share the load.’

‘I can’t – ‘ Rick starts but he’s interrupted by Maggie screaming his name.

‘Rick!’ She waves and points towards the fence. ‘Daryl!’

‘Oh shit,’ Rick breathes as he watches how walkers pile up against the fences, almost tearing it down. He jumps out of the grave as Daryl grabs his crossbow. Half-way across the field, Rick looks at him. ‘Get into the guard tower!’

‘Ain’t the boss of me!’ Daryl growls as he yanks one of the metal poles from the fence and runs over to where Glenn is already stabbing at the walker’s heads. He joins him. The angle is awkward because he’s a lot smaller. He has to wriggle the pole into a walker’s mouth and then jam it up into their brains. He tries to not think about it while he does it.

Some walkers are pushing so hard against the fence that it’s slicing into their skin.

‘Back away, back away!’ Rick calls, ‘it’s going to give! It’s coming down!’

The fence does bend over but doesn’t come down completely.

Rick wipes a hand over his face. ‘Glenn, get the truck,’ he says in a rough voice. ‘I know what to do.’

 

 

The next morning, they all know that it has spread.

There’s another council meeting. Daryl is leaning against Glenn’s chair this time, nervous fingers fiddling with the edge of the man’s collar. The group is getting smaller and smaller. Sasha has come down with it too. She’s gone to see Doctor S. For the time being, Michonne fills her spot on the council. Like Daryl, she’s an honorary member. She doesn’t join often, mostly because she’s always outside of the gates, looking for provisions and the Governor.

Someone has burned Karen and David. Dragged them out into the courtyard and set them on fire.

Shane and Rick are going to look into that. Create a time-line, figure out who was where when.

Glenn turns into his seat as Hershel discusses with Shane and Michonne that they need to start looking for antibiotics. The flu doesn’t kill people but the symptoms do. Everyone just needs to go through it but everyone is going to need a little help with that. Right now, they don’t have the help. They’ve been through every pharmacy nearby and then some.

‘Dare,’ Glenn rasps, ‘step back a little, okay?’

Daryl frowns, ‘why? Won’t touch no more, sorry,’ he says as he draws his hand back.

‘It’s not that,’ the Korean says as he dabs some sweat from his neck. ‘I just need a little space.’

‘A’right,’ Daryl nods as he slinks away to the side. He sits down on the floor, back against the wall as he listens to how Hershel knows about a veterinary college at West Peachtree Tech. He can draw them a map. Shane gets up, ready to go on another run with Michonne.

He looks at Daryl, who gets to his feet too. ‘I need you to sit tight for this one, okay, bud?’

‘Why? Ya ain’t got the people. I can come with.’

‘No. We’re spreading thin, I need you on guard duty, manning the gates, helping Hershel out with whatever he needs. I need you here.’

Daryl bites his lower lip and nods. ‘A’right.’ He listens to the plans and closes his eyes, feeling tired all of a sudden.

 

 

Hours later, someone comes to tell him that Glenn is sick, too.

Shane has already left on the run with Michonne, Bob and Tyreese. Daryl is sitting near the gates. The sun is beating down on him but he feels cold even though sweat is streaming down his temples. It doesn’t really register who is bringing the news. Someone from Woodbury. He doesn’t know their name. With an irritated wave, he dismisses them. Loops his arms around his knees and tries to curl into himself. He shivers and gags on his own saliva.

‘Are you okay?’ The man asks carefully.

‘The fuck are ya askin’ that for?’ Daryl shouts as he jumps to his feet. The world lurches around him, spinning wildly. ‘Twelve people are dead, ya mother fucker! Ya think I’m down here throwin’ some damn party? Go fuck yourself! Leave me be!’

The man takes a hurried step back. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he shushes, ‘I’m sorry, Daryl.’

‘You’re fuckin’ gonna be if ya don’t leave me the hell alone!’

The man leaves.

Daryl watches him go and only falls to his knees when he’s around the corner and out of sight. He moans softly, hands digging into his hair. His head hurts. No, not just his head. _Everything_ hurts. His muscles, his eyes, his throat, every cell in his body _hurts_.

He’s never been sick much in his life. The occasional cold, chased away with a shot of whiskey from his dad, and food poisoning that one time he hadn’t prepared the meat right and Merle had tucked him into bed. He still remembers his brother sitting at his bedside, reading some kind of motorbike magazine while keeping vigil through the night. Washing his face and mouth whenever he threw up, changing the bed when diarrhea had struck him. Now, he doesn’t quite remember if he’d been sick for hours or days. All he remembers is that Merle had never left his side. Daryl looks up at the overcast sky. He takes a couple of calming breaths before pushing himself to his feet again. The bow is in the grass beside him. With pain in his heart, he decides that it’s too heavy for him to carry now. When he takes a couple of steps towards the prison, the world spins again. He stumbles, nearly trips over a rock but drags himself forward. His shirt is sticking to his skin. He feels hot, cold, hot.

It takes him a long time to reach the entrance to the cell blocks. There, he finds Maggie, Rick and Hershel, arguing loudly.

‘- wife used to make tea with them,’ Hershel is saying. 'They’re a natural flu remedy. Caleb is too sick to help, I can. There’s been so many times we haven’t been able to do anything, to change what was happening, what was happening to us. We wished we could, but we couldn’t. This time, I can. I know I can.’

Daryl leans against the cold concrete. Sweat is dripping into his eyes. He closes them and lets Rick’s arguments wash over him until Hershel’s voice drags him back.

‘Listen, damn it,’ the older man says. ‘You step outside, you risk your life. You take a drink of water, you risk your life. And nowadays you breathe and you risk your life. Every moment now, you don’t have a choice. The only thing you can choose is what you’re risking it for.’

Daryl pushes himself away from the wall again, stumbling towards Hershel’s voice.

‘Oh no,’ the man breathes when he spots him. ‘Daryl…’

‘I don’t feel good,’ Daryl says. He hates how his voice comes out too small and fragile.

Maggie gasps and moves towards him but Rick grabs her arm and hauls her back, ‘don’t touch him!’

Daryl whimpers, curls an arm around his stomach and bites back tears. ‘Please…’

‘We can’t,’ Rick says, voice riddled with sorrow. ‘I’m sorry, Dare. I’m sorry but…’

‘Come here,’ Hershel cuts in, walking towards the boy and wrapping his arms around the small, shaking frame. Daryl chokes out a sob as he buries himself in the man’s warmth, fingers scratching at the dress shirt. The farmer tightens his hold on him. ‘There, there,’ Hershel shoots Rick a warning look when the cop opens his mouth to speak. ‘I’ve already been exposed, Rick. He’s just a boy, and he’s _scared_.’

‘Dare,’ Maggie sinks to her knees so she’s on his eyelevel. ‘Sweetheart, look at me for a second.’

Daryl turns and looks even though he still leans against Hershel’s frame. Fat tears are dripping over his filthy cheeks.

‘Go with Hershel,’ she says, braving a small smile as her eyes fill with tears. ‘Let him take care of you, okay? Get plenty of rest, drink lots of the tea he will make. Find Glenn.’ She chokes back a sob, lifting a trembling hand to wipe her own tears away. ‘He will look after you. Can you do that for me?’

He nods.

‘Shane is going to be back real soon with some medicine for you. You just have to hang in there.’

He whimpers again, ‘hurts,’ he whispers.

‘I know, darling,’ Maggie says, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth. ‘I know it does. I’m so sorry.’

‘Come on,’ Hershel brushes the sweaty hair out of the boy’s eyes. ‘Let’s get you inside. Maggie, open the door for us, please.’

She does as her daddy tells her.

Daryl follows the old man into the darkness of Cell block A. One step, two, three, then he turns back around. He sees the bright light outside, the gardens growing, the fields sprawling, the locked gates and fences that still hold now.

Rick, who is pinching the bridge of his nose with his injured hand while he stares at his own feet. Shoulders slumped in defeat.

Maggie, who is holding onto the door. When she sees that he’s focusing on her, she attempts another smile. One that doesn’t reach her eyes at all. Then she gives a pull and the heavy metal door slides closed between them.

Daryl slowly turns back around. And follows Hershel towards death row.

 

 


	39. Don't get lucky

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a demon in his cell. It’s high up against the wall, pressed into one of the dark corners. Daryl can barely see it, save for the yellow eyes and blinking white teeth. It smiles at him. Nails scratch over concrete whenever it shifts. Sometimes it tries to come down, crawling towards him with fluid movements, on all fours like some kind of animal, but it’s always chased back into the corner when someone coughs or shuffles past his cell. Daryl watches it. He can’t tear his gaze away but still jumps with fright every time it moves. The long tail lazily flickers in and out of the shadows. It curls around the bars but doesn’t make any sound.

A blanket has been tucked around Daryl’s body. He can’t remember now but knows that Glenn must have done it. The Korean had been waiting at the entrance of the cell block, drenched in sweat and with hazy eyes, ready to fight Hershel on his decision to come in. He’d fallen silent when he’d spotted the boy clinging to the old man.

Daryl’s not sure how long ago that was. A couple of minutes, perhaps. Could have been hours. It’s dark in this cell block. There are hardly any windows for him to check the sun so he can’t be sure of the time.

The tail flicks.

Every time Daryl reaches for his knife, the demon just crawls closer as if it’s challenging him. He tries not to touch the cold metal hilt. Sweat has soaked his hair, his pillow, his shirt. With shaking hands, he undoes the buttons. Fear strikes him. If he sits up to pull the shirt off, he’ll be that much closer to the demon.

The demon smiles at him.

Daryl slowly sits up because the shirt is irritating his skin. Something on his back seems to burn. He frowns, wipes his face on the shirt before tossing it aside and falling back into his pillow. It’s too hot here. He never thought a prison could be so hot.

The weddings bands jingle softly.

The demon leans forward to peek at them, curious and with a wicked smile. Nails scratching, it comes forward, into the light. It’s an ugly thing. Scorched by fire, the skin eaten away, leaving nothing but soot and charcoal for bones. It has open wounds but doesn’t bleed. He supposes he should be lucky that it doesn’t speak either.

‘What the hell is all this, hmm? You cryin’ or you sweatin’ like a whore a church, boy?’

Daryl gapes at the demon. It takes him far too long to realize that the voice had come from somewhere else. He turns his head to look who it is but already knows. He laughs, a broken sound now that his lungs are acting up. ‘Merle,’ he coughs. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

Merle lifts an unimpressed eyebrow as he flicks another page of his magazine. ‘The hell you talkin’ about? Been restin’ my fat ass here all night. Hey,’ he gives his brother a mean glare, ‘you shit the bed again, you’re eatin’ it. I ain’t jokin’ now.’

‘Didn’t shit the bed,’ Daryl groans because he’s pretty sure he’d remember that.

Merle gives him another look. ‘Callin’ me a liar?’

‘No,’ Daryl says quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’

The older brother shrugs and turns back to his reading material. ‘You’re gonna be cleaning it yourself, so it don’t matter much to me no more. Once you’re better, you’ve got a shit ton of cleaning to do. Dad’s mad. Hmm-hmm-hmm.’

‘He’s mad?’ Daryl whispers.

Merle looks up, the glare is gone and his blue eyes are a little softer now. ‘Just tryin’ to rile you up, brother. He ain’t here. Don’t worry about it.’

Nails scrape on concrete again. A tail lashes in the corner of his eye.

‘Merle,’ Daryl whispers, rolling onto his side and reaching out for his older brother. He’s sitting too far away to touch. ‘Merle. There’s a _demon_.’

‘That little thing?’ Merle asks as he looks up and raises both of his eyebrows. ‘Ain’t nothing to us. It could have killed you a thousand time over by now. It just wants to see.’

‘See what?’

‘Whatever it is demons like to see, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. I think they’ve got a thing for little boys though.’

Daryl looks at his brother. He’s exactly how he’d remembered him. With his crooked smile and blue eyes, that weathered face, broad shoulders, his brown hair lighter than Daryl’s and starting to turn gray already. Rough stubble on his cheeks and chin. Twenty seven years old and strong as a horse. Cunning as a fox, too. He grins. It causes his eyes to shine.

‘I’m scared,’ Daryl whispers.

‘Dixon’s don’t get scared,’ Merle answers. ‘We get smart.’

‘Lucky.’

The older brother frowns, ‘what now?’

‘’s what dad used to say. We don’t get lucky. We get smart.’

‘Fuck me. He had one brain cell left after that last bender and he wasted it on some wisdom, huh? Oh, well.’ He throws the magazine aside and leans with his elbows on his knees, peering at his little brother. ‘You look like fuckin’ shit, man. What’s going on?’

‘Got the flu.’

‘You turning into one of those people who say they’re sick when they got the sniffles, hmm? Pussy. Roll onto your back and stop crushing your lungs, Hershel done told you a million times already,’ Merle snaps as he reaches out and shoves Daryl onto his back again.

‘But the demon,’ Daryl breathes. He’s forced to stare right at it now. ‘Merle. _Merle_!’

‘Calm yar tits,’ his older brother laughs. He sits down on the bed beside him. Cold fingers on Daryl’s hot forehead. The boy arches into the touch, eager for some relief. ‘Easy now, baby boy,’ Merle murmurs softly. ‘I got ya. I’m right here.’ He leans over the boy so his brother can’t see the demon anymore. ‘You’re gonna be fine, little king.’

‘What?’ Daryl frowns, blinking sweat from his eyes.

‘You didn’t fuck up, did ya? This is a good thing you got going for ya. Ya promised you wouldn’t fuck it up.’

‘Didn’t promise you nothing,’ Daryl breathes, staring at his big brother. ‘Promised dad.’

‘Well,’ Merle smirks, ‘you went and got him killed, so I’m holdin’ you to it now.’

‘I didn’t get him killed,’ Daryl says as he tries to sit up, but Merle pushes him back into the blankets. ‘That weren’t on me.’ Then he realizes something and stops his struggling, freezing with fear. ‘How did you know that? You weren’t there.’

Merle smiles and slowly gets up. ‘Don’t matter. Don’t worry about it. Any of it, okay? Just don’t fuck it up.’ He takes a couple of steps backwards and bumps into the wall behind him.

‘Watch out!’ Daryl gasps because the demon starts crawling towards his brother. Nails transferring from concrete to Merle’s shoulder, digging into the flesh. It perches on his shoulder, tail curling around the man’s neck to steady itself. Merle glances at it and then reaches up to stroke its head. When he draws his hand back again, his fingers are covered in ashes.

‘I think I know what demons like to look at now,’ the older Dixon says. ‘You goin’ bad, boy?’

‘No.’ Daryl’s voice breaks on the word. ‘I ain’t bad.’

‘Of course not, but are ya _goin’_ bad? You like killin’ them deads, don’t ya? Like endin’ things.’

‘I don’t. I _don’t_!’

‘Think you do. That’s why it likes lookin’ at you. It’s waitin’. Going to welcome ya in hell, too.’

Daryl sucks in a shuddering breath. He struggles to sit up again, ‘I ain’t going to hell!’

‘We’ll see,’ Merle says easily. He glances over his free shoulder, ‘I’ve got to go. Will’s callin’.’

‘What? No! No, Merle, don’t leave!’

But his brother gives him a small wave and ducks into the corridor. The last thing Daryl sees are the glowing yellow eyes of the demon on his shoulder.

‘ _Merle_!’

‘Ssh, ssh, ssh, I’m not Merle, try to focus, Daryl. Here, drink this.’

Suddenly there’s a cup pressed into his shaking hand, the one that had been reaching out to his brother desperately. Daryl blinks. He looks to the side and gapes at Glenn.

The Korean looks at him warily. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Glenn,’ Daryl breathes, feeling horribly confused suddenly.

‘That’s right. Your fever spiked, Dare. You were talking in your sleep.’

‘Merle was here,’ he says as his fingers curl around the warm cup. ‘A demon, too. Right there!’ He looks at the corner of the cell. ‘It’s gone now.’

‘Good,’ Glenn answers. ‘Please drink your tea.’ The Korean sags when Daryl does as he’s told. He falls back against the concrete wall, dragging one hand sluggishly over his face to wipe the sweat away. His eyes are sunken. There’s red blooming around them like he’s been punched, but the rest of his skin is far too pale. The black hair is dripping with fever-sweat. ‘How do you feel? Get back under the blankets.’

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl mutters into his cup even though he feels like he’s been on the other end of one of Will’s benders. Everything aches and he keeps expecting nasty bruises to bloom on his skin. His back keeps hurting, the scars pulling and twitching, but he fears that might just be part of another fever dream. ‘Better now,’ he says when he puts the cup on the floor. ‘You look like shit.’

Glenn laughs softly, tilting his head back. ‘Feel like it, too.’

Daryl wipes his own sweaty hair out of his eyes and thinks that he might have to ask Maggie if she can cut it for him when he’s better. Carefully, he swings his legs off the bed, planting his sock-clad feet on the cold floor. ‘You been helpin’ Hershel out?’

‘Of course,’ Glenn whispers. ‘Sasha, too.’

‘With what?’

‘Doing the rounds,’ Glenn shrugs, closing his eyes. ‘Keeping people calm and giving them their tea.’

‘I can do that.’ Daryl staggers to his feet. He has to place his right hand on the wall for a second when the ground shifts. He breathes through his nose before everything settles into place again.

‘Dare, no,’ Glenn croaks, squeezing his eyes shut and waving a dismissive hand. ‘I got it. I just… I just need to sit for a minute, okay? Just one minute, I…’

‘Then take a minute,’ Daryl says as he carefully walks towards the door. ‘I’ll help him. Get some sleep. Drink the tea.’

Glenn laughs softly as he lets himself slide to his side. ‘My lines,’ he moans as his arm curls around his stomach.

 

 

He’d never expected death row to be a pleasant place but this is what he imagines when he thinks of hell. It’s dark and cold, only hot when his fever spikes. Shadows dance and disappear on the walls. All of the cells are full. The whole block is filled with people moaning softly, coughing, choking on their own saliva, with raspy breaths of those who are about to die. It frightens him. People stare at him with empty eyes as he shuffles past in search for Hershel. Bloodied hands stroke over his shoulder, people needing some kind of reassurance that he’s real.

He finds the old man a couple of cells over.

Hershel’s eyebrows rise when he spots the boy. He gets up with a soft grunt from where he’d been kneeling next to a woman on one of the bunks. A steady hand reaches out and Daryl presses his forehead against the palm, sighing a little at the coolness. ‘Your fever went down a little,’ Hershel rumbles. ‘That’s good.’

Daryl nods hazily. ‘Glenn’s restin’. Tell me what to do.’

‘You need to rest, too. An hour ago you were-‘

‘I’m fine now. Let me help,’ Daryl pants as he leans against the bars. ‘Just until it spikes again, then I’ll get back into bed and Glenn can help out again.’

Hershel works his jaw before nodding. ‘Can you make more tea? Careful, the kettle is hot.’

Daryl nods and moves towards the small stove. The task is easy enough for him to do, just pouring hot water into the canisters. Sometimes he has to cough and it splashes onto his jeans but it never soaks through so he doesn’t care. He’s so tired even though he’s been in bed all day. A tiredness that’s in his bones rather than his muscles. With trembling hands, he puts the canisters into a messenger bag. He hoists that onto his shoulder as he gets to his feet, swaying a little unsteadily.

Hershel is watching him when he turns around. ‘Are you okay?’

Daryl coughs into his elbow and nods. ‘Yeah,’ he rasps. ‘Fine.’ He closes his eyes for a second. ‘Saw my brother.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I saw my brother, I know he weren’t real, but… I saw him. That’s good.’

‘You must miss him.’

‘Yeah.’ He coughs again, grimacing a little. ‘He was bein’ an asshole though, so nothing new there. We gonna give them their tea now?’

Hershel smiles, ‘yes, we are, Daryl. Thank you for helping me.’

‘Ain’t nothing,’ the boy mutters as he stumbles out of the cell, nearly bumping into the bars. His coordination is shot now that the flu is taking over. The best part of the hour, they distribute the tea. Hershel checks the people while Daryl forces them gently to drink the hot liquid. Some take it willingly, still clear enough of mind to know that they mean well, but others try to bat his hands away when he forces them to take it.

When they reach the cell of Mr. Jacobson, they see that they’re too late.

Trails of blood cover the man’s cheeks. Empty eyes stare at the ceiling.

Hershel gets a gurney while Daryl stares at the body, leaning against the wall to stay upright. It’s a struggle to get the body on, mostly because Daryl keeps coughing and fumbling but they manage in the end. The boy wheels the body away while Hershel deals with a little girl who came asking questions.

In a room, away from the cells and out of sight, Hershel reads his bible. With a sigh, he closes it. ‘Go back to your cell now, Daryl. You’ve helped me a lot. Get some rest.’

‘He’s gonna turn.’

‘I won’t let him turn,’ Hershel says with a shake of his head.

‘Ever done it?’ Daryl asks. ‘One of our own? With your knife?’

‘No.’

Daryl coughs, leans on the gurney and shakes his sweaty hair out of his eyes. ‘A’right,’ He draws his hunting knife, takes a deep breath and plunges the blade into the skull beneath the sheets before Hershel can even object. The fabric turns red with blood. The boy looks up with hazy eyes, cheeks blazing red from his fever. It’s spiking again. He feels fuzzy. He’d gotten drunk once, a couple of years ago at a party at the trailer park. Merle had taken his eyes off of him for one second and he’d gotten away. Together with his friends, they’d snatched a bottle from the table and had hidden behind Mick’s trailer. Round and round the bottle went until Freddy threw up. It wasn’t that funny anymore after that. Their trailer was just a five minute walk from Mick’s but it had taken him half an hour to drag himself home. Merle had been waiting for him there. Livid and with empty threats of telling dad. Instead, he had dragged him into the tiny bathroom, forced him to his knees and then stuck his fingers down his little brother’s throat until Daryl threw up. He doesn’t remember much of the rest of the night, but this feels kind of like that long walk home, unreal and disorienting.

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ Hershel says softly.

‘Don’t,’ the boy rasps as he stumbles back and falls against the wall. He let himself slide down it so he can sit down for a second. He’s so tired. ‘Please don’t start. I can’t…  I don’t – ‘ he swallows with some difficulty and closes his eyes. ‘Where’s Shane?’

‘He’ll be here soon.’

Daryl nods and grits his teeth. He rises again. ‘Okay. Just gotta hang in there, right? That’s what Maggie said.’

Hershel nods.

‘He’s on his way back, right? Shane? He’s on his way, right?’

‘He is.’

Daryl’s shoulders relax a fraction. ‘Okay. Tell me what to do next.’

 

 

An hour later, he’s back in his bed with a raging fever. Sasha had pushed him back into his own cell, thanking him for his help and kissing his wet hair before stumbling away to help Hershel again. Daryl falls into his bed, curls up around his pillow and dreams his fever dreams.

A dog, with its teeth bared and ready to pounce, in a dark alley behind their house.

The teenager with the leather gloves chasing him for three blocks until they ran into one of Merle’s friends and it was the teenager’s time to run for his life.

Jerry standing beside his bed at night, hand moving down towards his belt buckle while he slept.

Merle, having another screaming match with one of his girlfriends in the living room and slamming the door of their trailer so hard that pictures came down from the wall.

A social worker tugging at his shirt with a frustrated expression, claiming he’d just wanted to help.

His home, burning.

The demon licking his ear, the saliva dry as ashes, trickling into his brain and rotting it until he’s a walker.

Will, high and drunk and angry, changing the rules and giving him a whooping he hadn’t earned by yesterday’s standards.

That waitress who thought she’d meant something to his dad insisting that he’d call her mom until Will caught her at it and went ballistic on her car.

His dad coming out of the shower wearing only a towel, body riddled with the same scars as him.

Will strangling him until he was sure he was going to die because he’d forgotten to take the trash out.

When he wakes up screaming, neither his brother nor his dad is there to comfort him this time. Instead, Glenn is there. Pressed up against his back, one strong arm looped around Daryl’s waist to keep him from trashing in his sleep, and his lips right up against the shell of the boy’s ear. Whispered stories lure Daryl back into the real world, where everything is even darker than his memories, but at least he’s not as scared when Glenn pulls him close. With a grunt, Daryl turns around, shifting until he can hide in Glenn’s chest. He’s not as broad as Will, Merle, or even Shane, but he’s strong and warm and his hands are soft when he brushes the boy’s hair out of his face. He’s gentler than even Shane is, most of the time. He’s more hesitant to show his affection, scared off easily when Daryl’s defenses kick in or when a foul mood causes him to snap when he doesn’t mean to. By now, however, Daryl knows that that doesn’t mean that he cares less.

‘I got you,’ Glenn murmurs into his hair when he resurfaces from another fever dream.

Daryl lets his forehead rest of his friends collarbone. ‘Glad you’re here,’ he whispers.

‘Wish I could say the same about you, but we’re on death row. _Jesus_.’

‘We’re gonna be fine,’ Daryl says. ‘Just… Don’t leave, okay?’

‘I won’t, Dare.’

‘Promise?’

Glenn’s hold on him tightens. ‘Promise.’

 

 

‘Where’s Glenn?’ Maggie asks as soon as Hershel steps into the small room where only glass separates them. ‘He said he would meet me.’ Her dark hair frames her pale face. She’s wearing the padded vest which means she’s been near the fences or even outside of them.

‘He is resting,’ Hershel says quickly, trying to ease his daughter’s fears.

‘Is he okay?’

‘He was helping me and he got tired, that’s all,’ her father nods. ‘But I brought another young man who’s really eager to see your pretty face.’

Maggie puts one hand against the glass, leaning forward eagerly, ‘Dare? Is he there? Is he okay?’

‘He’s holding on,’ Hershel nods. ‘The fever,’ he explains when Maggie frowns unhappily, ‘it comes and goes. Whenever it spikes, it’s… it’s bad. He has nightmares. It helps when Glenn is there with him.’ The old man smiles, ‘but he’s doing good now.’

‘Why isn’t he here? You said he wanted to see me.’

‘He’s waiting in the hallway. I just wanted to warn you before you saw him. Don’t do anything rash.’

‘Like what?’ Maggie asks as she tries to peer around her dad to catch a glimpse of the boy. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Don’t come in here,’ Hershel says, pinning her in place with a stern look. ‘And don’t say anything about them. Daryl?’ he calls over his shoulder, a little louder so the boy can hear him. ‘Maggie is here to see you.’

Before Maggie can ask who he meant by _them_ , she spots the boy and knows.

Daryl walks into the room, blue eyes a little sunken but bright due to the fever, cheeks rosy due to his spiking temperature. The sweat-slicked hair is pushed out of his eyes for now. One of his hands is curled around his necklace, palming the wedding bands his parents used to wear. Despite his heavy boots, his footfalls are nearly silent. The jeans he’s wearing are dirty, ripped, and hanging low on his narrow hips. That is nothing new, however.

What is new, is the fact that he’s not wearing a shirt.

Of course she’s seen him without a shirt before. They’ve lived in such close quarters that she’s seen every guy and boy of their group shirtless at one point in time, but those were always flashes. Daryl changing shirts took only a second, barely enough time for anyone to catch a glimpse of the marks on his young body. Glenn had told her about them. Curled up in their prison bunk, whispered stories from the Korean about why he’d always hated Will, not only for what the guy had done to them, but also for what he’d done to his son. She’d tried imagining them, but now she knows she hadn’t even come close. They’re all over his chest. Glistering due to the sweat now and not aged enough to fade into the whiteness of the rest of his skin. They’re still red, the edges puckered. Two over his collarbone, one over his right breast, several marking the softness of his belly, one wrapping around to his back.

Maggie stares.

Daryl smiles at her, quickly walking over to the glass and slamming his hand against it, leaning up as if he’s trying to get close to her. ‘You okay?’

Maggie opens her mouth but no sound comes out. Her gaze roams over his chest, lingering on the old wounds. There’s a scar from where he’d fallen into his own bolt, round and neatly stitched up, barely visible among the mess that is the rest of his skin.

‘ _Maggie_!’ Daryl curls his fingers into a fist and bangs it against the glass, snapping the woman out of her trance. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ she stammers, gaze flicking to those too-bright eyes. ‘I should be asking you that.’

‘We’re okay,’ Daryl is panting a little from the simple motion of banging on the glass. ‘I’m lookin’ after them.’

Maggie offers him a watery smile. ‘I know you are, darling. But tell me how _you_ are.’

The boy looks away, shoulders curling a bit inward as he shuffles his feet. ‘I’m fine,’ he mutters. ‘It’s hard, ya know? I mean… It’s – it’s kind of – it’s a little bit…’ He bites on his lip and glances at her. ‘It’s a bit scary,’ he says softly. ‘There’s all these people dyin’ and… Sasha ain’t doin’ so hot, and I’m not really… I dunno.’

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Maggie tells him. ‘I know you’re scared, but you’re doing so good. Is Glenn looking after you?’

Daryl nods.

‘Are you looking after Glenn, too?’

He nods again, wiping some sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand.

‘Good,’ she smiles, pushing some of her dark hair behind her ear. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

He bites his lips and won’t look at her.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she sighs when she sees tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Please don’t cry,’ she looks at Hershel for help but the older man just leans back against the wall, allowing her to comfort the boy. ‘Dare,’ she says, putting her hand on the glass at his height, ‘tell me what’s bothering you most right now. Is it just because you’re scared, or…?’

‘I’m havin’ these dreams,’ Daryl says as he desperately wipes his tears away. ‘I want it to stop.’

‘What do you dream about?’ Maggie asks even though she fears she already knows.

‘My dad,’ Daryl cries, wrapping his arms around himself and leaning his forehead against the window, ‘and he’s real mad, ya know?’

Maggie takes a step closer to the glass, nails scratching over the surface, ‘it’s not real, Dare. He’s not here anymore.’

The boy sobs, curling in on himself, ‘but I want it to be real. I don’t care if he’s mad or teaches me a lesson, I don’t care! I want my dad back and I want Merle and I want to get out of here.’

‘Hey, look at me, Dare. I’m so sorry, but you can’t think about that right now. We need you.’

Daryl cries, shaking his head and whimpering softly.

‘Glenn needs you,’ Maggie says desperately, tapping the glass to try and get his attention. ‘And you know what’s going to happen, right? Shane is going to come back. He’s going to drive up to the prison, and Rick's waiting for him there. They’re going to do that weird embrace they do, right? You’ve seen them do that, right Dare?’

Daryl nods.

‘What will happen next, Dare? What does Shane always do when he gets back from a run?’

Daryl swallows and takes a deep breath. ‘Check on me.’

‘Yeah,’ Maggie nods, ‘so he’s going to hear you’re sick and he’s going to come running. What’s he going to see?’

A crying mess, Daryl thinks bitterly. He’s angry at himself because he feels useless and weak.

‘Dixon’s,’ Maggie breathes against the glass, ‘tough as nails, right? He’s counting on you, too, Daryl.’

‘I know….’

‘So what’re you going to do?’

‘I don’t know….’

‘I’m going to tell you what you’re going to do. First, you’re going to go back to Glenn’s cell and check on him. You’re going to tell him I love him, okay?’

Daryl nods because that’s an easy task.

‘You’re going to drink some more tea and then you’re going to help daddy again. One hour. When the hour is up, you’re going to sleep for two hours. Then you’re going to help him again. And you’re going to do that until Shane is back. Do you hear me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We don’t get to be upset, Dare. We all have jobs to do,’ Maggie says now. ‘That one is yours.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl mutters as he gets up again, pushing himself away from the window. He shuffles towards the door, scars glistering due to his sweat.

‘I love you, Dare.’

‘Yeah. Same.’ When he’s almost at the door, he hears how Maggie walks away. He turns around, coughs and runs back to the window. He bangs his fists against the glass, ‘Maggie, _wait_!’

The woman whirls around, ‘what?’

‘Can you tell Shane…. When he’s back and… He might come back too late and I’ll be…. ‘ Daryl leans his forehead against the glass, ‘can you just tell him I lov-‘

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ Maggie says sharply, cutting him off and stepping back towards the window. ‘You should tell him yourself. He deserves to hear it from you. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to tell him that.’

‘What if I don’t?’ the boy asks in a small voice.

The woman smiles at him, ‘he already knows, Dare, but it’s always nice to hear it, so say it to him when he gets back. You will see him soon.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl mutters, dragging himself away from the window again. ‘Just…’ he says as he walks backwards, ‘if he’s too late…? Will you….?’

‘I will tell him if he’s too late, but he won’t be. You’re not dying, Daryl.’

‘Feels like it.’

‘You’re _not_!’

‘Enough, that’s enough,’ Hershel cuts in. He limps forward and places a hand on the boy’s forehead to check his temperature. ‘Maggie gave you a job to do.’

‘Right,’ Daryl nods as he pushes the hand away from his heated skin. ‘I’ll get to it. You okay here?’ he glances up at the older man, eyes so blue that it hurts the vet.

‘Yes. Can you get back to your cell on your own?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl coughs into his elbow. ‘See ya, Maggie.’

‘See you soon, Daryl.’

He drags himself back to the cell. Glenn is sleeping on his bunk, mouth slightly open and shirt riding up as he tosses and turns. Daryl drapes the blanket over his form and then lets himself fall down beside his friend. He grabs Glenn’s hand and tugs the arm around his own waist, making the Korean hug him close.

Glenn mumbles, frowns, and cracks one eye open, ‘Dare? How’s Maggie?’

‘Good,’ Daryl answers. ‘She’s good. Told me to tell you that she loves you.’ He bites on his fingernail and feels how Glenn relaxes behind him. Hot breath tickles his ear when the Korean shifts to get more comfortable. ‘Me, too,’ he says before he can chicken out. ‘Ya know that, right?’

‘You what?’ Glenn asks, rubbing at his eyes.

Daryl works his jaw and scowls a little. ‘I love you,’ he grinds out.

The Korean laughs and buries his nose in the boy’s hair, fingers tickling his side for a second, ‘made you say it. Of course I know, Dare.’

Daryl snorts and aims a kick at the man. ‘Stupid chink.’

 

 

Small hands shake him urgently. A whispered voice drags him out of another fever dream. It hadn’t been a nightmare. He’d been riding Merle’s shoulders as his brother walked him to school, smoking his cigarette and holding on to his ankles to prevent him from falling backwards. That deep rumble of his voice, the smoke, those broad shoulders carrying him –

‘Daryl! Daryl, wake up please. Daryl, you need to wake up!’

Daryl groans and rolls away from the sharp voice.

‘ _Glenn can’t breathe and Henry is waking up_!’

Daryl’s eyes fly open. He sits up with a gasp, staring at the little girl who is standing beside his bunk. Blond hair in disarray, eyes scared as she reaches for him again. ‘What?’ he croaks. The room spins for a second but settles down quickly.

‘Glenn needs your help!’

‘Which cell?’ Daryl asks as he rolls out of bed, landing hard on his feet.

‘The one at the end! Right, to the right!’ she screams when he shoots out of the cell, sliding onto the landing and then starts running to the right. Everything in his body aches. His lungs burn after two steps but he forces himself to run faster. He can’t scream, can’t call for Hershel when he’s gasping for breath, but he spots the man out of the corner of his eye and nearly freezes. A walker is ambling towards the vet.

Hershel is too slow with turning around. When he finally does, the walker is already on him, forcing him to the floor. ‘Everyone, stay in your cells!’ he manages to say as he struggles with the dead woman.

Daryl slams into the wall at the end of the cells, checking it hard with his shoulder as he stares at Glenn’s motionless body.

Henry is just dragging himself out of his bed, snarling and groaning, reaching for the Korean.

‘You don’t have to kill him!’ The little girl has followed him to the cell and now she’s tugging at his arm. ‘We can just lead him to another place, look, he’s coming after us now!’

Henry does turn at her voice but Daryl growls and pushes the girl so hard away that she falls onto her back, staring up him with wide eyes. Before she can even scream, he grabs his hunting knife, runs up, plants one foot against the wall beside Glenn and gets enough height to crash the blade into the walker’s skull. He shoves the body aside, away from his friend, and yanks the knife out again. ‘Glenn,’ he gasps as he crawls over to him. Shaking hands on Glenn’s face. ‘Please, please, wake up!’

‘You killed him,’ the girl staggers into the cell. ‘Why would you kill him?’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Daryl snarls, ‘Glenn, wake up. Please, please,’ he shakes his friend’s shoulders. Blood is dripping out of the man’s mouth. ‘He’s not breathing. What the fuck do we do?’ He looks around the cell but can’t think of anything. ‘Fuck, we need Hershel,’ he pushes himself to his feet and runs out of the cell again.

A gun goes off downstairs.

Daryl curses and flings himself towards the staircase, thundering down.

A woman is fighting a walker, another man is being torn to pieces.

‘Daryl!’ Hershel is limping towards him, ‘get back upstairs!’

‘It’s Glenn,’ Daryl coughs, holding on the railing to keep himself steady. ‘He stopped breathing. You need to help him!’

‘We need to get the gun out of Caleb’s room,’ Hershel says, ‘the walkers…’

‘Lemme take care of them,’ Daryl gasps. ‘I got them, you go to Glenn. He’s in Henry’s room. Hurry!’ When Hershel hesitates, he growls and shoves at the man’s chest, ‘stop wastin’ time. We all got jobs to do. This is mine.’

Hershel squeezes his shoulder before hurrying up the stairs to get to his son in law.

Daryl grabs his knife a little tighter. Two walkers. One body that hasn’t been stabbed in the head yet. He wipes the sweat from his forehead. ‘ _Over here_ ,’ he shouts, getting the attention of both walkers. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he coughs, ‘get yer ugly faces over here.’

The young man reaches him first. Daryl stumbles a couple of steps back onto the staircase so he has the height advantage. The knife goes in with some difficulty. He’s not strong enough to make it a clean cut. Instead he stabs at the eyes. When the knife snags on bone, he goes down with the body, falling from the stairs and landing hard on his hands and knees.

The other walker grabs his arm.

He looks up, a scream dying in his aching lungs.

The head explodes.

‘Daryl!’ Maggie runs over to him, yanking him away from the bodies as she stuffs her gun back into the holster. She runs her hands over his face, over his arms and chest to check for bites.

‘Glenn,’ Daryl pants, ‘he’s… he ain’t breathin’…’

‘ _Where_ is he?’

‘Upstairs,’ Daryl gasps and the woman rushes past him, up the stairs and out of sight. He listens to her footsteps, so loud all of a sudden. He stumbles and falls to his knees. He coughs and it feels all wrong. Too wet. Doubling over, he coughs blood onto the concrete between his knees. Fear makes him numb. He stares at the red spots, remembering how blood had been dripping from Glenn’s mouth. How Caleb had described the illness as shaking a soda bottle. He reaches up and rubs at his eyes.

When he draws his hands back, his fingertips are coated with blood.

 

 

 


	40. Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Netherlands, where I am from, we have an old tradition,  
> Every fifth of December, a man comes along with a mission,  
> He gives presents to the kids, the good and the bad,  
> Sometimes with a rhyme that tells of the year you’ve had.  
> His name is Sinterklaas, and he is very good indeed,  
> Braving foul weather and treacherous roofs on his trusted steed.  
> Down the chimney he throws his presents, which land neatly in your shoe,  
> My favorite holiday, and it so happens that he has a present for all of you.  
> To thank you for all your sweet comments, he leaves you a surprise update,  
> And for sticking to this story for over five months straight.  
> A little shorter maybe, your faithful author didn’t have much time,  
> And as always; all the mistakes are mine.

 

* * *

 

 

The prison is on fire.

Daryl is standing in the courtyard as dark clouds gather above the building. He can vaguely hear people screaming but he’s not sure where the sound is coming from. Slowly, he walks towards cell block C. All of the gates are unlocked. He picks up speed as the screaming grows louder. ‘Shane?’ He calls out as he throws himself into the building, skidding around the corner. ‘ _Glenn_?’

There’s smoke inside the building, creeping along the ceiling and steadily getting thicker as he moves deeper into the prison. Their cell block has been abandoned. There’s blood on the floor, on the walls, but he can’t find any bodies or walkers. Fear makes his blood run cold. The screaming hasn’t stopped. He tries to follow the sound but can’t pinpoint the origin. It echoes and bounces all around him, slowly driving him mad as he screams the names of his family.

‘Shane! Glenn, Maggie! Rick, where are you? Carl!’

‘Daryl!’

The boy whirls around and runs down the long corridor leading towards the tombs. When he yanks the door open, however, he’s met with a sea of flames. Hungry, livid, consuming flames that try to drag him inside. He backs away, trips over his own feet and falls onto his back with a thud. It’s getting harder to breathe. Sweat drips down his back now that flames try to engulf him. He manages to scramble to his feet again, hands scraping over concrete before he takes off running. Through the hallway, down the right corridor. His step falters a bit when he passes the memorial wall. The angel and demon are gone. Along with all the names. There’s only one name left up there. One name, written in blood, over and over and over.

It’s his, of course.

He can’t remember dying but knows he stopped breathing at some point. He frowns a little, wondering why his throat hurts when the smoke can’t affect him anymore. He’s dead. He looks at his fingertips and notices that they’re still coated with blood. He looks back at his name. He recognizes his own handwriting.

The screaming resumes all around him. Suddenly it seems clear as to whose voice that is but he hasn’t heard it in a very long time so he couldn’t place it at first. Now he remembers it. He chases it. Down the corridor, around the corner, through those heavy doors. Into the other cell block, past the staircase and towards that last cell.

‘Dad!’

Will is sitting on his bunk. Broad shoulders hunched, the palms of his hands digging into his eyes. He’s crying.

Daryl stares, lingering on the threshold of the cell. Hesitant hands on the bars.

‘Out of the way, baby bro,’ Merle murmurs as he gently pushes the boy aside so he can step into the room. Daryl wonders where he came from. He’s wearing a suit. Black and slick-looking. His shoes are gleaming, he must have just polished them. He has another pair in his hands, puts them down right in front of Will. ‘Dad,’ Merle murmurs as he kneels down before him, trying to catch his gaze. ‘We need to get ready. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.’

Will makes himself even smaller, shaking his head.

Merle puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, pushing it back so the man has to sit upright. ‘Dad, please. Come on. I’ve made Daryl breakfast but he won’t eat. He’s making himself sick with crying so hard. Dad, please…. I don’t know what to tell him.’

‘Fuck off.’ Will bats his son’s hand away. He looks up, eyes red, ‘she’s _dead_ , Merle.’

‘I know,’ Merle says, ‘but he’s not. He’s just a kid, he doesn’t understand.’

‘I will fuckin’ _make_ him understand if he doesn’t cut that cryin’!’ Will snarls with an angry glare at where Daryl is standing.

‘You touch him now, I will end you.’ The two oldest Dixon men stare at each other. ‘You touch him the way you did me last night?’ Merle asks in a soft voice, trying to keep his voice down, ‘and I will fuckin’ end your sorry ass. I don’t care how upset ya are, or how drunk ya are. You need to do that shit, you do it to me. Do ya hear me?’

After a couple of heartbeats, Will nods. He reaches out with a trembling hand, hooks it around the back of Merle’s neck and draws him close until their foreheads are resting against each other’s. Blue eyes closed as they take comfort in the shared pain between them. ‘What the fuck are we gonna do?’ Will asks.

‘Get Dare to eat his fuckin’ breakfast,’ Merle says with a small snort. ‘Bury mom. Get us a new place.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘We’re going to get through today,’ Merle says now, putting his hand on his father’s shoulder, squeezing it. ‘Dixon’s, right? Tough as nails.’

Will nods as strokes his son’s cheek. ‘I’m sorry. Not just about mom, but about yesterday. I’m sorry I-‘

‘Let’s just take care of Dare for now, okay?’ Merle asks as he leans back, away from the touch. ‘He needs you. Come on,’ he grabs one of the shiny shoes and puts it down beside Will’s foot. ‘Lift it up, old man. Let me help.’

‘Don’t got to do that,’ Will starts.

‘Let me help,’ Merle says again, a little more pleading this time. His father doesn’t object a second time. The son helps him put his dress shoes on, ties his tie for him and slides the black jacket over those broad shoulders. Then they clasp hands and Merle yanks him to his feet.

‘How do I look?’ Will asks with a small smile, tucking at his tie nervously.

‘Like you’ve been cryin’ like a damn baby,’ Merle snorts, reaching out to rub at his dad’s cheeks.

‘Hey,’ Will catches his wrist, ‘there’s no shame in that. Ya know that, right? It’s okay to miss her.’

‘Later,’ Merle says, ‘when this shit is all done. The whole neighborhood is outside. Fuckin’ assholes.’

‘Vultures. Wanna see us crash ‘nd burn.’

They both wince at his choice of words.

‘Let’s prove them wrong, huh?’ Merle says.

Will straightens his spine, ‘yeah.’ He claps his oldest son on the shoulder, ‘let’s show them what Dixon’s are made of. Now let’s get that little miracle to eat his damn breakfast. Did you get him dressed?’

‘Struggle and a half,’ Merle laughs as he rubs at his forehead, ‘compromised on the shoes. He’s wearin’ his boots. Figured it wouldn’t matter much.’

‘It won’t,’ Will checks that he has his phone and wallet and then heads towards the door.

‘You want me to keep an eye on that monkey today?’ Merle asks as he follows him. ‘I mean, there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of people and ya know how he gets, right? All nervous? I know you won’t have much time today, people payin’ their respect and all…’

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye on him. And not just today. He’s your blood.’

‘I know that,’ Merle says a little defensively.

Will shakes his head, ‘look, I’m going to need your help. I know he’s damn fifteen years younger and ya don’t need that devil suckin’ ya dry all the time, but times are ‘bout to change. For the worse. We’re gonna need to stick together. Money’s gonna be tight, it’s gonna be rough. I need ya. _He_ needs ya.’

Merle frowns, ‘I’ve been takin’ care of him for days now,’ he mutters as he shoulders past his dad. ‘You checked out on us, but I sure as hell didn’t. Gotta thank him though, sheriff hauled my ass out of jail personally so somebody would look after his lil’ ass.’

‘He’s not your get out of jail free card, Merle.’

‘No, _you_ were. Because you weren’t here,’ the oldest son snarls. ‘what, ya thought hidin’ out in the cabin, drunk and high, would bring her back?’

‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.’

‘I do. Got a crash course I didn’t ask for! What the fuck do I know about what kind of coffin she would have wanted? What story Daryl wants to hear when he goes to bed? What the hell a five year old eats, huh? How to get them to stop fuckin’ cryin’ for two minutes so I could just _think_! Jesus Christ, dad!’ Merle snaps, ‘of course I’ll fuckin’ look after him. Look at ya. Fancy suit, sunglasses ready, gonna kick some ass at the funeral I arranged, huh?’

Will tilts his head to the side. ‘Ya done?’

‘ _He won’t eat_!’ Merle shouts. ‘He went into a damn fit over the colors of his damn socks! Did you fuckin’ know he hates strawberries, by the fuckin’ way? Lucky I had another shirt ‘cause I was damn near covered in strawberry jam a couple of minutes ago! Had to go to his fuckin’ school because apparently they needed _proof_ that his fuckin’ _mother_ had fuckin’ _died_ and I fuckin-‘

Will laughs.

‘Are ya shittin’ me right now?’ Merle asks, breathless after his outburst.

‘Your mom used to say; we should let Merle watch him for a week, that’ll learn him to use some damn protection with those girls. I always said that two days would be enough to drive ya crazy.’ Will smiles.

Merle huffs out a breath of laughter despite his anger, ‘she always were a liar. Callin’ him a miracle. Pssh. Nightmare, drama-queen, anything like that, but he ain’t no damn _miracle_.’

‘Maybe,’ Will says, ‘you know what else he is?’

‘What?’

‘Too curious for his own good,’ Will says with a smirk as he turns to Daryl, who is still standing on the threshold. ‘I can see ya, little king.’ He shoots a glance at Merle, who groans and drags a hand over his weary face. ‘You’ll get used to it, he’s always stickin’ his lil’ nose in. Come on, monkey,’ he says as he leans down and hoists the young boy to his hip. ‘You been givin’ Merle a hard time now?’

Daryl wraps his arms around his father’s neck automatically. He’s a lot smaller than he remembers being.

‘Cat caught your tongue, boy?’ Will asks, ‘let’s get you to eat some damn breakfast, hmm? Come on, baby,’ he kisses the boy’s temple and walks towards the hallway. On the threshold, he looks over his shoulder. ‘Welcome to what bein’ a big brother is all about, Merle. It ain’t just that cartoons on Sunday morning bullshit you’ve been doin’, okay? It’s hard work. Hope you’re up for it.’

‘Fuck you,’ Merle smiles, ‘I’m up for it.’

‘Good. And she wouldn’t have cared about which damn coffin you’ve chosen, boy. Hope you know that.’

‘Dad,’ Daryl says urgently now that he has found his voice again. ‘There is a fire.’

‘ _Was_ a fire,’ Will corrects in a tone that implies that he has to do it all the time. ‘I know, little king. The fire took mom, remember?’

‘No, in the prison!’

Will laughs, ‘I know ya don’t like Michelle much, but she was mom’s best friend and she were kind enough to take us in for now. Don’t go callin’ her home a damn prison, bud. Ain’t what your mom taught ya. Be nice.’

‘That ain’t what I mean, dad, there – ‘

‘That _is not_ what you mean, your mom taught you proper grammar. Fuckin’ use it,’ Will grumbles as he ruffles the boy’s hair affectionately. They walk out of the cell bock, into the corridor that’s filling up with smoke.

‘Dad,’ Daryl coughs, pressing himself closer to his father, ‘dad, go back, we can’t…. I can’t breathe, dad-‘

His dad massages his back, ‘ain’t nothing wrong, kiddo, just relax.’

‘No, no, I can’t breathe! Dad! Dad! _Merle_!’ He now tries to climb over his dad’s shoulder to get to his brother, who is walking behind them. The big brother is fidgeting with his tie, clearly not used to wearing one, and pulls a face. ‘Merle, please!’

‘Just listen to dad,’ Merle mutters with a final tug to straighten his jacket.

Daryl looks at his dad, ‘please, I can’t…’ He’s choking.

‘Daryl,’ his dad says sternly, ‘I need you to breathe out for me, just push all the air out of your lungs now, okay? Can you do that for me?’

‘No, no, no….’ Daryl whimpers.

‘Yes, you can. I’m going to do it too,’ Will says, hitching him higher onto his hip and rubbing his back comfortingly. ‘We can do this. Tough as nails, come on, just a little bit longer. I love you so fuckin’ much, Dare. _I love you._ On three, now. One, two, big breath out, _three_!’

Daryl breathes out as hard as he can because he can feel his dad’s lungs emptying, too. The cell explodes into color. His grip on his father falters, he’s falling, he reaches out, desperately trying to get a hold of Will again and –

‘That’s it,’ a voice rumbles above him, ‘breathe, _breathe_ , Daryl. It’s okay. It’s okay. Stay still!’

Only now does he realize he’s trashing. He tries to relax, coughing a bit as he blinks against the light. There are hands on his face, on his arms, someone pulls the skin beneath his eye down to peer at the veins there. It feels strange. He bats at the hand, squirms and whimpers as he tries to get away.

‘Calm down, Daryl Let me have a look at you.’

‘Dare, you need to calm down!’

The voices don’t belong to Will or Merle. That’s all he knows. He panics, thrashing as he fights against the hands holding him down. They press against his shoulders now, fingers curl around his wrists as knees dig into his legs. He grunts, arches up his back as he tries to push himself away from the bed he is on.

‘He’s going into some kind of shock!’

‘No, no,’ the other voice rumbles, ‘call Shane inside.’

The name sounds familiar, but it’s not _Will_ and Daryl doesn’t care about anything else. His dad was just here, he had been right _here_ , and now there are people holding him down, pushing him back onto the bed and keeping him there.

Someone is running out of the room. It doesn’t take long for them to come running back, their footsteps haunted by another pair.

‘Daryl? Dare! Calm down, calm down, I’m here,’ a voice says as a weight settles beside him on the bed. ‘We need you to calm down, stop trashing, kid. They removed the respirator, the tube to your lungs. You started to breathe on your own again, so we had to get it out. I know it hurts, bud. I know, I know.’

It _does_ hurt. Daryl blinks but tears still slide down his temples. The world slowly settles. The brightness fades.

‘There we go, look at me. Dare, look at me. Here,’ his hand is dragged from the blankets to a warm chest, ‘breathe with me. Easy. Calm down, kid.’

His fingers twitch and then press into the shirt. He frowns, wriggles until his fingertips slide between buttons to find warm skin. Something real.

‘That’s it. Just calm, deep breaths. Jesus, you scared me there, bud. And that’s the second time you’ve scared me in twenty four hours, so you’re on a roll. Good job,’ the voice says with a laugh. ‘I told you to sit tight, not go and almost kill yourself!’

Daryl frowns and shakes his head, rubbing his cheeks on the pillow. He thinks about cigarettes and houses and guns and small tents and a building setting the air on fire. ‘Didn’t try to kill myself.’

‘I know. You got sick, remember? You tried to help Hershel and then you took a turn for the worse yourself. We got you those meds just in time.’

Death row. He remembers that. Suddenly he gasps, retracting his hand, pushing the chest away from him. ‘ _Glenn_!’

‘He’s fine! He’s fine, please Dare, calm down. He’s fine, he woke up about an hour ago. He’s a little woozy from the meds, just like you. Try to get some sleep now, okay?’ The weight ease away from him.

Panic flares inside his chest. He reaches out, blindly, and finds an arm. Fingertips slide down until his fingers curl around others. ‘Shane,’ he groans, frowns, arching his back again because everything hurts, but he holds on. Tugs the other man closer again.

‘Yeah,’ the weight of his body causes the bed to groan. ‘It’s me, bud.’

‘Stay.’

‘Okay, I will, Dare. Try to sleep, you’re exhausted.’

Daryl pushes his face into the pillow but makes sure he’s holding on to that rough hand. ‘Ya said we’d never split up again. After the farm, ya said…’

‘I know,’ Shane whispers as he gently brushes the dark hair out of the boy’s face. ‘And I’m sorry.’

Daryl frowns and shakes his head. ‘Promised I’d look after ‘em.’

Shane leans in, kisses the clammy forehead and stroking Daryl’s cheek. ‘And you did.’

‘Yeah… Fuckin’ hurts.’

The man laughs softly, ‘sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.’

Daryl nods and turns to his side with a groan. In order to get comfortable, he needs to let go of the man’s hand. After a couple of minutes, he relaxes. His fingers creep forward again. His pinky curls around Shane’s. ‘Promise,’ the boy whispers.

 

 

‘ _Daryl_!’

The youngest Dixon waks down the set of stairs, heavy boots clanking on the metal until he hits the concrete. His fists are stuffed deep into the pockets of his ripped jeans, causing his shoulders to hunch. The red rag is dangling from his back pocket again, cleaned of the blood and sweat. He’s wearing Glenn’s baseball cap backwards. It keeps his hair from pricking into his eyes. He’s not wearing a shirt. He jumps up to the platform where they usually have breakfast. It’s painful to see how empty it is now. So many have died during the illness, but life has returned to the prison. People are milling about, making breakfast and getting on with their chores. Most look up when they spot the Dixon boy. He’s the last to be released from Hershel’s care.

Daryl ignores all the curious looks. Dismissed the stares as people catch sight of his marred chest, smirks a bit when he passes them and he hears them gasp at the patchwork that is his back. The skin around his blue eyes crinkles as smiles. His gaze has landed on Carl, who is running towards him at full speed. Through the fields, leaving his dad in the dust, up the driveway, past all those people.

‘You’re better!’ Carl shouts as he throws himself into his best friend’s arms.

Daryl laughs and catches him, never flinching at the contact. They embrace, pressing their faces into each other’s necks. ‘Yeah. Hershel finally let me go.’

‘About time,’ Carl beams as he pulls away again. ‘I wanted to come see you, but…’

‘I know,’ Daryl laughs. He shoves the boy’s shoulder. ‘Pussy. Scared of a few germs, huh?’

‘Those few germs almost made me dig your grave, dude.’

‘Pssh,’ Daryl scoffs.

‘Daryl.’ Rick walks up to him with a big smile on his face. ‘It’s great to see you outside.’

‘Hershel told me to catch some rays,’ Daryl says as he looks at the sun. ‘Some vitamin D bullshit. Thanks for the beans or whatever they were, by the way. Weren’t no chocolate-chip pop-tarts, but they were a’right.’

‘ _I_ got you the beans!’ Carl protests.

‘Yeah, but your daddy grew them. You’re always skippin’ on your damn chores,’ Daryl teases.

‘That’s not true! Take that back!’

‘Easy,’ Rick murmurs, putting a hand on the shoulders of both boys. ‘Come on, let’s get some food into you. I’ll go get you both a plate. Settle down.’

Daryl smirks at Carl, who smirks right back, before slinking away to find the rest of their family. Most of them are sitting at the last table. Maggie and Glenn, Tyreese, Beth and Judith, Michonne and Shane. He figures that the rest are either working on the fences or on guard duty. The spot next to Shane is left open. Daryl takes it automatically. He’s breathing a little heavier, not really used to any physical activity after his long sickbed. It’s the first time Hershel has allowed him to go outside of cell block A. He’s finally off of death row.

‘Hey,’ Shane smiles. He brings up a hand to check the boy’s temperature, a nervous habit by now, but the skin is cool and his smile widens a fraction.

‘Here,’ Beth hands him a shirt. ‘your vest is still drying, I’ll put it on your bed by tonight, okay?’

‘Thanks, Beth,’ he mutters as he shrugs the clean shirt on. All his clothes had to be washed, as per Hershel’s orders, to try and get rid of all the germs. The bedding has been burned, Cell block A is officially in lockdown until it’s been thoroughly cleaned. They haven’t found the manpower for that yet, but Beth had taken special care to wash Daryl’s things. The jeans he’s wearing are still a little damp, but that can’t be helped. Rick places a plate full of food in front of him and he eats quietly, listening to the conversation flowing all around him. Easy laughter and friendly jibes, Glenn who gets up to punch Shane’s shoulder, Rick telling an embarrassing story about their high school days, Tyreese sharing something about his college years, Michonne’s witty comments which leave Carl in a fit of giggles.

He doesn’t join in but just enjoys listening.

When the food is all gone, Shane puts a warm hand on the small of his back and leans in. ‘Want to go back to your cell?’

It feels stupid to be tired after just having slept for five days, but Daryl nods. He stifles a yawn behind his fist and drags himself away from the table, grateful when Maggie takes his plate from him to hand it back to the cooks. ‘Get some rest,’ she smiles as she strokes his cheek. ‘Small steps, remember?’

He nods, ‘yeah.’ There’s a chorus of _sweet dreams, Dare_ , coming from the table and none of them sound sarcastic or condescending. He gives an awkward wave and allows Shane to steer him back towards his own cell. He yawns and doesn’t really focus on the way there, knowing that the cop will not lead him astray. With some effort and soft cursing, he finally drags himself onto his top bunk. He falls into the pillow, closing his eyes in bliss.

Shane leans against the bed, resting his chin on his folded arms. ‘You comfortable?’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘Good,’ Shane reaches out and take the baseball cap off, placing it on the side of his bed. Then he strokes the dark hair. ‘You need a haircut.’

‘Was gonna ask Maggie,’ Daryl nods, ‘or Carol.’

An emotion Daryl can’t quite place flickers over Shane’s face.

‘What?’ the boy asks, a little alarmed.

‘Nothing,’ Shane says hastily. ‘It’s nothing, Dare. I promise. Settle down and try to get some sleep. You’re right, you should ask Maggie later.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl closes his eyes.

‘Sweet dreams, bud.’ Shane pulls himself up and kisses his temple. ‘I’ll be on watch when you wake up, but Glenn’s coming to get you for dinner, okay?’

The boy yawns and nods.

‘Okay.’ The cop checks whether the blanket covers the boy’s shoulder entirely and then walks towards the bars. ‘I love you.’

‘Hey,’ Daryl cracks one eye open.

‘Yeah?’ Shane asks with a small smile. He already knows what the boy is going to say.

‘I love you, too.’

Shane’s smile fades into a stunned expression. Clearly, he hadn’t expected that.

Daryl frowns, ‘the fuck’s wrong?’

‘ _Nothing_!’ Shane winces at how shrill his own voice is. ‘I mean; nothing, bud. You just get some sleep. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Mean it,’ the boy says as he curls into himself.

‘I know you do.’ Shane laughs softly as he leans against the bars of the cell. ‘But fuck me, is it nice to hear it.’

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There wil no upload tomorrow. I'm hoping Wednesday and then back to regular. This was just a little something in between, it kinda didn't deserve it's own chapter, but kinda did, so... a surprise update-solution while I was traveling home after celebrating my favorite holiday at my family's place. 
> 
> Hope you have the best of days, and I hope you liked it. 
> 
> Thank you, always.


	41. Pull the pin

 

* * *

 

 

Shane is leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest, and a thoughtful frown mars his face. Dark eyes follow Rick as he paces around the landing, trying to explain the situation to Daryl, who is getting more upset with every word the cop utters. The boy is leaning against the banister now, fingers white due to the pressure. He snarls when Rick tries to reach for his shoulder, just a noise and not even word, just an animalistic sound of hurt and anger.

‘Hey, hey,’ Rick says as a draws his hand back. ‘She killed two of our own. She couldn’t be here. She’s going to be all right. She has a car, supplies, weapons.’

Daryl glares at him.

‘She’s… she’s a survivor.’

‘ _Stop sayin’ that like you don’t believe it_!’

Rick swallows with some difficulty. He nods as he looks away, trying to find a better way to deal with the anger of the child in front of him. ‘She did it,’ he emphasizes. ‘She said it was for _us_. That’s how it was in her head.’ He shakes his head and dips his chin to try and catch Daryl’s gaze. ‘She wasn’t sorry.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Daryl snarls, ‘I wouldn’t be neither! They were gonna die, just like Henry and everyone else in there. Hell, it don’t matter they were one of us. You see a walker, you put it down.’

‘They hadn’t died yet,’ Rick protests.

‘But they were sick!’ Daryl argues heatedly, pushing himself away from the banister. ‘Just dead people walking, same difference!’

‘They could have made it. _You_ made it.’

‘Because of Shane! It would have been too late for them, _they were already dead_!’ Daryl screams.

‘Calm down,’ Shane says as he pushes himself away from the wall. A calming hand on his brother’s shoulder, gently shoving him aside so the boy focusses on him now. He kneels a couple of steps away from Daryl. ‘Tell me why you’re so angry. You understand why she had to go, I know you do. You’re just saying things now. Come on.’ Daryl is breathing hard. He works his jaw but refuses to meet the cop’s eye. ‘Tell me why you’re upset like this.’

‘Ain’t _upset_.’

‘Of course you are. Carol was your friend.’

Daryl bites on his lip, ‘she was one of us.’

‘So were Karen and David.’

‘’s different,’ the boy mutters. Rick sighs and turns away, shaking his head. Daryl’s gaze snaps to him again, anger resurfacing as fast as lightning strikes, ‘it _is_!’ he shouts. ‘Ya stupid fuckin’ prick! What the fuck do you know about any of that? Ya just keep leavin’ people behind! My dad and now Carol. This is on _you_!’

‘No, stop that,’ Shane says sternly. ‘You were talking to me.’

‘Then fuckin’ tell him to get lost!’

‘Dare. _Stop it_.’

‘What are you gettin’ mad at me for?’ the boy asks with a confused frown. ‘He’s the jack-ass who left-‘

‘Because you’re being deliberately hurtful,’ Shane says as he gets to his feet. He reaches out and grabs the boy by his upper arm. Daryl doesn’t flinch but does scowl. ‘Come on,’ Shane drags him away, towards his cell.

‘The fuck are you doing?’

Shane shoves him inside the room. ‘You’re going to stay here and cool off. Rick and I need to talk to Tyreese about this. When we get back, you better have some control over that temper of yours. And you better apologize to Rick. He didn’t have a choice, Dare.’

‘He never does, huh?’ Daryl spits out. ‘What, you’re _groundin’_ me?’

‘I am.’

Daryl scoffs and smirks, ‘gonna lock me up too, officer?’

‘Of course not. But you’re going to stay here and you’re going to wait until we get back. Think about what you’ve said.’

‘Good Lord,’ the boy moans as he sits down on Carl’s bed. ‘The moment you turn your back, I’m gonna split. You know that, right? Or are you really that dumb?’

‘We’ll see,’ Shane says with a small shrug. ‘But I think you’re going to stay put. See you in a couple of minutes.’

 

 

Ten minutes later, Daryl is still sitting on Carl’s bunk. He’s glaring at the entrance of their cell and is not sure why he’s still inside. He could go out and find Carl, bother him for a couple of minutes before finding out where Glenn is and sticking by him for the rest of the day. He could just _leave_. But he’s staying put. He grinds his teeth and balls his hands into fists and glares and stays put.

Pussy, he tells himself when he thinks how mad Shane would be if he left. How disappointed. So he just sits there. He thinks about what he has said. He knows he hadn’t been fair. Rick didn’t have a choice. Not with Carol, who had killed two of their own and not with Will either, back in Atlanta. He hasn’t thrown that into the cop’s face for a very long time. It’s a dirty trick to make him feel guilty, Daryl knows that, but it usually works so he always uses it when he’s too angry to care whether it’s right or fair.

It’s been a long time since he hated Rick, too.

With a sigh, he lets himself fall back onto Carl’s bed, staring up at his own bunk.

It’s just that there are so few of them left. He hates that Carol is gone because she’d been there since Atlanta, it feels like she has always been right there, and he’s sick of losing the people he’s getting close to. She hadn’t been like Maggie or Glenn to him, but she’d been his friend and that’s enough to make him miss her. Maybe she’d even been one of the few people who could ever really understand. He thinks she did, anyway, because whenever he got into a fight with Shane she would always save him a seat or leave her door open. She would always make sure he had a place to go. It hadn’t happened often, he and Shane hardly ever fight, but that one time after Daryl had gotten home late from his hunt, covered in blood and angry because some walker had taken the kills he’d worked so hard for, tempers had flared. Shane, mad that he was late and hadn’t bothered to use his radio, and himself angry that all his hard work wouldn’t be paying off.

Now, he only remembers that they had screamed, Shane’s patience slipping away as Daryl riled him up, eager for any kind of fight. He can’t remember what they’d said. Anything hurtful, probably.

It was only when his own anger started to seep away, that fear started to replace it. He knew what happened when he got Will all riled up. And even though Shane had stalked away to save them both from his flaring temper, he’d feared that the cop might have been just as patient as Will could be. But everyone gets what they deserve, in the end. He’d learned that after he’d gotten the scar running over his right breast. So instead of going back to his own cell and making it easy for the cop to find him later, he’d slipped into Carol’s. She hadn’t looked surprised to see him. Hadn’t said anything, just lifted an eyebrow before going back to sleep, her back towards him. He’d made himself comfortable on the floor, his poncho wrapped around his shoulders and leaning against her bed.

In the morning, she had gotten him breakfast. He could hear her move around downstairs and answer Shane’s questions. Yes Daryl was fine, yes she’d seen him this morning, no she wasn’t going to tell him where.

She always gave him the choice to do everything on his terms. Even if she did kick him out around noon to force his hand a bit.

He thinks about what he would have done, but doesn’t have to think very long. He wouldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t have dragged those bodies out into the courtyard, wouldn’t have set them on fire. He’s not sure whether that’s a good thing.

A loud boom disturbs his thoughts. The walls shake. Dusts falls down from the ceilings as he sits up, his breath caught in his throat and heart pounding hard inside of his chest. He scrambles off the bed and grabs his bow, throwing it onto his back before running down the staircase and heading towards the noise. It sounded like it came from outside. It had been far louder than just a gun going off, so he’s not sure what plan to follow now. He makes his way outside, crosses the yard to see most of his family huddled by the gate. Rick is slowly walking down the driveway, hand on his python. Daryl lifts his gaze and stares.

There’s a tank.

For an embarrassingly long time, that’s the only thing that registers. People rolled up to their gates in a damn _tank_ and no one saw them coming. Then he realizes that he knows the guy who is standing on top of the tank. The one who’s talking to Rick now. The Governor. Hatred causes his blood to boil. He’s spend hours out in the woods with Michonne, trying to track the bastard down, only to lose his trail after a while. He’d felt like such a disappointment when he had to go back to her, tell her that the trail had run cold. When Shane had forbidden him to go further out to continue their search, he’d led her to the border and had wished her luck.

It’d hurt to watch her leave. She hadn’t ever given up. Daryl hadn’t wanted too, either, but with Shane laying down the law, he’d had no choice but give up on the idea of revenge.

It had been liberating, in a way. After a while, he stopped even thinking about the man who’d killed his father. It hadn’t matter anymore. Will’d been gone but he was still here. The prison was still here, filled with people who he’d needed to look after. So he’d hunted game instead. Dragging home deer and rabbits, and one time radioing Shane, ordering him to pass the radio to his brother and telling Rick that he’d found him a pig for the farm. The delighted laughter spilling from the walkie-talkie had been more satisfying than the Governor’s head would have been.

But now Michonne and Hershel are kneeling in front of the Governor and he, again, feels like he has failed them both.

If only he’d never listened to Shane.

If only he’d found the trail again.

Shane moves towards one of the large bins next to the wall. He passes automatic guns to his family. He grabs an extra clip and hands it to Daryl, standing close to the boy to hide the trade-off from view. ‘Put this in our back pocket,’ he whispers, ‘here,’ he passes the gun to Daryl. ‘Run for the bus if this goes bad.’

Daryl nods.

‘Stay back, okay? Don’t do anything rash.’

‘I won’t, Shane.’

Shane reaches out, puts a warm hand on his neck and squeezes, eyes on the Governor at all times. ‘I love you,’ the cop murmurs.

‘Don’t say that now,’ Daryl says softly. It feels too much like a goodbye.

‘Need you to know,’ Shane says before he moves to stand beside Bob, close to the fence and shielding the boy with his body. He asks the man something which causes him to frown and nod.

Daryl grips his gun tighter and goes to stand beside Carl. They watch how Rick talks to the Governor but they can’t quite make out what he’s saying. The other boy thinks about taking the shot but Daryl manages to talk him out of it. He'd probably miss from this distance and they're not ready to start something neither can finish. 

The automatic gun in his hand is black and sleek. A new model and one he’s already used once during one of Shane’s lessons. He knows it won’t jam on him. His palms are sweaty. He’s glad that he’s wearing Glenn’s baseball cap so his dark hair is kept out of his face. He tries to remember the plan. The bus is parked on the other side of the courtyard. It’s how they’re planning to get out. Some rations have been stashed on there, probably not enough to last them for a while, but enough to get them to another place, should the prison fall.

And it will fall, he thinks bitterly. They don’t have enough people left to fight the Governor off, should he decide to push through. If Rick won’t manage to talk him down, the prison will be lost.

Just as he thinks that, the Governor jumps down the tank. He takes Michonne’s katana and puts it against Hershel’s neck in a clear threat.

Rick steps forward again, gesturing to the other people, at the gates, at the fences. He seems to offer them the prison, a safe place to live, if they only put down their weapons.

Silence reigns.

And then, in one horrible moment, the Governor draws the blade back only to bring it down again. He slashes Hershel’s neck. Blood sprays onto the grass as Beth and Maggie scream.

Rick screams, too, draws his gun and fires the first shot.

Daryl watches in horror. He can hardly hear the gunshots. He can’t see Rick running for cover and getting shot in his thigh. He can’t see Michonne rolling away from the chaos and running to hide behind the cars. He just sees Hershel, falling to the side.

Shane starts to unload his clip, screaming and providing Rick with enough cover-fire to get behind the bus.

When Carl starts to shoot too, Daryl finally manages to pull his own trigger. Gritting his teeth, he stares down the sight and manages to take down one of the guys next to the cars. He watches how the man goes down, the bullet hitting him in the shoulder and slamming him to the ground. He shoots the body until it stops moving. He doesn’t feel a thing.

Bullets whiz by his head. He doesn’t duck. He holds his ground until the tank starts to move and takes down the fences.

‘ _Dare, move_!’

Maybe it’s Shane who’s yelling, or maybe Maggie, or Beth or – it doesn’t matter. He empties his clip on the car that’s closest to him, turns on his heels and runs for cover. Bullet are slamming into the concrete near his feet. He slides over a table, rolls behind the water barrels before taking off running again. A grenade goes off beside him, slamming him into the wall. His shoulder aches. He gasps for breath as he tries to see someone from his family. Anyone from Woodbury even, but the gate comes crashing down behind him and he has to take off again before he can spot anybody. He ducks behind a corner and reloads with shaking hands.

‘Tough as nails,’ he breathes as he lets his forehead rest against the cool wall. ‘Nobody kills us but us. Get to the fuckin’ bus,’ he tells himself. ‘Get to the bus and-‘

There’s an explosion not far from him. That fucking tank, he thinks bitterly. It’s blowing his home to bits and pieces. All he can hear is rubble falling, people screaming, walkers snarling, guns going off. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. Then he pushes himself away from the wall and back into the frenzy. It’s a good thing that he’s so familiar with these surroundings. He runs along a low stone wall and jumps into a chain linked fence, quickly climbing it. He throws himself over, landing hard on his feet. He lets himself roll over his shoulder, breaking his own fall just like how Rick had taught him. The scramble to get to his feet is a little less graceful than it had been during their sessions, but he gets to his feet and that’s all that matters.

He’s behind the tank now. He cuts through a corridor, takes a knee and raises his gun to his shoulder. Three men are sneaking forward behind the tank.

Daryl opens fire.

The first two go down easily, too surprised, but the third one has enough time to dive for cover. He hides behind some metal cabinets and returns fire.

Daryl scrambles to get to safety, pressing himself against a fence and using the cabinet for cover too. He returns fire, most of it blindly because he’s too afraid to actually look where he’s shooting, fearing that he might catch one of the bullets that slam into the concrete in front of him

A snarl surprises him.

‘Holy fuckin’ shit,’ he swears loudly as a walker comes down on him, snarling and biting at his face. In the struggle he loses his grip on the gun while desperately trying to push the walker away from him. A kick to its knees causes it to stumble, giving him just enough time to grab his knife and plunge it into the skull. He quickly grabs his gun, putting it against his shoulder again.

The man had stopped firing once he’d heard the boy scream.

Now it’s silent between them.

Daryl holds his breath and knows that the man won’t be able to resist. He has to know. Has to see.

A few seconds later, the man rounds the corner.

And Daryl shoots him in the head. ‘Weren’t dead yet, ya fucker,’ he smirks as he spits on the body. His gaze lands on a couple of grenades on a belt. He undoes the belt, yanking it out from underneath the body, and puts it on. Four grenades. He looks at the tank. With a shaking hand, he takes one of them from the belt. He remembers how Shane had tried to prepare him for the raid on Woodbury. The frantic last minute checks of his gear and that lame joke about having to remember to pull the pin before throwing the flashbang grenade. He prays regular grenades work the exact same way, or he’s screwed. It doesn’t matter, he decides. He has to _try_.

He throws his gun away and doesn’t bother to grab the man’s. He can run back later, he needs at least one free hand for this and his bow is already on his back. After a calming breath, he starts to run again. Closer and closer to the tank that’s rolling towards cell block A. He picks up speed, then jumps up to the tank. One hand grabbing at the side armor while his feet slip on the steel. Desperate fingers curl around a handle, he hauls himself up and then runs along the side skirt. There’s no time to change his mind. He propels himself forward and then jumps again, feet slipping on the round barrel, arms flailing as he tries to balance himself.

With a curse, he drops a little so his center of gravity is lower, which makes it easier for him to balance. One hand on the hot barrel to steady himself before he quickly walks over it towards the muzzle.

The muzzle has been aimed up high, he couldn’t have reached it from the ground. He pulls the pin out of the grenade with his teeth. Leans over, lets it slide into the hole and hears how it thuds down the barrel towards the inside of the tank. With a laugh, he jumps down and runs a couple of steps.

People scream inside the tank.

The commander hatch is thrown open. A guy manages to get out before the grenade explodes, forcing him to the ground with its impact. When he gets up, he’s staring at Daryl’s bolt. He raises a hand like he wants to plea for his life.

Daryl takes a step forward and shoots. He hits the guy right in the heart and watches how he sinks to his knees before falling to his side. A voice in the back of his head tells him that the guy will turn. That causes him to smirk a little. They wanted the prison. That means they’ll have to do the same thing Rick and Shane had done, what they all have done. They’ll have to clear it. Of their own people.

‘Dare!’

He turns around to see Beth running toward him.

‘I was trying to find the kids to get them on the bus!’

Daryl looks around. This is the place where the bus should have been at.

It left without them.

Everything is on fire. He can’t see anyone else. There are walkers heading towards them, too many to fight off.

‘We gotta go, Beth,’ he breathes, backing up a little. ‘We gotta go.’

‘Yeah,’ she reaches out and grabs his hand. ‘Come on!’

 

Together, they run.

 

 

 


	42. and run

 

* * *

 

 

 

They run.

First off the prison grounds, into the forest where Daryl leads Beth down a narrow path, jumping over low bushes and snaking between the trees. They’re constantly chased by walkers. The noise of the battle for the prison has lured hundreds over. The smell of fresh blood causes them to go into a frenzy. Beth covers him as best she can. She became a pretty good shot even under this pressure and Daryl is glad that she has his back. He tries to stick to tracks he knows so they can find their way back later, but the constant attacks drive them further and further out until he’s not sure where he is anymore. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. First, they need to get out of this mess and to a safe place. He can always find the prison when it gets dark. He’s seen the stars a million times from the roof of the prison by now, he knows them better than he did the stars above their trailer park.

Five walkers cross their path, appearing out of nowhere. He ducks beneath the hands of two of them and runs over to the third. He plants one of his booted feet against a tree trunk, jumping up and smashing the butt of his crossbow into the head. The skull splits open due to his force and gravity helping him. A stumbling step gets him back to his feet.

Beth shoots one of the walkers and then presses the gun against the forehead of the other. The gun makes that horrible clicking sound. She’s out of ammo.

Daryl whirls around, takes aim and fires with his breath caught in his throat. The walker goes down and Beth grabs the bolt, yanking it out of its skull with a grateful mutter.

‘Just run, just run!’ Daryl says as he pushes her in front of him now that he’s the only one with a weapon that can fire. ‘I got ya, run!’

The girl doesn’t object even though she take the time to pass him his bolt and put her useless gun between her jeans and the small of her back. She takes out her knife and starts running again. Down the hill, zigzagging between the trees. Maybe she knows that it doesn’t matter which way they’re going as long as it’s _away from here_ , or maybe she trusts him to shout directions should she go the wrong way. He doesn’t. They just run and run and run until they break the tree line.

They’re in some kind of field now. The high grass and bushes make it difficult for them to run, but Beth still manages to find them a path. She’s fast, maybe even faster than he is, but his feet are more used to the uneven ground. After a minute, she stops, leaning on her knees.

‘Just a little further, to the middle,’ Daryl pants, gesturing to the right direction with his bolt.

She nods and keeps running. Two more minutes until she finds them a clearing and crashes to the ground without looking at him for permission to stop. He falls into the high grass beside her, bow landing with a thud next to him. He rolls to his back, chest heaving as he gasps for air, shirt riding up as he presses the palms of his hands into his eyes.

He can hear that she’s doing the exact same thing.

The sudden silence, except for their labored breaths, is deafening. He lets his hands fall away from his eyes and stares up at the blue sky. Vultures are circling above them. Fucking figures, he thinks bitterly.

His heart is starting to calm down in time with his breathing. His mind catches up too. They lost the prison. But more importantly, they lost everyone at the prison. In those last moments of chaos, he hadn’t seen anyone of their group, or even anyone from Woodbury. He wonders who got out. There’s fear coiling in the depth of his stomach, causing his spine to tingle, but he tries to push it down. They made it out. Shane had been right beside him when it all went down, Maggie, too. He hopes they’d stuck together. He worries about Rick, who had been down at the bus. The last time Daryl had caught a glimpse of him, he’d been clutching his thigh, blood seeping through the fabric of his jeans. When the fences had come down, the guys from the Governor had been right there with him, with their cars and guns and knives.

He’s not sure where Glenn had been. Maybe he’d been back in their cell, still resting after their long sickbed, just like Daryl had been supposed to do. Maybe he’d been with the people on the bus, or Maggie had gone back to get him and they’d gone together. He’s sure he got out. He squashes him own fear and tells himself sternly; _they got out_.

When the sweat on his back is starting to cool, he rolls onto his side and looks at Beth.

Her eyes are closed, the hand which clutches her knife is pressed to her chest. She probably feels his eyes on her because she rolls to her side too and looks at him. Some strands of her blonde hair have escaped her hairband and stick out stubbornly. There’s sweat running down her temple. ‘What are we going to do?’ she whispers.

‘Survive,’ he whispers back promptly because that’s the only thing on his mind right now. ‘Go back to the prison.’

‘Go back?’ Her eyes widen with fright. ‘We can’t go back.’

‘The others might be there.’

‘Daryl,’ she shifts closer to him, ‘the prison _fell_. The bus left. If there is anyone left, it’s the Governor’s people. They took the prison.’

He bites on his lip and shuffles closer, resting his head in the cool grass. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand before digging his fingertips into the soft earth, scratching at the dirt and rocks there. ‘So what’re we gonna do then?’ he asks, not meeting her eye.

‘We’re going to find the others.’

He nods but doesn’t want to ask her how. The world’s a big place, has gotten even bigger now that they don’t have modern technology. He hadn’t even brought his walkie-talkie, it’s still in his cell, and even if he had brought it, he’s not sure whether Shane had been wearing the counterpart. They’re probably out of range of each other, too.

‘It’s going to get dark soon,’ Beth says with a nervous glance at the sky. ‘Dang.’

He shrugs.

‘Do you know where we are? Maybe there’s a house nearby we could stay at?’

Daryl sighs, ‘nah. Won’t know where we are until the stars are out. Ain’t no point in tryin’ to find something now, all we’ll find are walkers. It won’t rain. We’ll be fine.’

‘We’re going to _camp_ out here?’

He lifts a snarky eyebrow. ‘What else we gonna do? Done told ya, I don’t know where the hell we are.’

The girl recoils a bit at his sharp tone. She looks scared.

He sighs and sits up, crossing his legs beneath him as he checks his bow. He’s still got most of his bolts thanks to her, she’s been yanking them out of walker’s head after he took them down, making sure they won’t run out of his ammo. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters, ‘didn’t mean to… ya know. Sorry.’

‘I know,’ she tells him as she sits up too. She tucks some of her blonde hair behind her ear. ‘We’re going to be fine.’ It sounds too bright and cheery, causing the boy to wince, but he doesn’t say anything about it. She’s just trying to cheer herself up.

‘Course we are,’ he gets to his feet and looks around.

‘You know how to… like… camp, right?’

His gaze snaps back to her. He frowns. ‘Ya makin’ fun of me?’

She frowns right back. ‘What? No.’

‘Know ya ain’t worried about settin’ up no tent, so what the fuck you mean? What’s so damn hard about sleepin’ on the ground?’

Beth shakes her head and puts her knife back into the sheath. ‘I meant stuff like _where_ to camp. I’ve been camping before but that was on a holiday with my friends, it wasn’t, like, in the _wild_.’

The wild. He almost laughs as he looks around the field they’re in.

‘Now _you_ are laughing at _me_. Ya makin’ fun of me, boy?’ she says, trying to copy his accent.

‘Ain’t even laughin’.’

‘You were,’ Beth counters with a small smile, 'but that’s okay. So which way are we going?’

He looks back at her.

She wobbles on her feet a little. ‘Back the way we came, or push further?’

Back leads towards the prison, which will bring them closer to the walkers and possibly the people of the Governor. He’s not sure where _further_ will lead them, but it’s probably the better option until they can find out where they are. He looks at his boots and digs the toe into the soft earth.

‘Daryl,’ Beth says softly. ‘What should we do?’

‘Dunno.’

That actually makes her laugh again. A soft bubbly sound. ‘Well, then we’re right out of luck, because I certainly don’t know what to do. I was kind of hoping you might… you know? Take the lead.’

He wipes his nose on the back of his hand again and bites on his thumbnail. He glances up at her, unsure, and shrugs. ‘Should get to some cover, I guess.’

‘Okay,’ Beth draws the words out as she looks around. ‘You mean with the trees?’

He nods.

‘Okay… So, which way, Dare?’

‘Shouldn’t go back to the prison, lotta walkers over yonder,’ he gestures to where they came from. ‘If we’re gonna make a fire, it’d drawn them over.’

‘So that way,’ she takes a couple of steps towards the tree line. ‘Right?’

‘Yeah. I mean, I guess,’ he mumbles.

She gives him a considering look for a second before letting it morph into a smile. ‘Okay. Come on.’

 

 

They find a place to hide out for the night. It’s far from ideal. It’s too exposed for starters but neither one of them is going to get any sleep tonight anyway, so in the end they decide that it doesn’t really matter. Daryl builds the fire in record time. He’s still got Will’s zippo lighter in his pocket so he doesn’t have to bother with any primitive ways of starting one. It’s not really a cold night but Beth isn’t wearing anything beside her flimsy tank-top and Daryl doesn’t want her to get cold. If it had been just him, he would have just climbed a tree and camped out there, but the girl settles on the ground beside the fire with a grateful smile so he doesn’t mind.

They don’t talk much.

The fire crackles between them. The soft orange light spills into the night, gracing both of their features.

Beth is hugging her knees to her chest. Her bracelets jingle softly whenever she moves. ‘We’ve got to do something,’ she says softly after a couple of hours of silence.

Daryl is staring at the flames and doesn’t lift his gaze to acknowledge her words.

‘We’re not the only survivors. We can’t be. Rick, Michonne, they could be out here. Maggie and Glenn could have made it out of A block.’

Daryl brings his thumb to his lips.

‘They could have,’ Beth presses with wide eyes. ‘You’re a tracker,’ she says as she stands up. ‘You can track. Come on!’

Daryl finally looks up at her. ‘It’s dark,’ he says. ‘Can’t track nothing if I can’t see.’

‘But you _can_ track them?’

He shrugs.

‘The sun will be up soon. If we head out now, we can…’ She waits for him to get up. ‘Fine! If you won’t track, I will!’ She grabs her knife and stalks off angrily.

After a couple of paces, he gets to his feet. ‘Beth,’ he hisses which causes her to stop abruptly. ‘Come back. When the sun is up,’ he says when she turns around, ‘we’ll head back to the field, move in a circle around the prison, try to pick up anyone’s tracks, okay?’

‘Why wait?’ she demands.

‘If ya muck it all up now, I won’t be able to track jack-shit. We could pass someone’s tracks, miss some damn sign. Everyone’s hunkerin’ down for the night, okay? It’s too dangerous out in them woods at night. They sit tight, we sit tight. We’ll find them tomorrow.’

‘But we ran all that way, it will be hours until we’re back anywhere near the prison!’

‘Nah, we’re not that far out, and we didn’t run in no straight line from the prison neither.’ He looks up at the stars. ‘We’re pretty close.’

‘Promise?’

He narrows his eyes, ‘promise what?’

‘That we’ll look for them tomorrow.’

‘Yeah,’ he sits down on the log again and hunches his shoulders. ‘’course. They made it. Glenn ‘nd Maggie. Tough as nails, those two. Michonne. Rick’s got more guardians angels than he knows what to do with. They got out.’

Beth walks back to the fire. She looks down at him. ‘Shane got out, too, Daryl.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

She sits down next to him on the log and stares at the flames. ‘We’ll find them.’

 

 

They find the tracks. Small prints, couple of larger ones, too. Daryl could have spot them from a mile away but Beth breezes right past until he points them out to her. It’s almost comical to him how wide her eyes grow when he murmurs what they are. ‘That’s great, Daryl!’ she beams. ‘Which way were they going?’

He kneels down beside the tracks and brushes some leaves aside. ‘See this? That’s the heel, it digs in deeper, right? That’s a clear print,’ he points one out.

‘Yeah! So that way,’ Beth points to the north.

Daryl nods, ‘yup. They passed here about four or five hours ago.’

Beth’s face falls a bit.

‘They’re small,’ Daryl points out, ‘whoever it is, it’s Luke or Lizzy or one of them other kids. Small prints, see?’ He makes his own footprint right next to the ones already there so the girl can compare the sizes. ‘Means they’re slow as hell.’

‘Which means we can catch up!’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl can’t help but smile.

 

 

Two hours later, they’re standing next to a couple of train tracks. Walkers are feasting on fresh corpses. Daryl takes his bow and kills two of them before walking over and yanking one of his bolts out of a head. The last walker doesn’t even notice him. It’s too busy eating, ripping apart one of the bodies. He grabs the head and stabs it with the bolt. He doesn’t recognize any of the bodies. Some are too far gone to ever be recognized.

There’s a small black shoe among all the blood and limbs. It used to belong to a child.

He puts his bolts back into his quiver.

Beth is just standing there. She stares at the remains.

Daryl shrugs his bow onto his shoulder and steps over the bodies, heading down the tracks. After a couple of steps, he can hear Beth starting to sob. He sighs and turns around, hand on the trap of his bow.

The girl has put her knife away. She cries and cries and looks utterly helpless.

He’s not sure what to do. ‘It ain’t them,’ he says even though he can’t be sure.

Beth doesn’t answer.

Daryl grits his teeth and walks back to her. His boots squeak a little as he steps through the puddles of blood. When he’s back at her side again, he takes her hand.

She looks down at it.

‘It ain’t them,’ he says again, a little more forcefully before tucking her towards the tracks. He leads her around the corpses, careful to avoid any of the blood. When their boots hit the wood of the tracks, he wants to let go but she holds on tightly.

 

 

They’re forced off the tracks when another herd crosses their path. Thunder rumbles in the distance as they scramble to get out of the woods, onto a road where Beth tries to get a car going. It won’t run anymore. In a moment of desperation, Daryl pops the back open and they hop in, tying it closed with his red rag on the inside. Their legs brush against each other as they try and get as comfortable as possible. Both of their gazes are glued to the small crack through which they can see the shadows of the walkers in the moonlight.

Daryl silently raises his crossbow.

When dawn breaks, his hands is cramping and his whole arm hurts. He hasn’t lowered the weapon, too scared. He’s afraid to even move.

The temperature is steadily rising again. Georgia heat doubled by the metal cage they’re in.

Eventually it’s Beth who reaches out to untie the knots and escapes the deathtrap first. They stumble out, feet catching on the ledges. Daryl stretches out on the concrete in the shade, wiping away sweat from his brow as he enjoys the cool breeze while Beth sags down on the passenger’s seat of the car. ‘We need a plan,’ she says after a while.

Daryl nods.

‘Do you know where we are?’

Daryl sighs and shakes his head.

‘ _Great_ ,’ Beth bites out sarcastically

Daryl closes his eyes.

After a minute, Beth sighs and drops her head into her hands. ‘Sorry, Dare. That was unfair. I have no idea where we are, at all. Can you lead us back tonight, when you see the stars?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl rolls to his side so he can look at her. ‘But then what? Didn’t see no tracks up until we hit that herd. We don’t even know whether we’re following anyone. Don’t know where we’re going neither.’

‘So what do we do?’

He shrugs.

‘Dare,’ Beth snaps as she gets to her feet again. ‘Come on. You’re good at this stuff! What do we _do_?’

‘What’re ya lookin’ at me for?’ Daryl bites back, scrambling to get to his feet too so he won’t feel so disadvantaged. They’re not exactly the same height, he’s still a little smaller than her, but it helps that he doesn’t have to look up all the way.

The girl looks annoyed. ‘Who else is there to look at? It’s just us here, Dare, and you’re…’ She trails off to think about her wording but Daryl strikes before she can find the right phrasing.

‘I’m _what_? Fuckin’ trailer trash that’s used to sleepin’ beneath them stars?’

‘Of course not! But you’re a hunter, a tracker! You’re used to being out here, you were outside of the fences _all the time_. So you know what we need to survive. You know what to do.’

Daryl blinks and then scowls to hide his expression behind a mask of anger. He realizes with a start that the girl is looking at him to guide her. Not just back to the tracks, or to the prison or wherever they decide to go. She’s trusting him to make the calls Shane used to make, Rick, Will. Merle, even, from before the whole world went cray. It makes him sick. Nobody has ever looked at him for any of that. First because he’d just been some twelve year old with a crossbow and a temper, and later because he’d been the shadow of Shane and Glenn. Of course they’d relied on him for food, but they had still _allowed_ him to go hunting. He’d always played by their rules. He’s never made his own before.

Beth looks at him with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity. ‘What?’ she asks.

‘Nothin’.’

‘Right,’ she says, barely being able to keep herself from rolling her eyes. ‘So?’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘Gonna need to find water. Food. Shelter.’ He rubs at his cheek. ‘Clothes, too. Backpacks, all that shit. Gear.’

‘What first?’

Daryl glances at the sun. ‘Water.’

‘I’m really hungry, Daryl.’

‘I know,’ he nods. ‘I’ll find us something while we search for shelter, okay? Gotta find a place with some good gear ‘nd everything. Can’t be chasin’ no ghosts on God and an empty stomach. Is there anything in the car we can use?’

There’s a plastic bag and several empty water bottles. Beth collects everything while Daryl loads his bow and checks the sun again. The road they’re on seems endless either way, but now that he has a second to think about it, he’s pretty sure he knows where about they are. It’s not much of a comfort because they don’t know where they need to go either.

‘No water and no food,’ Beth says as she ties the plastic bag to her belt.

‘Don’t matter,’ Daryl mutters as he heads off.

 

 

‘You’re an animal, Daryl Dixon.’

‘Ain’t we all,’ Daryl frowns as he tugs at a piece of meat, tearing it off and wolfing it down. The outside is mostly charcoal because he hadn’t wanted to risk a serious case of food poisoning out here, but the inside is still edible. He digs around with his teeth to find another good chunk, his cheeks glistering with saliva and the juices of the meat.

‘Enjoy your snake jerky,’ Beth sneers as she walks past him.

‘Ya were enjoyin’ it just fine last night,’ he shoots back. ‘Don’t go all stuck-up princess on my ass now.’

‘It’s disgusting.’

‘It’s _food_.’

‘I meant the way you eat,’ Beth says but she turns around so she has to walk backwards. It allows him to catch the teasing smirk playing around her lips. ‘Thanks for dinner last night. And breakfast. And the water and the shelter and everything, okay?’ She laughs. ‘My knight with a shining crossbow.’

He snorts and ducks his head, ‘stop.’

‘You are,’ Beth smiles, ‘now wipe your face, cave-man.’

Just to annoy her, he keeps eating until the charcoal crunches between his teeth. Then he throws the last of his snake away, wets his rag with some water and washes his face and hands. The girl is selling herself short, he thinks, even though he did take care of getting them some food and water last night. She had built their camp, had rigged up some alarms in case walkers came stumbling by and had taken care of the fire before he’d even come back. Now, they’re searching for a place that will have some supplies. Clothes, ammo, more knives, food and water. Anything they can use, really. A while back, they’d come across a sign for a golf course.

‘There it is,’ Beth says when she ducks past the last tree.

There’s a sprawling lawn that leads to a huge country club. The sight of it makes Daryl a little uncomfortable. It reminds him of the club that used to be on the edge of his town. That used to belong to a big ranch that hosted races every weekend. People from all over the county would pull in that parking lot to root for their horses from the large stands. Sometimes Daryl would sit on the side of the road leading towards the ranch, in the shade of the trees and partly hidden from view, and he’d watch the cars pull in. They weren’t anything like the beat-up trucks downtown. These were shiny, sleek, growling with their powerful engines as they made that final turn before roaring down the dirt road. When the doors finally swung open, men and women would step out, wearing suits and dresses, hats and gloves. Other times, Daryl would join his friends and sneak onto the premises. They’d climb the stands, jumping over the fences until they could sit at the very back. It never lasted long. Staff from the club would come and chase them away, sometimes calling the cops to make a point but mostly letting them get away with a warning. The message had been clear enough. They didn’t belong there.

He can still remember those cutting glares the people on the stand shad given him and his friends. Those looks of disgust and contempt. Rich pricks, all of them. Daryl doesn’t suppose that the people who used to hang out in this country club were any better. He hasn’t ever met anyone who’d played golf before.

A couple of walkers appear on their left. Beth reaches out and taps his arm to get his attention. She gestures to the club. They quickly make their way to the front door, glancing over their shoulder every once in a while to make sure that the walkers aren’t catching up to them. The front door is locked but the one on the side isn’t. Daryl pulls the door open and they sneak inside. He shoves a golf club between the handles so the walkers won’t be able to bust in. Then he carefully walks further into the large area.

People used to camp inside. The floor is a mess of beds and clothing, blankets and pillows. Lines are cast overhead, blankets and towels thrown over it to create divisions. An illusion of privacy. A faint snarling comes from the other side of the room. Three people tried to hang themselves there.

Daryl spots a flashlight on the ground and grabs it, flicking it on. He steps a little closer to the walkers. They all seem to be dressed in their Sunday’s clothes. The guy’s wearing some sort of suit, the women dresses. Hair all done up, pearls blinking in the light. Daryl doesn’t doubt that their golden credit cards are still in their pockets.

There are more bodies like it on the floor.

Something catches his eye. He jumps over a bed and kneels down beside a leather bag. There’s a whole stash of money right next to it and a pile of jewels. Pearls, gold, silver, diamonds even. He reaches out and touches the money tentatively. Twenty dollar bills, bound together. Fingernails racking over the edges, trying to count it all before he decides that it doesn’t matter. He already knows that he’s never even seen so much money in one place before. And it’s _his_. He shoves it all into the bag. The money and the jewels, everything.

‘Why are you keeping all that stuff?’ Beth asks with a frown.

He closes the bag and throws it onto his shoulders. Walkers start to bang on the door. That golf club won’t hold forever. Daryl dashes towards the next set of doors and waits for Beth to slip into the hallway behind him. He closes the doors with a bang. ‘Cause I fuckin’ can,’ he mutters as he moves past her to take point, raising his crossbow as they go down the corridor.

They find a kitchen but there’s not much food left. Beth takes out a walker while he sorts through the cabinets and turns on the taps, even though he knows that it won’t have an effect.

Next, they find the shop.

Beth beams at him and goes to find some clean clothes.

Daryl shrugs and moves to the register. There’s a bowl there with little wrapped chocolates and he shoves them al into the pockets of his vest. He tries to open the register but it won’t budge. With a sigh, he jumps onto the counter, settling in to wait when he sees that Beth is grabbing some clothes and ducking around a corner to get changed.

There’s a walker right next to him. Actually, it’s half of a walker, just the torso, head and arms. Someone has stuck it onto the lower half of a mannequin. It used to be a woman. She’d probably been stripped because she’s only wearing a bra and come kind of cardigan now. There’s a string of pearls around her neck still.

Someone has nailed a message to her chest.

 _Rich bitch_.

Daryl grabs one of the chocolates and breaks it open, savoring the sweet taste while his gaze travels over the walker again. Just another dumb bitch who didn’t make it. People like this never could. The old world had suited them just fine, but – Daryl smirks – how the tables have turned. He’s still here.

Beth appears again and Daryl nearly snorts. She’s wearing a yellow shirt and white cardigan. He wonders whether she’d deliberately searched for the least practical clothing in the whole damn store, or had just gotten real lucky. She walks over to the walker and tries tugging the cardigan closed. When that doesn’t work, she tries to lift it. ‘Help me take her down,’ she says.

‘It don’t matter. She’s dead.’

‘It _does_ matter.’

And when she looks at him with those wide, pleading eyes, wearing those preppy clothes and with the light catching on her jewelry, he can almost see the resemblance. It makes him sick. He slides off the counter and walks over, grabbing a large pieces of cloth from the floor. He drapes it over the body.

 

 

‘We made it.’

Daryl frowns as he follows Beth down the last hallway. It leads towards a bar. Most of it has been trashed. The floor is covered in glass, stained by blood and booze. Most of the tables are still standing, covered in dust and set for people who are now trying to eat each other. There’s a large window behind the bar. It must have been really fancy back in the day. It certainly doesn’t look like any of the places Merle used to take him to. He wonders whether there were ever children sitting at this bar, whether the bartender hid the crayons behind the whiskey bottles, or if drunken patrons ever tried to help a six year old with their spelling homework here. He smiles at the memory as he walks into the room. There are some things he recognizes. A pool table and darts.

Beth makes a beeline for the bar, however. Gingerly stepping over the broken glass and a couple of bodies on the floor.

There’s a glass on every table, right in the center, which holds a couple of cigarettes. They’ve probably gone stale by now, Daryl thinks, but he still glances up at Beth. She has her back to him. He snatches the cigarettes out of their holders and dumps them into his pockets, hoping furiously that they won’t break too much.

Beth turns around and puts something on the bar. She sits down on one of the highchairs.

‘The fuck we doin’ here?’ Daryl asks as he walks past the tables towards the dart board. ‘Ain’t nothin’ left here we can use.’

‘There is.’

‘Like what? Want to eat mud snake with knife and fork now?’ he asks as he yanks the darts out of the board and turns towards the pictures of the board members of this stupid club. He tries to hit them all in the eyes.

‘I want a drink.’

He frowns and looks at her.

She’s staring at a bottle.

‘Why?’

‘I just do.’ She drags the bottle closer to her. ‘It’s peach schnapps. Have you ever heard of that?’

‘Nah.’

‘Suppose it tastes like peaches, right? Can’t be that bad.’ Beth bites her lip nervously. ‘Have you ever had a drink?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters as he tries to make the darts hit the pictures as hard as he can.

‘Really? What, like Will would let you have a sip of his?’

‘Like me puking my guts out while Merle threatened to whoop my ass,’ Daryl corrects. He lets the last dart fly. It lands in a guy’s chin. Then he walks over to Beth, climbs onto the high chair and sits down on the bar, feet on the leather of the chair. ‘What?’ he asks when the girl stares at him. ‘Was my first drink. Second was Jack and coke at the bar. Thought it was my regular coke. That was just a sip. Couple of other sips, too. Beer, whiskey, moonshine.’

‘But you’re… how old are you now?’

‘Fourteen,’ Daryl says as he rubs at his left eye. ‘The fuck’s that got to do with it?’

Beth laughs, ‘it means you were younger than twelve when you had your first drink! That’s… that’s crazy, Dare.’

Daryl shrugs and bites on his thumb.

Beth is looking at him expectantly.

‘Merle, my brother, right? He used to take me with him when he went to the bar. Dad was… I don’t know. Sometimes he were angry at something we’d done, something that had happened at work, shit like that. Other times he’d bring women home to… ya know…’ Daryl ducks his head and scrapes his feet over the leather of the seat. ‘So Merle would take me out to this bar downtown.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Was after mom had died of course, so,’ Daryl shrugs a little, ‘six? Seven maybe. I don’t know. Feels like I’ve always been there, ya know?’

‘That’s awful.’

Daryl looks up. ‘Why? Was a good place. Everyone knew Merle, knew what he could do, ya know, so nobody bothered me. Sometimes I’d sit with them, listen to their crazy stories. Other times I’d sit at the bar with these older guys. They’d keep an eye on me.’

‘What’d you do?’

‘Draw,’ Daryl says as he rubs at his nose. ‘Guys learned me some card games.’

‘Taught,’ Beth corrects with a smalls mile.

‘Yeah. Whatever. _Taught_ me to play pool, darts, cards, all that shit. When it’d get real late, sometimes Merle would put me in his truck outside, so I could get some shuteye. In the winter they’d let me sleep in the room behind the bar, where all the booze was kept. Lady behind the bar would make me a bed out of coats and shit. Was comfy as fuck,’ he laughs shyly at the memory. ‘Better than home, anyway.’

The shoulders of the girl sag a little. She looks sad.

‘Gonna take a swing or what?’

‘What was your first drink?’

‘Moonshine,’ Daryl says as he wrinkles his nose. ‘It was gross as shit. Had it a couple times after that. My dad would leave those jars all over the place. Same jars my mom had always made me use to get water from the jug, ya know? So I’d mix them up all the time. Whenever dad saw me spit it out…’ Daryl laughs softly, ‘ _brace yourself_ ,’ he mimics Will’s drunken drawl. ‘Wastin’ _precious resources_ like that. Asshole.’

‘So peach schnapps should be better, right?’ she open the bottle. ‘There are no clean glasses left.’

‘They’ve already put it in a damn glass for ya,’ Daryl says, ‘that’s what the bottle is for.’

‘Sorry, Will,’ Beth mocks with a laugh.

‘Merle,’ Daryl corrects with a grin.

‘You want some?’ Beth asks. ‘I mean, you can have _one_ sip.’

‘Sure,’ Daryl nods. ‘Ladies first though.’

‘My gentleman cave-man with a shining crossbow. What are we toasting to?’

‘Jesus Christ, just take a damn sip!’

Beth laughs again and does as he tells her. She swallows and passes the bottle to him. ‘Quick, your turn!’

He eyes her suspiciously before letting the alcohol swirl into his mouth. He swallows and only then realizes his mistake. With a grunt he jumps off the bar, down the bar stool. He groans, sticks his tongue out and tries to clean it by licking his shoulder. The mixture of leather and peaches and alcohol isn’t much better. He throws the bottle onto the floorboards. It smashes into a million pieces. ‘That’s so fuckin’ gross. Screw you! Ya could have told me it was nasty!’

Behind him, Beth collapses into a fit of giggles.

Daryl watches.

She laughs and laughs and laughs until, gradually or maybe suddenly, she’s no longer laughing at all. Her breath comes in tiny gasps between sobs, her shoulders shake as tears drip down her pale cheeks.

‘Come on,’ Daryl says as he grabs his bow from the pool table. ‘This place? It was on them maps I helped Michonne draw while we searched for the…’ he rubs at his nose. ‘I know where we are. This is the Pine Vista Country Club. We ain’t stayin’ here, it’s too rich a place for my blood. Come on,’ he repeats as he walks over to the backdoor, pushing it open. ‘Got a much better place for us to crash tonight.’

 

 

 


	43. Moonshine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to asalea for inspiring Daryl's teenager-ness. It's gonna be a wild ride.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The cabin is hiding behind some tall trees and overgrown bushes. It’s nestled against the edge of the forest, hugging the tree line and almost swallowed by the wilderness now that there’s nobody left to tend to the land. Wild flowers bloom between the cracks in the pavement. Vines are sneaking onto the porch, curling around the wood like eager fingers.

It’s a small building. Just two rooms and the shed. There’s a porch, one part of it covered by junk. Flowerpots, a rickety looking chair, building materials. The path leading to the door is almost completely covered, but he can see still where Michonne had slashed at it with her katana. It had been a couple of months ago when they’d found this place. Daryl had come across her in the woods while hunting, had heard the tell-tale sound of hooves on asphalt and had ran out to meet her. She’d been on her way to go and try to find another sign of the Governor but he’d managed to convince her to stick around.

A small smile, arched eyebrow as if she was daring him and then that outstretched hand. He’d grabbed it and let her haul him on the back of the horse. He’d always liked being out in the woods alone, but he’d carefully switched around and sat with his back against Michonne’s, listening to her latest adventures and figured that that wasn’t so bad either.

‘What is this place?’ Beth asks curiously as she follows him up the path.

‘Home sweet home,’ Daryl smirks as he knocks on the wood and listens for a second. Nothing moves inside so he opens the door. It creaks but doesn’t jam. ‘My dad had a place like this,’ he tells the girl as he moves into the cabin, bow raised as he scans the interior. ‘Couple of miles into them woods, hmm. Kept all our huntin’ shit there. Except our bows, of course.’

Beth follows him inside, ‘why not keep your bows there too?’

‘’cause they’re expensive,’ Daryl mutters as he checks the kitchen and bedroom. They’re both clear. ‘Only thing you need to spend a good dollar on. Your bow and your boots, that is.’

‘You got new boots.’

Daryl looks down at the dark brown boots he’s wearing now. Shane had brought the pair back for him. Mostly watertight, with the leather already broken in by someone else and long laces he can wrap around his calves. He used to do that with his old boots when he’d jump onto the back of Merle’s bike to keep his jeans from touching the hot exhaust. He’d given his old boots to some boy from Woodbury. They’d still been top quality, he’d always taken good care of them, and the boy had beamed at him when he got them.

‘Yeah,’ he says as he puts his bow up against a stuffed armchair. ‘Old ones were getting real tight.’

Beth smiles. ‘You’ve grown a lot since the farm.’

‘Guess,’ the boy shrugs as he lets himself fall into the chair. He sighs and leans his head back, closing his eyes. It almost feels like he’s back at their own cabin, back when this all started. Except there is no couch here to rest his head on and there’s no picture on the wall to remind him of his mom. The rest of the interior could have come straight out of Will’s den. The armchair, the ashtrays everywhere, the paper strewn about, the creaking floorboards. The plastic chairs around that ugly table in the cramped kitchen. For the first time since the fall of the prison, he feels how all of his muscles relax.

‘What’s behind that door?’ Beth asks as she shuffles towards the door next to the bathroom. ‘You didn’t check it, should I –‘

‘No, leave it,’ Daryl mutters, stretching his legs out. ‘It just leads to the shed. Ain’t nothing in there or we would have heard.’

‘The shed?’

‘Yeah’ Daryl waves a hand as if he’s batting at an annoying fly. ‘Don’t got no business bein’ in there. Don’t stick your nose in,’ he mutters, remembering what his dad had told him all those years ago.

‘Okay,’ the girl says slowly. She looks around the small room. ‘So we’re staying here for the night?’

‘Good a place as any.’ He pulls his feet onto the armchair and curls up, hugging his knees to his chest. Dirty fingernails scratch at the laces of his new boots while he tries to get some sleep. He listens to how Beth walks around, examining their new home for the night. Something metallic clangs into the sink as she roots through the kitchen and she mutters under her breath about what a dump this is. Daryl has half a mind to flick her off but can’t be bothered. He finally falls asleep when she drags one of the plastic chairs over towards the window to be on watch first.

 

 

He wakes up several hours later. At first he’s not sure what woke him up. For a second, he thinks that he really is back at their own cabin. The sun is still out but the temperature is dropping already. He remembers how cold it used to be when they got back from their hunts in the winter and had to wait for the heating to kick in. How his dad and Merle would make him strip so he wouldn’t be wearing damp clothing, how they’d get him a scratchy blanket to wrap around his shoulders, waiting next to the heating with chattering teeth.

He can hear bottles clanking together.

He can hear a walker just outside of the cabin.

With a grunt, he jumps to his feet, grabbing his bow and sneaking towards the window. Low bushes keep the walker away from the jagged glass, otherwise the dead guy would have probably made it inside without too much trouble. Most of the small windows have been blown out by the wind or other walkers, the wooden frame that remains doesn’t look too sturdy.

Anger coils in his stomach. He turns around and looks for Beth, expecting to find her on the floor next to the window, fast asleep, but she isn’t there. The door leading to the bedroom is still closed. He moves towards it to look for her until his gaze falls on the other door. And he remembers that he’d heard the bottles before he’d heard the walker. With a snarl, he stalks over to the door.

Beth is inside the shed. She’s sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest. There’s a mason jar in her hands, filled with clear liquid. When Daryl looks at the ground beside her, he spots a whole crate filled with bottles and jars.

The shed looks exactly the same as Will’s had done. With the tank that looks like it’s made of copper and gleams in the last rays of sunlight. The vials and pipes and buckets and glassware. The smell.

The girl lifts her gaze and smiles at him. She’s lost the white cardigan because she’d gotten blood all over it during a struggle with a walker and there’s still blood on her yellow shirt. If it weren’t for that, and the grease and grime on her face, she could have been any girl at any of the parties Merle used to drag him along to. Eyes hazy, smile too soft to realize that there’s danger staring her right in the face. ‘Hey,’ she says. She looks back at the mason jar in her hands. ‘I thought this was worse than the peach schnapps at first, but the second round is better.’

‘There’s a walker outside.’

Her gaze snaps back to him. ‘Oh dang, really? I was only in here for two seconds, Dare, I swear.’

Two seconds is all it takes now, but he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything as he turns on his heels and stalks back towards the dumpster chair. Falling into it, he brings his hand to his mouth, teeth gnawing on the edge of his thumb. The anger inside of him is but a dull roar now as he listens to the snarling of the walker outside and how Beth climbs to her feet inside the shed, following him into the living room.

‘Should we take care of it?’ she asks as she peeks out of the window.

‘If it keeps makin’ too much noise, yeah,’ Daryl mutters but he kicks his left leg out and doesn’t get up.

‘I just figured, if we’re gonna be stuck here, we might as well make the best of it.’

Daryl’s gaze travels to her right hand. She’s still holding on to the mason jar. Clear liquid shifts inside of it. He doesn’t need to smell it in order to know that that isn’t water. He sets his jaw and looks away.

‘Do you want a sip? You can have just one.’

‘No.’

‘It really isn’t that bad,’ Beth says as she settles down on the floor a little ways away from him. She takes another sip, wincing a little at the taste but trying to hide it behind a soft laugh.

‘It is,’ Daryl mutters but he’s not talking about the taste.

Beth doesn’t seem to hear him. Her fingers trace the rim of the glass. She seems lost in thought now.

The boy shifts in the chair, rummaging through his pockets until he pulls the lighter out along with one of the cigarettes he’d snatched up at the country club. It’s gone a little crooked in his pocket but hasn’t snapped in half, for which he’s grateful. He hasn’t smoked since his dad died.

Just when he puts it between his lips and raises the zippo, Beth looks up. Her blue eyes grow almost comically wide. ‘You’re going to _smoke_? _You smoke_?’

‘Sometimes,’ Daryl says with narrowed eyes.

‘You’re _fourteen_! Give them to me. You’re not smoking, Dare!’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because it’s… it’s…’ Beth searches for the right word. ‘ _Illegal!_ ’

Daryl snorts. ‘Yeah, and drinkin’ moonshine is a-okay for you, right? ‘sides, Shane ‘nd Rick ain’t here to uphold the damn law, so…’

‘You’ll get cancer. Do you even know how bad smoking is for you?’

‘My dad smoked all the damn time and he were fine.’

Beth looks outraged, ‘then he got lucky. You’ll die from lung cancer, or you’ll cough up a lung while trying to run from walkers. You’re not smoking it, Daryl, give it to me!’

‘Ain’t my chaperone,’ Daryl says with a nasty smirk on his lips. The cigarette wobbles dangerously on his lower lip. He bites down on it to keep it from falling. ‘Ain’t givin’ you shit. Hell, what’s with the holier than thou attitude? You’re offerin’ me up as walker bait to get a damn drink. I told ya not to stick your nose in that damn shed, girl. Ain’t nothing but trouble inside of it.’

Beth looks down at her drink and then back at the boy. Her eyes narrow, a hint of curiosity now replacing the haziness he’d seen before. ‘What makes you say that?’

He scowls. ‘’cause you’re gonna be pukin’ your damn guts out if ya start drinkin’ that shit and I ain’t gonna drag your drunk ass to the bathroom if ya do. That’s what.’

‘That’s not it.’ Beth cocks her head to the side, ‘you were fine with me drinking the peach schnapps. What about this is making you so uncomfortable?’

‘Ain’t – ‘ Daryl starts but then makes a throw away gesture with his left hand. ‘Fine. Chug it then, if you’re so tough. See how ya handle it. That ain’t no peach schnapps or budlight. Go on, be that one dumb bitch at a trailer park party.’

The girl is too smart to be that easily baited, however. Daryl hates that. He watches how she settles back down, that thoughtful look back in her eye. She puts the jar down on the floor near her hip. When she looks up again, there’s a defiant little smile playing around her lips. ‘We used to play this game, me and my friends. At parties, you know? It was a drinking game.’

‘So?’

‘So, I want to play it with you.’

Daryl looks at her suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re my friend.’

The blue eyes narrow at that but he doesn’t object otherwise. ‘Done told ya; I ain’t drinkin’ nothing.’

‘I know,’ Beth nods, ‘and I want to know why. The game is called truth or dare, have you heard of it?’

‘Nah.’

‘Really? You haven’t heard of truth or dare?’

‘Never heard of nobody needin’ a game to get lit before,’ Daryl mumbles around his cigarette. He plays with the zippo lighter, flipping it open and closed every couple of seconds.

‘Okay. Here’s how it goes; I ask you a question and you have to answer with the truth. If you don’t want to answer it, I get to drink.’

Daryl narrows his eyes again.

Beth rolls her eyes, ‘okay, that’s not really how it goes, normally you have to do some stupid dare, but we can’t really do that now, so… we’ll play it like this, okay? If you answer, I don’t get to drink. If you don’t, I get another sip.’

‘Don’t sound like much of a game.’

‘It’ll be fun!’ Beth says in that perky tone of voice Daryl doesn’t like much.

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘If I don’t want to answer, you get to smoke. One drag versus one sip. That’s fair, right?’

Daryl scoffs and brings the lighter to his cigarette, ‘could just do it. Don’t need your permission.’

Beth rolls her eyes, ‘Dare, come on. We’re going to be stuck here for the entire afternoon and evening. Play the game.’

He thinks about it. It’s not a game, he knows. It’s just a cheap way of learning a couple of secrets. At first, he wants to back out because there are too many things he doesn’t want her to know about him, but he can’t help but be curious about some things as well. It’s a dangerous game, he thinks as he watches how Beth’s fingers trace the rim of the jar again. He will have to find the balance between booze and secrets, knowing that either one can end up hurting like a bitch. ‘Fine,’ he slides onto the ground so they’re on the same level. He’s leaning back against the chair now, one of his knees drawn up so he can rest his wrist on it. The cigarette is between his fingers, still unlit. The zippo is in his left hand, cold metal pressed into the sweaty palm.

‘I’ll start,’ Beth says eagerly, her whole face lighting up with a smile. ‘It was my idea,’ she argues when he scowls at her. ‘Okay,’ she thinks about her questions. ‘Truth or dare? Which do you like better, snake or possum?’

Daryl blinks.

Beth snorts, hiding her laugh behind her cup of moonshine. ‘It’s just a warm-up!’

‘Possum,’ Daryl answers slowly, a little suspicious.

‘Okay! Now you go.’

‘I dunno,’ Daryl mutters. He brings the hand with the lighter up so he can gnaw on his thumb again.

‘Just say the first thing that pops into your head.’

‘What’s your favorite song you like to sing?’

Now it’s Beth’s turn to blink. ‘Oh,’ she recovers quickly and smiles, ‘it’s a song called _be good_. You wouldn’t know it, it’s not really famous or anything.’

Daryl ducks his head a little, ‘a’right.’

‘Do you like my singing?’

‘That your question?’ the boy asks as he looks at her from behind his long bangs.

She laughs, rocking a little in place, ‘yes, that’s my question, Dare. You gonna answer?’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ Daryl nods as he thinks about it. He tugs at his flesh with his teeth. ‘Sometimes,’ he mutters, glancing at her and then looking away quickly.

‘Okay,’ Beth says easily. The cheerfulness hasn’t faded from her tone. ‘That’s fair enough, I guess.’ She plays with the bracelets on her wrist for a long time before she looks up again. ‘So you drank before you were twelve, you smoke, you’re little mister independent and you were always complaining that the prison like was like a romance novel. Daryl Dixon,’ she leans forward with a cheeky grin on her face. ‘Have you ever kissed a girl?’

His eyes widen a bit before heat races up his spine, curling around his shoulders, up his neck and to his cheeks. He can feel that he’s blushing. ‘What’s all that shit got to do with _that_?’

‘Nothing much,’ Beth laughs, ‘just wanted to see you blush. So? Have you? Or can I take a shot now?’

He scowls at his boots. ‘No.’

‘What, I can’t take a shot or…’

‘Ain’t never kissed a girl, a’right?’ he says, looking anywhere but at the girl who’s sitting opposite him. ‘My turn, you play an instrument?’ As soon as the question leaves his lips, he’s angry at himself. He’d just wanted the attention to be drawn away from him but with only the two of them, it won’t take Beth very long to turn the table again with such an easy question to answer.

‘Piano,’ she says quickly, ‘my turn. You ever _thought_ about kissing a girl?’

‘Stop bein’ a goddamn perv.’

‘You’re not answering the question,’ Beth says cheerfully as she raises the jar to her lips.

‘Fine,’ Daryl snarls before she can take a sip. ‘Yeah. I.. ‘course I thought about it. Now stop it with the bullshit questions, okay? That ain’t fair.’

‘Why not? You can ask me stuff like that, too.’

‘Don’t wanna know stuff like that about ya!’

Beth giggles, ‘then you should let me take a shot and stop spilling all your secrets. Go on. Ask something you do want to know then.’

Daryl looks at his cigarette, rolls it between his fingers. He scrunches up his nose, rubs at it with the back of his left hand and then peeks at the girl. ‘What’s your favorite memory of your dad?’

Beth goes still. The moonshine ripples inside the jar as her fingers start to shake a little bit. She opens her mouth, closes it again and blinks back some tears.

Daryl watches. He digs his fingernails into the palm of his hand as a punishment. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters, ‘you don’t have to answer that, I’ll-‘

‘No, no,’ Beth says quickly, wiping at her cheeks even though no tears have spilled over her lashes. A watery smile mars her face. She plucks at her bracelets again, thinking about it, and then shrugs. ‘I – I just don’t know. Normal things, I think. Like,’ she smiles, ‘that he’d always be there when we got out of school when we were younger? He’d be waiting for us at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. He’d listen to our stories and then shoo us out to the barn to do our chores. Things like that. Normal things.’

Daryl ducks his head and nods, his hair falling into his eyes.

‘What do you miss about your dad?’ Beth asks quietly.

‘Drink up.’

Her head snaps up, eyes wide. ‘You don’t want to answer that?’

‘No, I don’t. Drink up,’ he says with a nod to her moonshine.

Beth narrows her eyes but takes a sip.

He misses a million things about his dad. The way Will used to put a warm hand on his neck, the way he smelled, the way he would laugh, how he would wink at him from across the room, the stories he used to tell about his mother, the million times he’d hoisted him onto his back or shoulders to carry him home after a long hunt. He misses the camping trips, the rides in their truck, the way he would kiss his forehead before going to sleep. But he also misses those lessons. Sometimes he misses the sound of leather slithering out of denim loops, those slow steps towards him, the way moonshine always made the Southern accent a thousand times worse, or better.

He misses being told to brace himself. The lashes still come today but the hurt is now somewhere inside of him. Not in any place that can just scar and heal and feel better the next day. It’s nothing that can be written off to broken rules or drunken mistakes. They still come and there’s no one left who tells him to brace himself for them.

‘It’s your turn,’ Beth reminds him.

‘Why did you wanna slit your wrists?’

It’s a cruel question but he doesn’t care anymore. He watches how she flinches.

‘Go ahead and get cancer,’ she says, the smile gone from her face and eyes.

He lights the cigarette with a practiced move and inhales deeply, enjoying the way the nicotine rushes to his head. The smoke billows between them. When he lifts it back to his lips, she clacks her tongue. ‘One drag and one sip, Dare.’

‘It’ll go to waste,’ he says because the cigarette still burns and smoke drifts to the ceiling but he can’t enjoy it now.

Beth shrugs. She looks him dead in the eye. ‘Why did your mother burn?’

He stares back.

‘I heard Glenn talking about it with Maggie. My cell was next to theirs. They thought I was already asleep.’

‘Stupid accident,’ Daryl answers. A small smirk teases his lips up. The question doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. This isn’t a retaliation, he thinks. He knows what happened. His dad wouldn’t have lied about that. ‘Do ya miss Zack?’

‘Yes.’ Her hands shake again. She looks more angry than hurt. ‘How often did your daddy beat you?’

Daryl grind his teeth together, anger flaring in his chest again. ‘Didn’t keep count.’

‘So many times, huh?’

‘Stop talkin’ about him.’

‘You started it.’ She glares at him now. ‘You’re being a jackass.’

‘’s a stupid game,’ he mutters when he lifts the cigarette to his lips again to take another drag. Ashes fall onto his jeans. He brushes them off and watches how they land on the dry floorboards.

‘Because you’re too afraid to talk about your dad?’

‘Ain’t afraid of nothing.’

‘You are.’ Beth’s voice goes quiet but she keeps on going. ‘Back when you had the flu and you had to go to block A? You had these fever dreams. One time, you dreamt about your dad. I heard about it from the people who were in there. They said you screamed so loud that even Rick could hear you outside of A. He went in to the room with the glass, you know? Tried to find out what was going on with you. But you were just dreaming about Will. About what he used to do to you.’

‘Shut up.’

‘You dreamt about Shane too,’ she says now, chin a little higher in defiance. ‘That he’d died. You cried in your sleep.’

Daryl stares at the girl. He can’t even see her, he’s so mad. She’s still talking but he can’t hear her anymore. In a fit of rage, he throws his cigarette onto the floor before jumping to his feet. The girl flinches but he storms right past her, busts the door open and draws his knife.

The walker is still there. Caught in the low bushes.

He stalks over, grabs the man by his shoulder and yanks him out of the greenery.

The walker stumbles.

Daryl pushes him to his knees and then kicks his back so the walker goes sprawling into the dirt. Then he jumps onto the man’s back, knees digging into the spine and he lifts the knife high before driving it into the skull. Over and over and over and over until he can’t see anything anymore but blood and brain matter and a broken skull. Sweat is running down his back now. There’s blood everywhere. On the ground, on his jeans, on his shirt, his arms, hands, face, hair.

Beth must have followed him because she’s sitting in the doorway now. One hand clasped over his mouth and with horror in her eyes. Tears are rolling down her cheeks.

‘What the hell are you cryin’ for,’ he yells at her, still so angry. ‘He was _dead_! It don’t matter no more!’ He drives his knife into the mess one more time before scrambling to his feet and stalking over to her. ‘What the fuck do you know about anything, huh? Want to know about my dad? Yeah, he fuckin’ beat the crap out of me every other night but I’d fuckin’ earned that!’ He jabs a finger into her face, ‘you wanna know what I miss? I miss his goddamn belt on my back, you stupid ass girl. I miss him beating me until I couldn’t see straight no more because it meant he gave a damn, okay? It meant that there was someone out there who actually gave a fuck about me.’

Beth looks up at him. ‘ _Shane_ cares about you. Glenn! Maggie!’

‘ _They’re dead_!’ Daryl screams. ‘Everyone we know is dead!’

‘You don’t know that!’

‘Might as well be, because you ain’t ever going to see ‘em again! Shane. You ain’t never going to see Maggie again.’

‘Dare, just stop.’

‘No!’ He takes a stumbling step backwards. ‘The Governor rolled right up to our gates. Maybe if I wouldn’t have stopped lookin’. If I hadn’t listened to Shane….Maybe ‘cause I gave up, that’s on me.’

‘Dare…’ Beth gets to her feet now, reaching out to him.

He takes another step back. ‘No.’ He looks at his booted feet. Shoulder curling in, eyes filling with tears. His voice breaks on the next words. ‘And your dad… Maybe… Maybe I could have done something.’

Beth takes a quick step towards him, grabs his arm and yanks him to her chest. She wraps her arms around him, holding him close. Her nose in his dark hair, breathing him in as she hugs him tightly.

He leans into her. Rests his forehead on her collarbone and just stands there.

His shoulders shake when he starts to cry.

 

 

‘He’d change the rules.’

Beth looks up. ‘What?’

They’re sitting out on the porch. It’s night. The stars are in the sky and Daryl knows they’re a long way from the prison and the tracks. But he knows which way they should go now.

‘My dad,’ he says when he pulls the knife out of the wood. He’d cleaned it earlier and is now just messing around with it. Jabbing it into the wood of the porch and then yanking it out again, scraping it over the floorboards just to have something to do with his hands. ‘He’d change the rules when he was drunk. We used to have a cabin just like this where he’d made his own moonshine. Sold it sometimes, but he drank most of it. First just at the cabin, I guess.’ Daryl scrunches his nose up, ‘Merle used to say my mom hated the smell of it in the house. Wouldn’t allow it. I don’t remember that. When she were gone, he used to drink in the trailer too.’

Beth is watching him intently and doesn’t interrupt.

‘He got drunk and he'd change the rules. Made up some bullshit ones, ya know?’ Daryl says when he looks out into the darkness that’s surrounding them. ‘Would wake me up in the middle of the damn night, drag me out of bed, say I hadn’t kissed him goodnight. That that were a rule now. Always had to do it.’ He shrugs, ‘always did it too, ya know? Was our thing, I’d kiss him on his cheek and he’d kiss my forehead, but he weren’t even there when I went to bed that night so… And weren’t no goddamn _rule_ before anyway.’

Beth cocks her head to the side to show that she’s listening.

‘He'd forgotten all about it the next day and I never gave him another kiss goodnight,’ Daryl mutters as he tilts his head back to let it rest against the banister. ‘Happened all the time. Dozens of made-up bullshit rules. That’s why I hate moonshine. Ain’t nothing but trouble.’

‘Because it made him change the rules?’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

Beth opens her mouth but closes it again. She’s dying to ask a question but won’t.

He answers it anyway. ‘He’d drag me to the living room, make me take off my shirt. Would tell me to brace myself, ya know? So I could take the hit. Would ask me if I were ready,’ he scratches at his arm. ‘Then teach me good.’

The girl winces.

‘Weren’t so bad when he were sober,’ Daryl tells her. ‘If I’d done something stupid and he’d teach me when sober? Hmm, it’d hurt like a bitch but it’d be fine. No scars, nothing. But if he were drunk?’ He frowns and jabs the knife into the wood again. ‘He just wouldn’t stop, ya know?’

‘Sometimes you can’t stop. With the walkers? Sometimes you can’t stop.’

He shrugs. ‘Just get real mad.’ He glances at the girl. ‘Bad blood, I guess.’

She cocks her head to the side again. ‘You miss him, don't you?’

He nods, scratches at his cheeks and hides behind his hand. ‘Yeah. Something fierce.’

That makes her smile. ‘I miss Maggie. I miss her bossing me around.’ She chuckles and then looks away. ‘I miss my big brother Shawn. He was so annoying and overprotective. And my dad.’ They look at each other. ‘I thought…’ she halts and then corrects herself, ‘I hoped he'd just live the rest of his life in peace, you know? I thought Maggie and Glenn would have a baby and he'd get to be a grandpa. And we'd have birthdays and holidays and summer picnics.’ She smiles. ‘And he'd get really old.’

Daryl bites on his lips.

‘And it'd happen, but it'd be quiet. It'd be okay.’ She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘He'd be surrounded by people he loved.’ She laughs but chokes back a sob at the same time. Tears fill her eyes again. She wrings her hands. ‘That's how unbelievably stupid I am.’ She grabs her bottle of moonshine and takes a sip.

‘That's how it was supposed to be,’ Daryl tells her.

‘I wish I could just _change_.’

‘You did.’

‘Not enough,’ she says. ‘Not like you. It's like you were made for how things are now.’

He knows that’s not something to be proud of. ‘I'm just used to it, things being ugly,’ he says with a nod at the cabin. ‘Growing up in a place like this.’

‘But you got away from it.’ She sounds so hopeful that it makes something inside his chest hurt.

‘I didn't.’

‘You _did_.’

He doesn’t want to fight again and gives in. ‘Maybe you got to keep on remindin’ me sometimes.’

‘No,’ she says with a small smile. ‘Little mister independent, remember? You’ve got to do everything yourself, including that. We all have jobs to do. That one is yours. I’ll be gone someday.’

‘Stop.’

‘I will,’ she insists. ‘You're gonna be the last man standing. _You are._ ’

He fidgets with the knife but then puts it away. He meets her eye again.

‘You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon.’

He looks away. ‘Good lord. Thought you weren’t an angry drunk like my old man, but you sure as hell ain’t no happy drunk neither.’

‘Yeah, I'm happy. I'm just not blind,’ she laughs, shaking her head. ‘You got to stay who you are, not who you were,’ she tells him. ‘Places like this, you have to put it away.’

‘What if you can't?’

‘You have to. Or it kills you. Here,’ she puts a hand over her heart.

Daryl takes a deep breath and looks out into the darkness. ‘We should go inside,’ he mutters.

‘We should burn it down.’ The girl looks giddy at the prospect. Her teary eyes are gleaming now and she beams at him.

He bites on his nail for a second. Then he makes up his mind and hauls himself to his feet before leaning down and snatching the bottle of moonshine off the floorboards. In the door opening, he turns back to her. ‘We're gonna need more booze.’

 

 

They spray the moonshine everywhere. On the floors and ceilings, on the plastic chairs, on the broken glasses, all over that armchair, over the papers, on the walls. They laugh and splash the clear liquid around, shaking bottles and smashing jars.

It’s mad.

Daryl laughs and makes sure that every inch of the floor is covered, dancing on the spot as he tries not to get any of it onto his new boots.

Beth snickers and takes care of the ceilings, dragging the boy behind her when it starts to drip down.

When they’re satisfied, they jump off the porch and walk a couple of paces.

Daryl digs into his backpack to grab the stack of money he’d stolen from the country club. ‘You wanna?’ he asks as he holds out his zippo lighter to her.

‘Hell yeah,’ she grins back, flipping it open and setting the paper on fire.

Daryl throws it into the cabin.

Flames burst into existence.

Together, they watch how that old cabin burns.

Beth raises her middle finger, flipping the house off. She nudges him between the ribs.

He glances at her before raising his middle finger too.

 

 

 


	44. The mutt and the lost cause

  

* * *

 

 

 

He teaches her how to hunt.

It feels strange to pass the crossbow to someone else. He almost feels naked without it, and he’s glad that she handles it with great care. Slim fingers curl around the handle, flipping the safety off before she lifts the weapon to her right shoulder, peering down the sight. Sometimes she still has some trouble doing two things as the same time, keeping her aim and sneaking through the woods, but she’s making great progress.

He tries to be patient. It’s aggravating when she just waltzes over fresh tracks without a care in the world and he has to keep reminding himself that she has only been practicing for a couple of days now. He bites his tongue when she handles the bow wrong, jumping forward to bat her fingers away from the path of the string. Sometimes she flinches. Most of the time she just thanks him before adjusting her grip.

‘Are we close?’ she asks.

‘Almost done,’ he answers quietly, looming over her shoulder so he can check her hold and aim.

‘How do you know?’

‘The signs are all there. Just got to know how to read ‘em.’

‘But what are we tracking?’

Daryl glances at the ground to make sure that they’re still on track. ‘You tell me.’

She lowers the bow and turns to look at him, a hint of frustration in her stance.

He shrugs, ‘you’re the one who wanted to learn.’

She sighs. ‘Well, something came through here. The pattern is all zigzaggy.’ She bends down to examine the tracks up close. After a second however, she straightens with a proud smile on her face. ‘It’s a walker!’

Daryl scratches at his chin, rather unimpressed by the deduction. ‘Maybe it’s a drunk.’

She reaches out to punch him in the shoulder. ‘I’m getting good at this. Pretty soon I won’t need you at all!’

‘Yeah,’ he grunts, waving a vague hand while he keeps his eyes on the tracks surrounding them. They are tracking a walker, have been for about a mile without the girl even noticing it, but at least she noticed eventually. ‘Keep on trackin’.’

Beth manages to lead them through the woods just fine until they hit a clearing. The walker is sitting at the center of it, probably eating some dead animal because it doesn’t smell or hear them coming. When the girl spots that it has a gun, Daryl nods that she should take it out. Bow to her right shoulder just like he taught her, finger on the trigger. She tilts her head too far but Daryl has already adjusted the sight to compensate for that. It’s a rookie mistake, one he will drill out of her later. Slow, measured steps, but Beth isn’t looking where she’s going. She’s too focused on lining up the shot to pay any mind to her surroundings.

And Daryl is too focused on making sure that she’ll make the shot to watch where she’s putting her feet.

A trap closes around the heel of her foot, metal teeth digging into her boots and skin.

She grunts and falls over, landing awkwardly on her hip but she manages to keep the bow up.

The walker turns around, gets up and walks over towards her.

Daryl is already running to catch up but Beth fires the bolt without taking the time to aim properly. The bolt lodges itself in the walker’s chin and never hits the brain. With a grunt, he yanks the weapon out of her grip before smashing it into the walker’s brain, taking him out with one mighty swing. A second later he slides onto the forest floor next to Beth’s foot, quickly dismantling the trap. He puts a careful hand on the heel of her boot, ‘can you move it?’

Beth tries, winces a little but doesn’t cry and then nods. ‘Yeah.’

Daryl helps her rotate it and glance up at her. ‘Means it ain’t broken, right?’

‘Yeah, it’s not broken. It just hurts real bad. Help me up?’ She holds out her hands.

‘We can take a second.’

Beth wriggles her fingers, ‘there’s a walker two inches from me and it smells. Help me up!’ With a soft laugh, he gets to his feet and grabs her hands, hauling her up too. She hops around on one foot, grabbing hold of his left shoulder to stay upright. When she puts her foot down and tries to put some pressure on it, she winces again. ‘It’s okay,’ she says when she sees his concerned look. ‘Just – grab your bow and come back?’

‘Can you walk?’ he asks as he grabs the weapon.

‘If you help me.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he grabs her hand and loops her arm around his shoulders. Then he slides his arm around her waist, tucking her into his side. ‘Lean on me.’

‘Thanks, Dare.’

‘Yeah, you’re welcome,’ he mutters as they slowly make their way out of the clearing. Then he squints at her, ‘ _pretty soon I won’t need you at all_ ,’ he parrots mockingly.

Beth laughs and swats at his head which causes her to wobble dangerously. ‘You can’t tease me when I’m hurt! I’m in pain, Daryl. I thought you were my knight with a shining crossbow?’

‘Called me a damn cavemen two seconds later.’

‘Well, you are,’ Beth states.

‘You want my help or what?’

‘I _need_ your help,’ she says as she loops her arm around his shoulders again. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

 

 

Their progress is slow. They manage to find a stride that works for both of them, Daryl slowing down while Beth figures out how much of her weight he can take between the steps and leaning heavily on him. At first he feels awkward about being so close to her. His hand curled around her hipbone, her arm around his shoulders, sides pressed together as they walk. He hasn’t showered in days now, not since they left the prison, and her arm sometimes touches the sweaty part of the back of his neck where his hair is plastered against his skin. Heat crawls up his neck, embarrassment makes his answers clipped whenever she tries to strike up a conversation about anything.

He’s not quite sure why he suddenly gives a damn about that, anyway. They’ve spent months on the road together before the prison where he’d go for weeks without dipping into a stream somewhere. And she hasn’t showered either, so if she’s going to throw it in his face he can throw it right back but she doesn’t mention it. Maybe she’s just being polite. He’s helping her after all and she’s always been very nice about everything. Back at the prison they hadn’t spent much time together when the Woodbury people got settled in. There were older kids then, some in their late teens like Zack and even a couple in their twenties and Beth often sought them out whenever she didn’t have a chore to do. Daryl didn’t mind. He had Carl and Shane and Glenn to hang out with after all, but the girl always struck up a conversation with him when she would see him.

Whether it was when he was lounging in his cell with his comics on one of his days off and she happened to walk by with Judith on her hip, or when he came back covered in mud and blood from his latest hunt. That never mattered to her. She’d always beam and wave him over, asking him about his day and what he’d be doing later. Sometimes he’d tried to slink away when she had been with her new friends. He knows it’s not very cool to hang out with younger kids so he’d tried to save her the embarrassment of having to talk to the resident redneck kid but she’d always spotted him. And had always called him over, whether Zack was there or that older girl with her brother.

‘Daryl.’ Beth lifts her hand from his shoulder to tug at a strand of his greasy hair. ‘Are you listening?’

‘What?’

‘I said; are you okay? We can take a break.’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah,’ he wipes the sweat of his brow and looks away.

‘Okay.’ Beth draws the words out which means that she doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying. Her gaze darts around, trying to find a good place to stop.

‘Swear ya, I’m good to go, come on. Can’t stop here. Fuckin’ walker tracks all over the damn place.’

There aren’t any walker tracks and Beth knows it but she still nods and lets him lead her further.

They don’t really have a heading anymore. Last night they’d come to the conclusion that there’s no point in going back to the prison or the train tracks. The prison is lost and the tracks ended. Now, they’re just going to travel in a wide circle around the prison, trying to find new leads and hopefully run into some of their own people. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the best they could come up with.

Daryl can read the stars and the ground but needs a place to come back to or someone to follow for either of that to work out. He has neither.

Beth still can’t tell the difference between a walker and a human footstep. He’d made sure her default has been switched to walker by now. The first four times she’d shouted that she’d found their family’s prints, he’d almost believed her, still far too hopeful himself. Now, he doesn’t think that they will ever find the others again. But Beth believes it, and he hates fighting with her.

‘I need to sit for a moment,’ Beth says, jerking him out of his thoughts again.

‘Okay. Just a little further, it’s a little way downhill, see? There we go.’ They stumble out of the bushes and onto a dirt road. Daryl looks up. ‘No way, Beth, look.’

The girl looks up too. The pain melts from her face.

There’s a large house at the end of a sprawling lawn. Three stories high, white, and surrounded by large oak trees. Even in the slight fog, it’s a beautiful sight. The lawn, however, turns out to be a graveyard. Old graves line the road. Grey tombstones, golden plaques, a flag post at the very end. There’s no proud flag waving in the wind anymore. Perhaps it had been taken down before everything went bad. Maybe somebody had stolen it.

‘Can ya make it to that ridge right there?’ Daryl asks as he rubs at his nose with the back of his hand. He nods at one of the graves that’s closest. It’s a little elevated, high enough for her to sit comfortably on without having to jump up.

‘If you help me.’

‘Been doin’ that all day.’

‘Yeah, _sorry_ ,’ Beth bites back, ‘I didn’t mean to stumble into a bear trap, okay?’

Daryl scowls at his boots. ‘Just meant that I ain’t goin’ nowhere.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. _Oh_ ,’ Daryl echoes as he reaches up to grab her hand, pulling it down a bit so she leans more on his shoulders than her own feet. ‘I’m gonna stop with feedin’ ya though, you’re heavier than ya look.’

When they sit down on the ridge, their gazes automatically go to the headstone in front of them. Weathered by time and nature, washed out but still readable. The name doesn’t mean anything to him but he takes his time to figure out the words. Reading still doesn’t come easy to him even with all the practice of the comic books. The dates are easier to understand. The man hadn’t been very old. Maybe a couple of years younger than Will had been. And beneath the date, two words which make his heart heavy.

 _Beloved father_.

He peeks at Beth out of the corner of his eye.

She’s staring at the tombstone, eyes distant and hazy but there are no more tears rolling down her pale cheeks. She just looks sad and lost.

He looks at his boots, kicks his feet before getting up. There are flowers growing right by his left foot. They’re wild and yellow. In another time someone might have considered them weeds, but they’ve reclaimed the land and are growing freely between the graves now. With heavy boots, he walks over to the grave and puts the flowers on top of the stone.

When he sits back down next to Beth, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers, entwining their fingers. She doesn’t let go for a long time, not even when she leans forward to look around Daryl, at the house. ‘Maybe there are people there.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods even though he doubts it. If someone lives there, it means they survived the first two years of this disaster. It means they’re strong and smart and someone would have been on guard duty. They would have seen them coming. And he doubts they would have let them onto their grounds without so much as a warning shot. ‘If there are, I’ll handle them.’

‘ _We_ will handle them,’ Beth corrects, squeezing his hand.

He squeezes back. ‘Yeah.’

‘There are still good people, Dare.’

He looks away, back at the stone. At the engraving. ‘I don’t think the good ones survive,’ he says.

 

 

‘Give it a minute,’ Daryl warns as Beth moves forward to limp over the threshold. She backs down while they wait for anything to move inside the large house. Nothing does.

Daryl goes in first. Boots squeaking on polished floors. His gaze roams over the strange furniture. It’s fancier than any place he’s been in for years. With a frown, he notes that there isn’t any dust on the floors, stairs or paintings. There’s no blood anywhere, no rubbish. The wood isn’t rotting, roof not leaking and even though all the windows have been boarded up, none of them seem to be actually broken.

‘It’s so clean,’ Beth states.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl rumbles in agreement. ‘Someone’s been tending to it. May still be around.’ He walks into the room on his left. There’s a casket with a body. The body doesn’t move when Daryl scuffs his boots on the floor, so it’s dead for good. He walks over, Beth following on his heels.

There’s something weird about the guy’s face, Daryl thinks as he leans in. From a distance it had just been a strange shimmer, but now that he is closer, he can see that the texture of his skin is different in places.

He reaches out and scrapes his nails over the man’s cheek. He wipes off a thick layer of make-up. Beneath it, he can see the telltale rot of a walker’s skin.

‘What the fuck?’

‘It’s a funeral home,’ Beth realizes.

‘What?’

‘It’s a funeral home,’ the girl repeats, a little slower as if he just hadn’t heard right. She realizes what the real problem is after a second. ‘It’s where they take the bodies before they’re buried. People would take the body and tend to it and then the family could come in to say goodbye,’ she explains.

‘Thought it was someone’s damn home,’ Daryl mutters as he wrinkles his nose.

‘It’s supposed to feel cozy.’

‘At a funeral?’

Beth rolls her eyes, ‘at a funeral home. You’re supposed to feel at ease so you can grieve.’

Daryl looks at the strange wallpaper, the high ceilings, the candles and flowers and soft colors. He shrugs. ‘If ya need to find me a place? Dump me in a bar somewhere,’ he says with a nod at the casket, ‘would feel more at home there than in this stuck-up place.’

‘I’ll wrap you in jackets and leave your body on top of the booze,’ Beth nods. ‘Just like how you used to sleep there, right? Or maybe I’ll find you a hunting cabin! Like the one – ‘

‘No,’ Daryl interrupts sharply. He looks away. ‘Just – I mean… A bar would be cool, ya know? Or a truck. A blue one, if you can find it.’

‘Why?’

‘Merle’s was blue.’ He wipes his hand on the white lining of the coffin, ignoring Beth’s sound of protest, and then moves towards a set of stairs that leads down. ‘Come on.’

There are two bodies in the cellar. Both on slabs, both dressed in suits. Neither one of them sits up when they stumble into the room. The suits have been clearly put on after the two had already died. They’re too clean to have been on any walker. The bodies used to be two men. One clearly younger than the other. The suits vaguely remind Daryl of his fever dreams. Of Merle fidgeting with his tie after helping their dad get ready for the funeral. He doesn’t remember much about that day, only that Merle would let him hide behind his leg.

It takes him a little while to realize that their mom wouldn’t have been at a place like this. The coffin had been closed. No amount of make-up can restore a charred body.

He stalks over to some cupboards on the side and yanks them open. There are medical supplies in there. He finds some gauze and tears the package open with his teeth. ‘Let’s get that ankle wrapped. You know how, right? I’ve seen your dad do it before but…’ He trails off and looks at the girl. She’s looking at the bodies. ‘Looks like somebody ran out of dolls to dress up,’ he comments.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Beth says and she sounds hurt by his words. ‘Whoever did this cared. They wanted these people to get a funeral. They remembered these things were people before all this. They didn’t let it change them in the end. Don’t you think that’s beautiful?’

He doesn’t. It makes him sick. He thinks about all the things he has done to make it this far. The people he slaughtered in Woodbury, all the times he drove his knife into a brain to end it all, how he’d burned his own father, watched how Sophia stumbled out of that barn, how he’d blown up a tank with people still inside just to make it. He wants to think that that was necessary. That that is how anyone survives, by flipping switches inside hearts and minds until they stumble out at the other end, somehow still alive. He doesn’t want to hear that there are people who wouldn’t _let_ this change them. That they fought it, somehow. That they were still the same people as before all of this.

He likes to think of his own transformation as strength. Not a weakness. Or as something ugly.

‘Come on,’ he mutters as he sinks down onto his knees, holding his hand out for her foot. ‘Tell me if I’m fuckin’ it all up.’

 

 

The fridge is empty, along with all the cupboards on Beth’s side.

Daryl hops onto the counter of the kitchen, muddy boots on the white wood. He opens all the cupboards he passes, wobbling a bit as he tries to keep his balance on the small ridge.

Beth turns around, ‘you find anything?’ She snorts when she sees him. ‘Hey spider monkey, did you find anything?’

He opens the last cupboard on his side. ‘Whoa!’ With a thud, he lands on the floor again, staring up at the filled cupboards. Jugs of water, coke bottles, and food too. A couple of rows, enough to last them a while if they ration it properly. Right now, though, he just wants to get his hands on the coke and see if there’s anything sweet hiding in there. ‘Peanut butter and jelly!’ he says, so excited that his voice cracks on the words. That has been happening a lot the last couple of weeks. Shane had been teasing him mercilessly about it whenever it happened, saying that he was becoming a man now.

Daryl had noticed that too, of course. His body has been changing a lot over the past time. His voice has become deeper and rougher, edging closer to that deep rumble that Will used to have, and he’d been quite proud to discover that there’s hair growing in places it previously wasn’t. Glenn had been the one to tease him about the few whiskers he’d managed to grow on his chin and cheek. Unlike Shane, who’d just roared with laughter when Glenn had told him that he’d caught Daryl inspecting his new beard and the two hairs on his chest in front of the mirror near the shower stalls, Glenn had actually offered help.

One day, Glen would teach him how to shave.

Daryl had been secretly pleased and excited until Maggie had walked by, snorting and winking at Shane, who tried to bite back another laugh, and dropping a comment about how the Korean wasn’t exactly an expert in the shaving department. She’d stroked his smooth cheek lovingly before placing a teasing kiss on the tip of his nose.

Glenn had told him not to listen to her. He could grow a mustache. Possibly half a beard. And that hadn’t even mattered, he’d assured Daryl. Every dad teaches their son to shave.

Shane had loudly protested, saying that he had learned to shave on his own and that cuts and razor rash were part of the coming of age experience, but Glenn had rolled his eyes and mouthed at the boy ‘I’ll teach you’.

‘What’s that?’ Beth asks as she leans onto the counter and points at the jars at the very top.

Daryl frowns and clambers back on, trying to get a closer look. ‘Pig’s feet. That’s a white trash brunch right there.’

‘It all looks good to me,’ Beth shrugs as she starts to take the jars out.

‘No, hold up,’ Daryl objects even though his fingers sneak towards the peanut butter jar. ‘Ain’t a speck of dust on this.’

‘So?’

‘That means somebody just put it here. This is someone’s stash. Maybe they’re still alive.’ He lets that sink in for a moment and then nods, ‘a’right, we’ll take some of it and we’ll leave the rest, a’right?’

Beth puts one jar back. ‘I knew it,’ she laughs.

‘Knew what?’ He opens the jar of peanut butter, silently claiming it as his own.

‘It’s like I said. There are still good people,’ she beams when she’s looking right at him.

He frowns, dips his fingers into the jar and then stuffs his fingers into his mouth, slurping obscenely.

‘ _Gross_!

 

 

Because Beth can’t walk, he strings up an alarm made out of tin cans and hopes that it will do. He wanders through the house, checking all the windows and boarding up all the doors except one. Eventually he makes his way down the last hallway. The sound of a piano and Beth’s soft singing leads him back to her.

She’s behind the piano, fingers ghosting over the keys like they’d almost forgotten their places. Her voice is strong but soft, the words more for herself than the empty room around her.

He leans against the door, head titled to the side. After a couple of lines, he clears his throat because he doesn’t want her to think that he’s creeping on her.

She’s spooked anyway, whirling around on the seat and only relaxing when she spots him.

‘The place is nailed up tight.’ He puts his bow down on a fancy-looking couch and walks towards the coffin. This one is empty. With a grunt, he pushes himself up and over the side, sitting down in it.

‘What are you doing?’ Beth asks with a confused smile.

Daryl swings his feet over and in, putting his head on the soft pillow. ‘This is the comfiest bed I’ve had in years.’

‘Really?’

‘I ain’t kiddin’.’ He relaxes into the soft cushions. ‘why don’t you go ahead and play some more?’ he asks with a  wave at the piano. ‘Keep singin’.’

She looks a bit surprised. ‘I thought my signing annoyed you.’

‘Only sometimes.’ That makes her laugh softly. Fondness causes her eyes to become a little less dull. ‘And there aint no jukebox, so…’ he smirks as he wriggles around to get comfortable.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she just turns back to the piano.

‘Hey,’ he calls out softly. ‘Maybe… maybe you can sing me that song? Like… your favorite? I mean, I don’t care. Whatever. I’m going to sleep.’

The sound of the piano washes over him.

‘It’s clear now what we intend,’ Beth sings. From her tone of voice, he can tell that she’s smiling. ‘We’re alone in our own world.’

 

 

That morning, Daryl tries to give Beth a piggy ride to the kitchen. They’ve both slept for more than five hours and barely remember what it felt like to be well rested. Daryl is jittery due to his energy, eager to get out of the house and go hunting, running, do something, but Beth can’t come and he doesn’t want to leave her alone. So they stay inside. Daryl lets her hop on, grabbing her legs and hoisting her up higher with a grunt. He walks unsteadily, nearly toppling over due to her weight. She’s taller than him and it feels like there are arms and legs everywhere. ‘Ya damn octopus,’ he laughs as he crashes into a wall again, mindful of her injured foot but not caring that their shoulders will be bruised later.

‘Almost there, almost there!’ Beth urges him on, pointing to the door of the kitchen and laughing in his ear.

‘Stop bein’ so heavy!’ Daryl complains when they crash through the door and he dumps her unceremoniously into a chair. He’s breathing hard but beaming at her. ‘There ya go.’

‘Thank you, Dare,’ she giggles.

‘Let’s eat,’ Daryl says eagerly, plopping down onto the chair and grabbing a jar with the pig’s feet. He wants to eat that first because then he can wash it down with the diet coke they found earlier. Before he can even get the lid off, they hear the tin cans rattle outside. It’s too much noise for it to be the wind. He whirls out of the chair again, grabbing the bow from another table and pointing at Beth. ‘Stay,’ he snaps, side-stepping into the hallway before peeking outside. He can’t see anything move but the cans still rattle so he opens the door carefully.

There’s a dog. Coat matted but still more or less white. It’s missing an eye. Just another stray looking for a home.

‘It’s just a damn dog,’ Daryl calls out to Beth before he sinks to his knees. ‘Hi,’ he says, tone soft as he reaches out to the animal. ‘Come here, boy.’ Just before his fingertips brush over the coat of the dog, it yelps and darts away, back the way it came. Daryl sighs and shuts the door. When he turns around, Beth is right behind him in the doorway.

‘He wouldn’t come in?’

‘I told you to stay back!’

‘Yeah,’ Beth says, another smile breaking through, ‘but Dare, you said there was a _dog_.’

‘Maybe he’ll come back around,’ he says as he pulls at her shoulder, turning her around. ‘Come on, back to the kitchen. Ya best not have eaten my feet. And I ain’t carryin’ ya this time. You done broke my back, girl.’

 

 

Beth writes in her diary and Daryl horses around in the kitchen.

Beth plays the piano and Daryl sits still long enough to listen to two songs before he gets up to explore some more.

Beth gives him a lecture about not sliding down the banisters of the stairs and Daryl still smokes a cigarette.

Beth thinks of a game that has Daryl tearing through the house, running up and down the stairs to find things within sixty seconds, a tailored game of I-spy.

It’s the afternoon.

Beth listens to how Daryl tries to mimic a song she’d played earlier on the piano upstairs while she uses the bathroom downstairs and Daryl doesn’t hit any of the right keys.

Beth shows him the right ones and Daryl pretends he doesn’t want to learn.

Beth calls him a terrible teen and Daryl defiantly smokes another cigarette.

They both decide that another game of truth or dare would probably end up with the world on fire so they don’t play.

Instead, they have dinner and it’s evening.

Daryl notes happily that the day has gone by pretty fast. He’s eating some of the jelly, scooping it up with a spoon because Beth keeps complaining about his eating habits and he gets tired of it.

‘I’m going to write them a thank-you note.’

‘Why?’ Daryl asks as he tilts his head back and lets the goop glide from the spoon into his mouth. It plops onto his tongue and he hums.

‘Still gross,’ Beth informs him. ‘And it’s for when they come back. _If_ they come back. Even if they’re not coming back, I still want to say thanks.’

Daryl hesitates. ‘Maybe you don’t have to leave that.’

She stops writing and looks at him.

‘Maybe we should stick around here for a while. They come back? We’ll just make it work. I mean, they may… may be nuts, but maybe it’ll be all right.’ He takes another big bite of the jelly just so he won’t have to look at her.

‘So you do think there are still good people around.’ She chuckles when he pulls a face. ‘What changed your mind?’

He glances at her a couple of times. ‘Ya know…’

‘What?’ She presses when he just keeps on eating.

He looks at her and mumbles something under his breath, shrugging a little.

She rolls her eyes, ‘don’t,’ she starts and then mimics him, mumbling something and shrugging. Then she turns serious again. ‘What changed your mind?’

The spoon slides back into the jelly. He puts the jar on the table and wipes his mouth. Maybe this is the same thing, he thinks. Maybe this is just another thing that makes him horribly uncomfortable but that doesn’t make it any less true and sometimes people need to hear him say those things.

‘You,’ he says quickly, blurting it out because he just want to get this over with.

Beth blinks.

‘You’re, like, you’re a good person, Beth,’ he says, stumbling over his words. He feels that he’s blushing something fierce. He hopes she can’t tell in the soft candle light. ‘You changed, ya know, but you ain’t… ya know. Ya ain’t like me, so… that’s good.’

Beth opens her mouth but she’s cut off by that dog barking again and scratching at the door.

‘I’m gona give that mutt one more chance,’ Daryl grumbles as he grabs the jar with pig feet and moves to the hallway. ‘Stay here, for real this time. If it comes in, it comes in. Ain’t nothing worth lookin’ at anyway.’

‘Okay, Dare,’ Beth says softly as she sits back down again.

He walks through the other room and into the hallway.

 

 

There, he stops.

The barking fades but the scratching at the door doesn’t stop.

He knows that the people who used to live here would have opened the door. The good people. The ones who’d held on to who they had been.

But Daryl wants to hold on to this.

To this right here, who is he now, because he’s still alive.

He is still here and the cabin burned but that doesn’t change anything. The marks are on his back and those will never fade. He won’t ever change again. Not after his mom, after the trailer, after Merle leaving and his dad…. Not after the Turn, not after Glenn, Shane, not after what happened. The prison and his dad and Hershel…  and everyone else.

Years ago, truly years already, Lori had called him a lost cause.

He knows she had been right. He wonders how she’d known, back then. A mother’s gut feeling that something is _wrong_ with a child.

But if he’s a lost cause then it doesn’t matter anymore what he does. How he does it.

He sets a new goal. Not _redemption_ , anymore. Not _change_ , either.

None of that.

Beth is a good person.

And he will do whatever it takes to make sure that she will stay that way.

The scratching dies down.

He doesn’t open the door.

Doesn’t even try to get the dog to come inside, to try and save him, there’s no point. Another lost cause.

 

 

He turns on his heels and walks back to the kitchen.

Beth looks at him expectantly.

‘Stupid mutt ran away again.’

They finish their dinner.

Beth teases him about his table manners and Daryl eats in the most disgusting way possible.

Beth mimics him and Daryl pretends to be at a posh tea-party, lifting his pinky as he tips the jar, catching one of the pig’s feet with his teeth.

They both laugh.

It’s night.

Beth sings him a song. And Daryl sleeps peacefully in his coffin.

 

 


	45. Claimed

 

* * *

 

 

 

On the second day, they find a small town near some train tracks. Warehouses, long since abandoned, and a couple of scattered houses between the overgrowing greenery. There’s a local supermarket with smashed in windows and empty shelves, a gas station that had burned at some point and is now only a black scar in the middle of the town. They make their way through the town, ducking into every house and rooting through the kitchen cupboards and basements.

Beth still walks gingerly, needing a break between every house, but at least she can move around on her own again.

They’d left the funeral home with heavy hearts. It had been a good place, with the food and music and peaceful nights, but they had to move on eventually. Beth is still convinced that they will find the others. She’d been the one to tell him to start packing up, that she was well enough to travel, and while he’d managed to get her to rest for another day, the next morning she’d been ready to go.

There’d been no point in trying to stall any longer.

The first night, when they had to sleep out in the open again with only their tin cans for protection, he’d whispered that they could still go back. Beth hadn’t answered. Maybe she’d only pretended that she couldn’t hear him, maybe she’d been just as tempted to go back and hide in that funeral home for a while longer, to hold on to that tranquility, but she’d ignored him.

They have to find the others.

There’s no sign that anyone of their group ever came across this town. They find a couple of bottles of water and some dusty cans of food, enough to last them another day. Beth follows him wordlessly, trusting his sense of direction as they head out of town again, not wanting to linger too long in suburban areas.

The last house attracts Daryl’s attention, however. It’s the only one that has been boarded up, and not by regular wood either. He steers away from the road and walks through the overgrown garden, jumping over a low fence to examine the place up close. Sheets of metal have been placed over the windows and doors. There’s a porch, covered in mud and rotting leaves. He bends down to examine it but finds no tracks.

‘What’s up, Dare?’ Beth asks as she makes her way over to him. ‘Do you want to look inside?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods. ‘Windows are welded shut, see? But the door’s locked from the outside.’ He points at a heavy chain and lock hanging from the door. ‘No prints, no tracks. Someone locked this up good and never came back.’

The girl moves forward to rattle the lock and chain. ‘But how are we going to get in?’

‘Think you can boost me up?’ Daryl asks as he jumps off the porch and squints up at the roof of the structure. From down here, he can see a window on the second floor that hasn’t been boarded up. If he can manage to climb up the porch’s roof, he can smash the glass and get in. ‘I can probably pull you up after.’

‘ _Probably_? I’m not staying out here alone, Dare.’

‘I can do it,’ he assures her. ‘Just boost me up, okay?’ He shrugs his backpack from his shoulders and puts it on the porch with his bow.

Beth braces herself against one of the pillars, squatting a bit and folding her hands together so he can step on them. When she nods, he runs up to her, stepping on her hands and jumping up, feeling her push him higher so he can grab hold of the ledge. His boots scrape over the pillar, trying to find some traction as he claws his way up to the roof. With a final grunt, he rolls onto it.

‘You okay?’ Beth asks anxiously.

‘Yeah, throw me my stuff first. I’ll haul you up, okay?’ He places the backpack and bow next to the window and then lies down on the rooftop, extending his hand to the girl below. With one hand he braces himself.

‘Are you sure?’ Beth asks as she takes a couple of steps back for her run-up.

‘Yeah, yeah, it’ll be fine.’

She looks doubtful but trusts him enough to start running, jumping up against the pillar, taking a couple of quick steps upwards and grabbing his hand. The wind is knocked out of him when his chest is pulled down against the wood but he lets his fingers curl around her wrist, yanking her up a way, just enough for her fingertips to grab hold to the ledge. She lets go of him and hangs from the roof.

‘Dare!’

‘I got ya, girl, just hang on a sec,’ he grunts as he slides forward to grab hold of her arm, pulling her up. ‘Pull yourself up, dammit.’ When she does, he manages to grab her under one armpit, hauling her up so she’s hanging onto the ledge with her arms. Then he gets to his feet, grabs her hand and drags her up the rest of the way.

Once she’s safe, she tiger-crawls towards the window and rolls to her back, panting. ‘ _It’ll be fine,_ ’ she mocks.

‘What? It is. Got you up.’

‘That hurt, Dare.’

‘Well, you’re fuckin’ heavy, ain’t my fault,’ he grouses as he moves towards the window.

‘Next time, I’m hauling you up, see how you like that.’

With a grunt he grabs his backpack, throwing it onto his back again and taking his bow into his hands. He throws a look over his shoulder. ‘You okay though?’

‘Yeah,’ Beth gets to her feet. ‘Thanks, Dare.’

He nods and adjusts his baseball cap, brushing some of his hair under the brim to keep it out of his eyes. ‘Close your eyes, I’m gonna bust the window open,’ he warns before he swings his bow and breaks the glass.

Together they wait for a couple of minutes but everything stays quiet inside the house. After a shared nod, Daryl kicks the remaining shards out of the frame and goes in first, bow raised high as they clear room after room. The whole house is covered in a layer of dust and Daryl can’t spot any prints. There are a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs, but only two rooms seem to have been used since the Turn. They decide to first check the lower level before looting the place.

Daryl thinks that they could spend the night here. All the windows downstairs have been welded shut. He pulls at some of the sheets of metal but none of them give way. The blocked windows make for great defenses but they give the whole house a creepy feel.

With their flashlights out, they quickly clear the living room, the kitchen and hallways downstairs.

When Daryl checks the bathroom and finds it empty, Beth breathes a sigh of relief and puts her knife away.

They walk back to the kitchen, eager to find some food.

‘Dang it,’ Beth says as she checks the cupboards but only comes up with a couple of dented cans.

‘Guess we know why they went out,’ Daryl mutters as he opens and closes the empty fridge. ‘I’ll check upstairs. Meet in the middle?’

Beth nods and Daryl heads back upstairs. The first bedroom he comes across must have been a guest room because it’s barely decorated. Just a bed, a nightstand and a closet filled with a couple of boxes. He roots through them but finds only old baby clothes and Christmas ornaments. The next bedroom would have belonged to a teenager, a girl. Books on the shelves, make-up scattered all over the desk and a laptop that’s gathering dust. He goes through her clothes, finds a black vest he pulls on before slipping his vest over it and leaves the rest of the clothes for Beth.

In her bathroom, he finds deodorant which he stuffs in his backpack along with some generic painkillers, a package of toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. He looks at the rest of the bottles, decides to take some shampoo and body-wash too. He flips the cap off it as he moves to the next room and takes a sniff. Minty. He doesn’t really like it, but beggars can’t be choosers, he supposes.

The master bedroom has been turned into some kind of command center. There are maps on the walls, clothes strewn about, empty cans littering the floor. It reminds him of the cells at the prison. The stubs of candles are on the nightstand, wax has dripped down the wood to become puddles on the floor.

There’s nothing they can use here.

He sighs and sits down on the bed. Sunlight streams in through one of the windows behind him. He rubs at his eyes, yawning a bit. With his boots, he kicks some of wax loose. Then he lets himself fall on his knees, sliding off the bed so he can look beneath it. Nothing’s left that’s not hidden, Glenn reminds him from a distant memory.

There’s a stack of papers under the bed. He frowns and pulls it out, sitting down next to it, his leg crossed beneath him. They’re magazines. Heat rushes up from his bely to his chest and neck, to his ears. He knows those kind of magazines. Merle used to have some just like them under his bed, back at the trailer. He remembers finding some, thinking and hoping they were comics, and shoving them right back when he saw the covers.

Now, he doesn’t shove them back.

There’s a young woman on the cover. She’s not wearing anything. Her lower half is turned away from the camera, revealing only her smooth thigh and the outline of her ass, and an arm is folded over her boobs, hiding her nipples. She’s smiling over her shoulder, black hair flowing in a breeze.

He glances back at the open door and listens. Beth is still downstairs.

He flips the magazine open with nervous fingers, fumbling a bit before calming himself with a deep breath. The first page is just advertisements. The second tells him on which page everything is. He doesn’t care and flips past all of that.

He stops at one of the larger pictures. A girl spread out on a bed, wearing nothing but black underwear. Another page and another girl, blonde this time and with the biggest boobs Daryl’s ever seen. He frowns and brings his thumb to his mouth, gnawing on the nail as he leaves through the magazine. He stops at another picture. It’s a guy, leaning against the side of a car with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his low-riding jeans, lower lip caught between his teeth as he stares at the camera. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Daryl stares. Flips to the next page. A girl and a guy on a bed. His gaze lingers on the big hands curling around narrow hips, the broad shoulder of the guy and the girl’s naughty smile.

‘Did you find anything?’

‘ _Holy fuckin’ shit_!’ Daryl curses as he slams the magazine down.

Beth is standing in the door opening. Her eyebrows raised at his outburst. When her gaze starts to slide towards the cover of the magazine, Daryl jumps up and kicks the pile back under the bed before storming over to her. ‘What the hell do ya want? Huh? Can’t you mind your own goddamn business for one fuckin’ minute? No, I didn’t find nothing or I would have said so! Jesus! You stupid or something? Go check that bathroom!’

Beth frowns at him.

‘Are you deaf as well as stupid?’ Daryl snarls, getting into her face. ‘Did I fuckin’ stutter?’

‘You don’t get to be an ass just because you’re embarrassed.’

‘I ain’t – I ain’t got nothing to be emb – I ain’t embarrassed!’

‘What were you reading then?’

‘Nothin’!’

‘You’re blushing,’ Beth points out.

‘ _Mind your own goddamn business, Greene_! _’_

She laughs at him and reaches out to ruffle his hair. ‘You’re too cute sometimes. My dad once caught Shawn with one of those magazine and it was a whole thing,’ she waves a vague hand. ‘I’ll spare you the whole decency and modesty lecture, okay?’

‘Fuck you, I were just…’ He groans, ‘I weren’t doing nothing. I just… Leave me alone.’

‘You’re a bit too young to be looking at those kinds of things, Dare,’ she chides.

‘ _Leave me alone_ ,’ Daryl says again and he realizes too late that he sounds like a whiny teenager. ‘Fine, _I_ will fucking check the bathroom if you’re too much of a lazy shit to do it.’

Beth pulls the door to the bedroom closed behind them with a small smile.

 

 

It’s early in the morning, just after sunrise, when Daryl wakes up. He’s on the floor in the girl’s bedroom, resting comfortably in a nest made out of blankets. Most of them had come from a closet in the hallway, but Beth had gone back into the master bedroom to get those blankets for him as well, saying that she should be the one to get them because she wouldn’t want Daryl to become _distracted_.

He’d clipped her over the back of the head, softly, just like Shane used to be to him when he was being a brat.

Beth is still sleeping.

Daryl gets to his feet and stretches, scratching at the back of his neck as he moves towards the bed.

The girl is sprawled out beneath the covers. Face mashed into the blankets, blonde hair a messy halo on the pillow.

‘Beth,’ he yawns, reaching out to shake her shoulder. ‘Wake up. I’m goin’ out to hunt, okay?’

‘Hmm’

‘Beth, I’m goin’. Wake up, make sure ya get the chair down like we talked about, so I can get back up. I’ll be back before noon. Beth!’

‘I’m up, I’m up!’ The girls says as she bats his hand away. ‘Noon, chair, hunting. I got it, Dare,’ she grouses as she buries herself in her blankets again.

‘Ya better, girl,’ he snarls as he yanks the blanket from the bed, leaving her in just her clothes on the bed. ‘See ya later.’

‘Knife, bow, holler.’

‘Shane ain’t here.’

‘ _Knife, bow, holler, Dare_!’

‘Fine, fine,’ he shushes before flipping her off and quickly making his way back to the window. He climbs out onto the roof, then wriggles down before letting himself fall into the soft earth of the lawn.

 

 

Two small rabbits are hanging from his belt when he makes his way back to the house a couple of hours later. From a distance, he can see that Beth has held her word about the chair. She’s dragged one of the sturdy looking kitchen chairs all the way up the stairs, through the window and over the roof to throw it down into the lawn where he could put it under the edge. If he does a good run-up now, he’ll be able to jump just high enough to climb up on his own.

When he moves over to place the chair in the right position, however, he glances at the front door of the house and freezes.

It’s open.

The thick chain and lock are on the ground, shattered.

He shoulders his bow and carefully steps onto the porch. Feet quiet as he edges towards the door, trying to peer inside the building. He can’t see a damn thing from this angle. It’s too dark. After a steadying breath, he steps into the living room.

Nothing happens.

He listens for a couple of moments.

A sob is cut off in the kitchen, feet scraping on the floorboards, kicking one of the chairs.

Daryl grips his bow tighter and steps into the kitchen, quick as a shadow. But not quick enough.

Beth is sitting on the kitchen chair, hands bound behind her back. There’s a man standing right behind her, a fat dude with greasy hair and sickening smile. His hand covers the girl’s mouth, dirty fingers stroking her chin and brushing over her lips when she tries to squirm away from him. She tries to scream when she spots Daryl, eyes wide and scared, and she jerks in her seat but the man pushes her back against the chair and his belly.

Just when Daryl raises his bow another inch to make the headshot, a gun is pressed to his temple.

‘Well, lookit here,’ a man drawls beside him. ‘Looks like your man came home after all.’

Beth struggles against the man holding her and seems to be screaming his name, the sound muffled by the hand.

Daryl glances at her, narrows his eyes, and she falls silent.

‘ _Man_?’ another guy melts out of the shadows with a gruff laugh. ‘It’s just a kid. I’ll show her what a real man can do, I’m claiming her. She don’t need to wait up for some kid to bang her goo-‘

Daryl whirls around, ducking away from the gun and bringing his elbow up against the man’s teeth with a sickening crunch. The man grunts and goes down, falling onto the floor as Daryl steps forward, bow now aimed at his head instead of the man behind Beth.

Three more men step into the light, coming out of the hallway. One is holding a compound bow but the rest are toting guns. Hunting rifles, mostly.

‘Hold up,’ the man who’d been holding the gun to his temple says when the rest take aim. ‘Just hold up now.’ He laughs, a high pitched sound that almost edges on hysteria. ‘Did you see that punch? Holy hell, boy. And it’s a bow-boy! Now I respect that. See, a man with a rifle, he could have been some kind of photographer or soccer coach back in the day. But a bowman’s a bowman through and through. What do you got there?’ He asks with a nod at the bow while he lower his gun. ‘150 pound draw weight? It’s heavy for a little guy like you. Don’t see no cocking rope, so you’re pullin’ it by hand?’ He whistles, impressed. ‘I’ll be donkey-licked if that don’t fire at least 300 feet per second.’

Daryl doesn’t react. He stares at the man who is still on the floor, lining up his shot with the man’s right eye.

‘I’ve been looking for a weapon like that.’

Daryl’s grip on the bow tightens.

‘Of course, I’d want one with a bit more ammo and minus the oblongata stains.’

The rest of the guys laugh but Daryl doesn’t know what that means.

Another guy leans forward with a grin on his face, ‘get yourself in some trouble, partner?’

‘You pull that trigger,’ the man with the gun says, attracting Daryl’s attention again, ‘these boys are gonna drop you several times over. That what you want? Come on, fella,’ he urges when Daryl still doesn’t move. ‘Suicide is stupid. Think about it. If you’re gone, who’s gonna look after that pretty piece of tail, huh?’

Daryl pulls his upper lip back in a silent snarl.

‘My boy here was just kidding. You can’t claim people. He knows that. Come on. Why hurt yourself when you can hurt other people?’

Daryl finally looks at him. He doesn’t lower the weapon but squints at the man. He’s got longer gray hair, pale eyes and a weathered face. He’s smiling crookedly.

‘Name’s Joe,’ the man says.

‘Daryl,’ the teenager answers as he finally lowers his bow. ‘That’s Beth. Get your paws off of her, _now_.’

‘Dan,’ Joe sighs as he sits down on the table and puts his gun away. ‘Let the girl go.’

As soon as the guy lets go of her, she shoves herself away from the table to stumble towards Daryl. He reaches out to her and tugs her behind his back, shielding her from the guys as best as he can. She’s not crying but her hands tremble as they find his vest, needing to hold on to something.

‘They hurt ya?’ he asks, glancing over his shoulder.

‘No,’ she whispers.

‘We wouldn’t hurt a lady,’ Joe sneers.

‘You touch her again and I’ll end you,’ Daryl promises.

‘A spitfire, this one,’ the man laughs as he looks at his friends. ‘I like him. You hear it, guys? No touching the girl.’ He slides off the table and sidles past the boy, glancing at the girl, eyes roaming over her body. ‘But there’s no harm in lookin’ right? We’re staying here for the night. Bed upstairs is claimed.’

The rest of the guys disappear to find other spots to sleep.

Daryl whirls around to face Beth, ‘ya sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she pushes her blonde hair behind her ears with shaking hands. ‘They shot the lock, I didn’t even hear them until they – I tried to get out but they knew I was in here. I think they’ve been watching us. They knew you were out hunting.’

‘Assholes,’ Daryl spits out angrily. ‘They take our shit?’

‘No,’ Beth points to her backpack that’s still on the floor next to the chair.

‘Where’s my pack?’ Daryl asks before he realizes he’d left it in the upstairs bedroom. He turns on his heels, grits his teeth and runs up the stairs only to almost bump into Joe again.

The man is holding his backpack. ‘This yours, kid?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl glowers.

‘Here,’ Joe pushes it into his hands. ‘Keep an eye on your shit or someone’s claiming it, okay? You fill up your bottle in the creek up north?’

The teenager glares at the floorboards. His hands moves to the canister that’s hanging from his belt. ‘Nah,’ he mumbles. ‘Wanted to go fill up this afternoon.’

‘Why not do it right away? You bein’ lazy now? I hate lazy people.’

Daryl grinds his teeth together. He glares at the man’s boots and hates how the southern accent reminds him of his dad. The rest of the men could have been Will’s hunting buddies. ‘Weren’t _lazy_ ,’ he snarls. ‘Was just… was goddamn tired, okay? Thought Beth could clean my kills, roast them up and I’d get the water later.’

‘You might not have a _later_ ,’ Joe tells him. ‘Get water while you can, don’t matter whether it’s boiled or not. Always fill your bottles up, boy.’

Daryl scowls at his boots.

‘Here.’

He looks up. Joe is holding a bottle out to him. He can see water shift inside the plastic.

‘Claim it,’ Joe tells him. ‘You want something, you have to claim it. That’s how it works. See, going it alone, that ain’t an option nowadays. Still, it is survival of the fittest. That’s a paradox right there. Do you know what that means, a paradox?’

Daryl shifts his weight uncomfortably. ‘Nah,’ he mumbles.

‘It’s a statements that holds two opposite facts. You can’t make it alone, but it’s survival of the fittest. That last one means only one comes out on the top. You get that?’

Daryl nods.

‘Good,’ Joe smiles. ‘In order to overcome the little conundrum, I laid out some rules of the road to keep things from going Darwin every couple hours. Survival of the fittest,’ he explains when the teenager frowns. ‘Keep our merry band together and stress-free. All you got to do is claim. That’s how you mark your territory, your prey, your bed at night. One word,’ Joe says as he holds up a finger, ‘ _claimed_.’

Daryl stares at him, ‘I ain’t claimin’ nothing.’

‘Now don’t be rash,’ Joe chides. ‘What are you going to do, huh? It’s going to be you and that girl against the world? You’re dead on your feet trying to provide for you both. How long do you think you’ll be able to protect her, hmm?’

Daryl brings a nervous thumb to his lips, biting down on his nail.

‘You stay with us?’ Joe asks, ‘we’ll look after you two.’

‘In exchange for what?’ Daryl asks immediately. ‘Ain’t nothing’s free no more.’

‘One of those rabbits will do for now.’ He holds out his hand. ‘Seems like a fair exchange to me.’

Daryl works his jaw before yanking one of the rabbit off his belt, trading it for the water.

When he wants to pulls the bottle out of Joe’s grasp, the man holds on. ‘What do you say?’

Daryl looks up at him. ‘ _Claimed_.’

 

 

They’re following the train tracks. Daryl is holding on to the strap of his bow, his shoulder sometimes brushing against Joe’s elbow as he glances behind him, making sure that no walkers are following them. The older man has kept his end of the deal. He’s helped Daryl out with water and protection for a share of whatever Daryl manages to catch that day.

After two days, Daryl decides that the men are stupid, simple fucks with a dumbass code. He’s a bit ashamed that he likes that. It’s easy. _Claimed_ and it’s yours. Can’t lie, can’t steal, can’t break the rules or they will teach you all the way.

It’s so easy.

It helps to keep Beth save.

The girl is walking a couple of steps in front of him, next to Billy, who seems to be the most decent guy out of all of them. He’s the only one who doesn’t try to cop a feel every now and then, and the only one who hasn’t had Daryl’s knife to his throat for the trouble. He likes Billy, especially when Beth laughs softly, shaking her head in amusement at whatever the guy is saying.

‘So what’s the plan, Daryl?’

‘How so?’

‘Oh, you’re with us now, but you ain’t soon?’

‘Yep.’

No matter the code, no matter the two good men in this whole group, they’re not staying.

‘So what’s the plan?’ Joe asks as he brings his hand to his mouth, sucking on a cigarette Daryl had given him as payment for the day.

Daryl shrugs. ‘Just lookin’ for the right place, is all.’

‘Oh, we ain’t good enough for you, huh?’

‘Some of you ain’t exactly friendly,’ he mutters as he eyes Len, who is leading the group. Even from here, he can see the nasty cut in the man’s neck from the time he’d cornered Beth, pushing her up against a tree while he had been taking a piss in the woods. He’d come back in time to throw his knife, slashing the skin open in warning. He’s still sorry he missed the brain. If the fucker even has one.

‘You ain’t so friendly yourself,’ Joe laughs. ‘You know you need a group out here.’

‘Maybe we don’t.’

‘No, you do. You should be with us. People don’t got to be friendly. We don’t have to be nice. We don’t have to be brothers in arms.’ They watch how the guys take out a walker together. ‘We just got to follow the rules. You claim. If you steal, you keel. I know that sounds a little funny, but nobody’s laughing when something goes missing. And you don’t lie, ‘cause that’s a slippery slope indeed.’

‘What happens if you break ‘em?’

‘Oh you catch a beatin’,’ Joe says off-handedly. ‘The severity of which depends upon the offense and the general attitude of the day.’

Daryl nods thoughtfully. He glances up at Joe through his bangs, ‘you ever change ‘em?’

‘The rules?’ Joe asks with a frown.

‘Yeah. They ever change ‘em suddenly?’

‘No. That would defeat the point. The rules are the rules. How I said it just now, that’s how they are. No exceptions, no changes. Set in stone.’

Daryl nods.

Joe narrows his eyes knowingly. ‘Your dad changed them rules on you, kid?’

‘Mind your own goddamn business,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Looks to me like you’ve caught a beatin’ before. Hey,’ Joe laughs when Daryl ducks his head. ‘Nothing wrong with that. You’d probably earned it, right? Yeah, you look like trouble, a’right. Come on,’ Joe says fondly as he curls hand around the boy’s shoulder to steer him towards one of the buildings. ‘This is our abode for the evening.’

Daryl follows the men into the building. There are several cars there, it must have been an old garage or something. He watches how Billy pushes Beth towards the matrass that’s on the floor in the very back. The guy nods encouragingly. Daryl takes hold of his knife. But Beth just smiles at Billy and turns towards the rest of the group. ‘Claimed,’ she says loudly, putting one foot on the edge of the soft bedding. ‘For me and Dare.’

 

 

They sleep curled up around each other. Daryl’s back pressed against her front. Her arms around his waist, nose pressed into the dark curls at the back of his head. His hands clutch his crossbow, holding on tightly even in his dreams.

 

 

Daryl catches a rabbit but so does Len. One bolt and one arrow piercing the same rabbit. They claim it at the same time.

In the end, after Joe’s negotiations, they each take half.

That works well enough until Len’s half goes missing.

 

 

Daryl stares at Len’s bloodied corpse on the side of the road.

Stupid fucker got himself killed over half a rabbit.

‘Dare?’ Beth slips her hand into his, holding on tightly. She’s never more than a few steps away these days, always scared. ‘Don’t look, please.’

He remembers how the men had dragged Len away from him after the accusations, after the argument, after Joe handing out the first punch because he knew Len was lying about the stupid rabbit. Daryl hadn’t stolen it, and Joe knew all along. Instead of stopping the argument before any lie could have been uttered, Joe had waited until Len had condemned himself to death with a simple ‘ _no’_ when asked if he’d planted the rabbit.

‘Dare, please,’ Beth whispers as she reaches out to cup his face, forcing him to look away.

 

 

‘Is that where we’re headed?’ Daryl asks Joe on the third day after they see a sign on the side of the tracks. ‘Terminus?’

‘So now you’re asking?’

‘That’s right,’ Daryl nods.

‘We were in a house,’ Joe says, ‘minding our own business and this walking piece of fecal matter was hiding in the home. Strangled our colleague Lou and left him to turn. Lou came at all of us. He lit out. We tracked him to these tracks, one of those signs, and thus we’ve got a destination in mind.’

‘You see his face?’

‘Only Tony,’ Joe admits. ‘That’s enough for a reckoning.’

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Beth suddenly comes bursting through the group of men, shouldering past them and anxiously reaching for his hand.

Automatically he pulls her to his chest, curling a protective arm around her. He glares at the laughing men. ‘They fuckin’ with ya again?’

‘It’s fine,’ Beth breathes, brushing her hair out of her face. Someone has pulled her hair loose. ‘Just…’ she squeezes his hand, ‘I’m... I’m gonna walk with you for a while, okay?’ she tries to give him a bright smile but it looks too broken to be comforting.

Daryl glares at Dan, who is fingering the hairband. ‘That ain’t yours, man. Looks like you’re stealin’ to me.’

‘Girl dropped it,’ Dan shrugs, holding it out to Beth. ‘I just picked it up for you, sugar. How about a thank you?’

‘How about a bolt in your ass?’ Daryl asks as he snatches the hairband back, passing it to Beth. ‘Start mindin’ your own damn business. Keep walkin’.’

The guys shrug and sneer but continue to walk along the tracks. Daryl falls back with Beth still clinging to his hand. Her shoulders relax when they’re out of earshot.

‘We’re leavin’ tonight,’ Daryl says suddenly, looking at her. ‘When they’re all asleep? We’re leaving.’

‘Okay.’

He knows he’s made the right choice when she doesn’t even protest leaving the safety of the group. It might have been a good place for him, good enough people to hang around with, but it’s not good for her. He likes the rules, simple and dumb, and while it’s enough for him, it’s not enough for her.

It’s not _good_ enough for her. She deserves better than this.

He nods, tightens his hold on her hand, squeezes. ‘Okay.’

 

 

Except, they don’t stop for the night.

It’s dark when they happen upon the small group they’re hunting. Joe and Tony sneak forward to surprise them while Daryl hangs back with Beth, trying to decide whether they’re just going to sneak away now they’re all distracted, but something in him tells him to stick to it for now.

They’re hunting a guy.

Daryl needs to know who it is.

There’s a chance, something in him tells him. There’s a chance that’s it’s one of their own and he _needs_ to know.

 _Ten Mississippi_.

Daryl tells Beth to stay in the shadows and the girl nods, drawing her knife.

He starts to head over to the group.

 _Nine Mississippi_.

Joe is counting down.

Daryl is getting closer.

_Eight Mississippi._

‘Joe!’ The words leave his mouth as soon as he sees who’s kneeling by the side of the road. His heart is pounding in his chest, palms get sweaty as he takes another step forward, coming into the light of the moon above them. He walks around the car, lowering his bow and throwing his bag on the ground.

Rick stares at him.

Michonne looks like she’s seeing a ghost.

‘Hold up,’ Daryl says, voice almost breaking on the words.

‘You’re stopping me on eight, Daryl,’ Joe says with a hint of warning in his voice.

On unsteady feet, Daryl walks forward, nodding a bit to show that he’s heard the leader of his new group. He stares right back at Rick, who has a gun pressed to his temple and his arms raised in surrender. He doesn’t know what to do. ‘Just hold up.’

 

 

 


	46. Terminus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everyone.
> 
> Thanks for everything.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The thing about nowadays is that they have nothing but time.

Daryl can feel how it stops all around him. Every second feels like an hour as he slowly walks forward to face his friends, who are kneeling on the cold asphalt with their hands raised high. He can barely take the disbelieving look Michonne gives him. Or the way Rick won’t look him in the eye.

They’ve been hunting his friends. His family.

‘These people,’ he starts and he hopes that his voice sounds stronger than he thinks it does. ‘You’re gonna let ‘em go. These are good people.’

Joe gives him a strange smile. ‘Now, I think Lou would disagree with you on that,’ he tells the teenager. ‘I’ll, of course, have to speak for him and all, ‘cause your friend here strangled him in a bathroom.’

‘You want blood,’ Daryl nods. ‘I get it.’ Someone always has to pay with guys like these. Like their dad and Merle, they can never just let things go. They remember and they collect every single debt they’re owed, eventually. He lowers his bow and puts it on the ground. ‘Take it from me, man.’ Michonne makes a distressed noise but Daryl ignores her. ‘Come on,’ he urges.

Joe stares at him with disbelief written all over his face. ‘This man killed our friend. You say he’s good people. See, now that right there is a lie.’

The words take a second to register and then they hit him all at once. Lies, rules, teaching.

Brace yourself, his dad tells him.

‘It’s a _lie_ ,’ Joe says.

The first hit comes from the left. The butt of a gun into his stomach and he doubles over, gasping for air and pulling his arms in to protect his chest, curling up as he falls to the side. He can hear Rick shouting ‘No!’ while Joe says ‘teach him, fellas, teach him all the way!’

Two dudes drag him towards the car. Billy and Harley. They slam him into the cold metal, punch him in the back, gut, head, shoulders, anywhere they can reach.

Daryl whimpers, screams, groans as he tries to fight back. He lands one solid hit which causes Billy to stumble back a few steps but Harley rams his fist into the corner of his mouth and he nearly blacks out due to the pain. All he can hear is his own grunts and moans as boots kick him into the ground, until a car door is wrenched open and he can hear Carl yelp.

‘You leave him be!’ Rick shouts, somewhere far away.

Daryl doubles over again, gasping for breath, but Billy pulls him up again so Harley can hit him in the face. The force behind the hit drives him to the ground. He scrapes the palms of his hands on the asphalt, tries to scramble away, towards the trees, but Harley grabs his belt and yanks him back towards the car. He’s turned over onto his back and Billy sits down on his thighs, pinning his hips down. A hand yanks at his hair, almost ripping some strands out of his skull and he screams, trashing and bucking, but none of it matters. He can hear Joe laughing and Carl screaming. Daryl tries to look at where his friend is but he gets another hit to his jaw and his mouth fills with blood. He chokes on it, splutters, coughs and pushes weakly at Billy’s chest.

Suddenly there’s a gunshot.

Everyone freezes for a second.

Billy stares at him with wide eyes, Harley slowly turns to look who fired the shot, but Daryl is the first to recover. He draws his fist back, hits Billy on the nose. It sends the other man tumbling off of him and Daryl rolls to his side so he can spit his blood out onto the asphalt, gasping for breath. None of it matters because Harley is on him seconds later, pulling him up by his vest and throwing him against the car. He hits his chin painfully, feels his bruised ribs almost crack under the pressure. His knees buckle when Billy kicks him from behind.

There’s a gurgling sound behind them.

Daryl turns his head and watches how Joe sinks to his knees, blood spraying from his neck.

Rick stumbles away from the body and spits on the ground, chin and neck covered in hot blood.

Michonne manages to turn the tables on Tony, grabbing his gun and killing him with a smooth move.

Daryl turns back to Harley. He punches him while the man watches in horror how Rick now advances on Dan, who’d been straddling Carl on the ground. As Harley stumbles away, clutching his jaw, he bumps into someone else. His eyes go wide, he tries to duck but –

Beth buries her blade into his skull.

Daryl growls and jumps on Billy, who’d been trying to turn on his heels and run. He works him to the ground, punches anywhere and everywhere he can reach until his fists bleed. When he can’t do it anymore, he scrambles to his feet and looks down at the bloodied face of the man. He lifts his boot and stomps on the skull until it breaks.

‘Dare.’

Daryl sways on the spot. Behind him, he can hear Rick stabbing Dan’s body over and over and over and over. He fears it might never stop.

Beth walks towards him, slowly, carefully. She’s put her knife away, has her hands raised to show that she doesn’t want to hurt him. When she is close enough, she folds her hands over his ears and draws him closer, guiding his head so his forehead rests against hers. They stare into each other’s eyes.

‘It’s okay,’ Beth mouths. ‘We’re safe now.’

He closes his eyes and lets his body slump forward, falling into her embrace.

 

 

_‘One, two, three.’_

_‘Bacon,’ Daryl says promptly._

_Carl throws his head back to laugh and then shoves his shoulder, ‘you ass! Stop thinking about eating Violet!’_

_‘What? I fuckin’ found her,’ Daryl grins as he stumbles due to his friend’s shove. ‘I’ve earned that first slice of sweet, juicy, salty – ‘_

_‘No, no, no,’ Carl punches him, trying to fold his hands over his mouth to stop him from talking. ‘Shut up, shut up! I need to take care of her and now every time I look at her, I’ll just see strips of bacon! Stop it. That’s so mean.’_

_Daryl grins and takes out his machete, swinging it at the high grass on his right._

_They’re slowly making their way to the gates of the prison. Only yesterday Daryl had helped Shane and Michonne push the heavy metal doors into place, creating a new line of defenses along with the wooden poles. Walker traps. Because of the hard physical labor yesterday, Daryl’s not allowed to go out to hunt but he doesn’t mind much._

_The morning he’d spent with Glenn and Maggie, helping to make sure everyone of Woodbury got settled in all right. Most of the new people still eye him warily, not used to a thirteen year old covered in blood and with such a sharp tongue, but others start to realize that he does no harm. Especially not when he’s trailing after Glenn._

_It’s late in the afternoon now._ _Shane will come back with his runners soon._

_Rick is outside the gates to clear the water pump._

_‘Hey boys,’ Tyreese greets from where he’s working the fences with Karen’s group. ‘What are you two doing here? I know Rick, Shane and Glenn didn’t clear you for fence duty.’_

_Carl leans against the gate, kicking at a rock so it bounces away, ‘I’m just waiting for my dad.’_

_‘Same,’ Daryl mutters as he bites at his thumb._

_Tyreese frowns, ‘what do you need Rick for, Dare? Thought you were going to wait for Shane, he told me he was going out to look for some stuff you need. Some boots?’_

_Carl smirks, ‘that’s who he’s waiting for._ His _dad.’_

_‘Ain’t! Jesus Christ, you’re so fuckin’ annoying,’ Daryl snarls as he aims a kick at his best friend. ‘I was just keeping ya company, but never mind, ya stupid pussy.’_

_‘Shane’s_ totally _your dad.’_

 _‘_ Daryl Dixon _!’_

_Daryl blinks and finds himself pushing Carl up against the fence, fingers twisting in the other boy’s shirt. There’s blood dripping from his friend’s nose but he’s still laughing through the pain, trying to wriggle free. He can’t even remember hitting the boy. Daryl looks over his shoulder to see who called him._

_Carol is stalking over with a thunderous look on her face. When she reaches him, she grabs hold of his shoulder and pulls him off his friend. ‘Are you out of your mind?’_

_‘He started it!’ Daryl argues but Carol shakes him roughly before she drags him back to the prison._

 

 

‘No,’ Rick says as he gestures at the red rag in Daryl’s hands. ‘We should save it to drink.’

The teenager holds it out to the father, ‘nah, you’re freakin’ me out, lookin’ like that, man. Clean up.’

With trembling hands, Rick takes the rag and starts to clean some of his face. There’s blood smeared all over him. It’s matting his beard and covering his cheeks and hands. The rag wipes some off, but not all.

Daryl sighs as he sits down next to the man. His whole body aches. He need to move carefully to not jostle his ribs too much and his skin is already changing color. Bruises bloom on his back and chest once more. One of his eyes is swollen shut. He supposes he should be glad that the guys didn’t manage to break any of his bones. It feels like they did though. Every bone in his body feels like it’s made out of splinters.

They’re both leaning against the car. Carl is curled up with Michonne on the backseat. Beth is in the driver’s seat, hand still on the seat where Daryl had been only minutes earlier, next to her. He’d woken up and figured that he should take over the guard duty from Rick, but now he knows that the father won’t get any sleep tonight.

‘It’s a good thing you found Beth,’ Rick says as he stares at the trees opposite from them. Blue eyes empty. ‘That you kept her safe. Thank you.’

‘We got out together,’ Daryl mutters as he picks at the hole in his jeans. ‘We just ran, you know? Tried findin’ others.’ He looks away. ‘Didn’t.’

Rick nods and turns to him. ‘How did you wind up with those guys?’

‘Just ran into each other. I didn’t know what they could do. I mean, knew they were bad, but they had a code. This one guy, he struck a deal with me, I thought I could keep Beth safe at least. Thought it would help with more people, ya know? But… The code was simple. Stupid, but it was something. It was enough.’

‘And you were alone,’ Rick says softly.

Daryl looks at the trees. ‘They said they were lookin’ for some guy. Last night they said they spotted him. I was hangin’ back with Beth. We were gonna leave. These guys kept lookin’ at her, ya know? Kept trying to feel her up, makin’ it seem like an accident so they weren’t breakin’ no rules. Knew we had to split soon. But we stayed. That’s when I saw it was you three. Right when you saw me.’ It’s important that Rick understands that. That he didn’t know he’d been hunting his own family, that he’d never meant for any of this to happen. ‘I didn’t know what they could do.’

‘It’s not on you, Dare,’ Rick says, tilting his head to the side to catch the boy’s gaze. ‘ _Hey_ ,’ he says when it doesn’t work.

Daryl tears his gaze away from the trees and looks at Rick.

‘It’s not on you. You being back with us here, now? That’s _everything_. You brought Beth back, kept her safe. And Carl –‘

Daryl quickly looks away.

Rick lets his former sentence fade, eyes narrowing when he catches on to what Daryl is thinking. ‘What that guy tried to do to him? That’s not on you, Dare,’ Rick says as he reaches out and strokes the dark hair of the teenager, hand coming to rest on his neck, massaging the tense muscles there. ‘He doesn’t blame you. He’s so happy you’re back.’

Daryl bites on his lips.

Rick’s hand tightens on his nape, shakes the teenager, a small smile forming around his lips. ‘You’re his brother.’

 

 

_‘Stop your squirmin’,’ Daryl huffs as he awkwardly shifts Judith to his other hip, trying to balance her while reaching for the bear that is sitting in her crib. ‘You want that?’ he holds the bear up to her but the little girl just cries, fists pawing at his chest in misery. ‘Girl, stop it, okay? Beth will be back soon, she’s just takin’ a damn shower, okay? Calm your tits.’_ _He drops the bear back into the crib and walks out of Rick’s cell again, going into the common area and looking around for Carol. He tries bobbing the girl a bit, patting her back and pressing a kiss to her forehead, but none of it seems to help._ _‘Jesus, girl, I don’t like this neither, okay? Don’t gotta do this, ya know? Thought I’d be all nice and look where it got me. Makin’ me want to opt out, lil’ Asskicker.’ He glares down at her. ‘You had your bottle. Diaper’s all good to go, ya told Bear to fuck right off, so what is it?’_

_‘You shouldn’t be talking to her like that.’_

_Daryl looks up to see one of the women of Woodbury. She’s sorting their laundry at one of the tables. There’s a disapproving frown on her face._

_‘You should mind your own business.’_

_The woman straightens and puts her hands on her hips. ‘I think you should give her to me.’_

_‘Yeah, I think not,’ Daryl laughs, curling another arm around Judith and hitching her higher onto his chest. ’We’re fine.’_

_‘She doesn’t look fine.’_

_‘She’s just throwing a hissy fit. She’s a Grimes through and through, now ain’t ya,’ Daryl grins as he nuzzles the girl, burying his nose in her soft, blonde hair. He playfully bites at her cheek, kissing it when she giggles. ‘See? All good. Just bein’ a damn princess about it all.’_

_‘Give her to me.’ The woman takes a step towards him, her arms outstretched and hands reaching for the girl. ‘I don’t think Rick would want you watching his daughter.’_

_Daryl stares at her._

_The woman nods and her fingertips almost touch Judith’s back when another voice cuts through the room._

_‘I think he does.’ Shane is leaning against the doorpost, arms folded in front of his broad chest. ‘In fact,’ he pushes himself away from the bricks and walks over. ‘I_ know _he does.’_

_The woman glares at the teenager, ‘did you hear how he spoke to her?’_

_‘Yeah,’ Shane says easily. ‘And a simple_ language _, would have sufficed.’ He puts his hands on Daryl’s shoulders, squeezing reassuringly before pressing a kiss to his dark hair. ‘I think you should leave now,’ Shane tells the woman. ‘I’ll sort the laundry. Thank you for bringing it down here.’_

_The woman huffs but takes her leave._

_Daryl scowls at Judith, ‘I didn’t do nothing wrong. Beth just wanted to take a shower and Rick weren’t back yet, so…’_

_‘You know Rick doesn’t mind you watching Judith. And thanks for doing it. It’s important that we all chip in, it’s not just Beth’s job to look after her.’_

_‘I know, that’s why – ‘_

_There’s stumbling in the hallway and seconds later Rick and Carl burst into the room, chasing each other. The boy vaults one of the tables, trying to stay out of his father’s reach but that takes him too close to Shane._

_‘Brother!’ Rick pants and Shane easily plucks Carl out of the air, grabbing him around the waist and yanking the boy to his chest._

_‘Dare, Dare, help!’_

_Daryl quickly takes a couple of steps back so no flailing limbs will get too close to Judith. ‘What the fuck, man?’_

_‘_ Language _,’ both Rick and Shane scold with a matching grins._

_‘Dad knows!’ Carl shouts, ‘he knows!’_

_‘Dang,’ Daryl laughs, ‘you ran your mouth, didn’t ya?’_

_‘Got a 10-31, brother,’ Rick pants as he sits down on the table. ‘They have an accomplish but she got away. I saw them trading stolen goods. Comics._ Candy bars _. They’ve been trading candy bars, can you believe it?’_

_‘And we thought we were raising them right,’ Shane says as he shakes his head. ‘You got anything to say for yourselves? An explanation as to why your two favorite people didn’t even get a single bite? Hmm? Don’t you sneak away, Dare, I see you.’_

_Rick holds his hands out for his daughter when he spots the Dixon boy. ‘Hey, Judy,’ he kisses her forehead, ‘I know,’ he says when the girl starts whimpering again, ‘I know, I’m sad too. Your brothers didn’t give you any chocolate either?’_

They walk side by side. Carl keeps his head down and Daryl stays silent. They don’t talk about Judith, who isn’t with them, or Shane, or Glenn, or any of their family members. They don’t talk about the men who came in the night and nearly took their lives. They don’t talk about the wounds on Daryl’s body or the way Carl flinches at every sound.

They don’t talk. At all.

That doesn’t really matter, because Carl’s shoulders relax when it’s almost noon and he elbows Daryl, nodding at a squirrel that skips by and Daryl pretends to shoot it with finger guns, blowing imaginary smoke away. Carl laughs and Daryl smirks. The dumb squirrel was too skinny to be any good to them.

They’re almost at Terminus, anyway. They don’t need the food that badly.

‘We’re gettin’ close,’ Rick says as he kicks some leaves off one of the signs lying next to the road. ‘Let’s cut through the woods. Daryl, on point. Beth, stay with Michonne. Carl, with me.’

‘Got it,’ Daryl murmurs as he jumps into the ditch next to the road and leads his family into the comforting stillness of the woods. It doesn’t take him long to lead them to the fences. Terminus used to be a train station. It’s a big building, several stories high and towering over its surroundings, casting its shadow far and wide. Daryl peeks through the fences, standing on the tips of his toes next to Rick. They can’t see anything move inside. The windows of the building are too far away, but even outside, nothing moves.

Everything is quiet.

Rick gathers them around with a soft whistle and quick order. See what you see but stay close.

Daryl nods, grabs his crossbow and walks a couple of steps backwards.

Carl goes with Michonne.

Daryl points at Beth and then at Rick. The girl nods and sticks to the cop’s side.

After an hour, nobody has seen anything.

They bury a bag filled with guns, the spare machete and the bow and arrows they’d taken from Billy’s body. At the last moment, Rick switches his Python for a smaller gun, placing his beloved weapon in the bag before burying it. ‘Just in case,’ he says when he sees that Daryl is watching him warily.

They climb the fence. Rick first, then Michonne, Carl and Beth before Daryl hops over too. After a nod and hand gesture, he slinks forward to take point again. He’s got the only silenced long-distance weapon. With careful, quick steps, he leads them towards the first building.

A woman’s voice greets them.

‘ _Terminus_ ,’ it echoes, ‘ _those who arrive, survive_.’

Down the hallway, into a bigger room until Daryl sees the woman, hunched over a microphone. When he glances to his right, he can see several people working on the maps they’ve seen all along the tracks. One of them is wrapping them in plastic while others spray-paint a star on the place where all the lines intersect.

_‘Sanctuary for all. Community for all.’_

Daryl is unsure of what to do now. He’s just standing in the doorway and nobody notices him. He glances back at Rick, who nods and steps past him.

_‘Those who arrive, survive.’_

Michonne puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and pulls him behind her.

_‘Terminus, sanctuary for all. Community for all.’_

Rick strides towards the woman who is broadcasting. ‘Hello,’ he says simply. Then a little louder so the one’s at the back can hear him too, ‘ _hello_.’

One of the guys at the tables sighs and puts his paintbrush down. ‘Well, I bet Albert is on perimeter watch.’ He slowly makes his way around the table and towards them. ‘You here to rob us?’

‘No.’ Rick goes to meet him half-way. ‘We wanted to see you before you saw us.’

‘Makes sense,’ the guy nods. ‘Usually we do this where the tracks meet,’ he clears his throat and spreads his arms. ‘Welcome to Terminus. I’m Gareth.’ He looks them over. ‘Looks like you’ve been on the road for a good bit.’

‘We have,’ Rick nods. ‘Rick. That’s Carl, Daryl, Michonne and Beth.’

Gareth waves at them. When it stays quiet, he laughs, ‘you’re nervous! I get it. We were all the same way,’ he waves at his friends behind the tables. ‘We came here for sanctuary. That what you’re here for?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. You found it. Hey, Alex?’ He calls one of the guys over. ‘This isn’t as pretty as the front. We got nothing to hide, but the welcome wagon is a whole lot nicer. Alex will take you, ask you a few questions. Uh, but first, we need to see everyone’s weapons. If you could just lay them down in front of you.’

Rick’s head slowly turns so he can look at Michonne. After a wordless question, he nods before getting his new revolver out and putting it on the floor in front of him. Carl follows his example immediately.

Daryl hesitates, fingers going white on his bow.

‘I’m sure you understand,’ Gareth smiles.

‘Yes, I do,’ Rick says from where he’s kneeled on the floor.

Daryl grits his teeth and puts his bow down. He draws his knife too, throwing it on the concrete with a chilling clang.

Alex moves to him while Gareth searches Rick. The man is tall, Daryl looks away pointedly as he feels the hands go over his clothes, feeling the outline of his body. ‘I’d hate to see the other guy,’ he tries to joke.

‘You would,’ Rick answers for him.

‘They deserve it?’ Alex asks Carl when he pats him down.

‘Yes.’

Rick stares at his boy. The same look Shane always gives Daryl when he comes back from his hunt with smears of walker blood on him and an easy smile on his face. That mixture of astonishment, terror and pride.

‘Just so you know,’ Gareth announces, ‘we aren’t those kind of people but we aren’t stupid either. And you shouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything stupid. As long as everyone’s clear on that, we shouldn’t have any problems. Just solutions.’

Alex picks Michonne’s katana up and gives it back to her. He moves to touch the bow but Daryl beats him to it, not wanting the stranger to touch his most prized possession.

‘Follow me,’ the man smiles.

 

 

_‘Did your dad ever complain that it tickles? Because it does.’_

_‘Stop bein’ a pussy. You asked for it, man,’ Daryl murmurs as he bends over Glenn’s naked back, drawing black lines on pale skin._

_‘Shane’s bringing you paper on the next run.’_

_‘Hey, if you don’t want it, then – ‘ Daryl snarls as he pushes himself up._

_Glenn reaches back awkwardly, his finger circling around Daryl’s left ankle. ‘That’s not what I meant, Dare. Come on, I asked if you could give me a tattoo, okay? Finish it. Please?’_

_Daryl sighs and sits down again on the man’s lower back. ‘Fine. Stay still or I’ll fuck it up.’_

_‘Okay,’ Glenn smiles as he closes his eyes, putting his head back onto his folded arms._

_There’s a flash on their right. They both jerk and reach for their knives until they can hear Maggie giggling next to them. She’s holding a camera and now waves a polaroid in the air to dry it._

_‘Adorable,’ she says._

_‘Fuck you,’ Daryl murmurs, cheeks and ears red as he stubbornly continuous. ‘You shouldn’t have given her the camera, man,’ he tells Glenn._

_But later, Maggie gives him the polaroid and he stuffs it behind the picture of his mom, safely hidden between the glass and frame._

‘So how long has this place been here?’ Beth asks as she goes to walk beside Alex.

Daryl hangs back with Rick, surveying the area. He doesn’t really listen to the answer, doesn’t really care because something just feels off about this whole place. He remembers the courtyard of the prison, always filled with people and noises. This is nothing like it. It’s so quiet here. Just a handful of people sit at the tables.

There’s a lady preparing a plate for them.

Daryl wrinkles his nose and looks at the meat. He doesn’t recognizes it. But then his gaze glides from the plate Alex is holding out to Beth, to something on the man’s side. Something metallic. A chain. Daryl elbows Rick, looks at him with wide eyes and nods at the item.

Rick draws his gun, slams the plate out of the man’s hands and grabs the item hidden in his pocket, taking it out by the chain. He presses his gun to the man’s temple. ‘Where the hell did you get this watch?’

 

 

Everything erupts into chaos. There’s gunfire everywhere. Bullets hitting the concrete near his feet, dust blowing up all around them. They run, Rick pushing Carl into the right direction and shielding him with his body while Daryl makes sure that Beth is following Michonne’s footsteps. Into an alley, through a hall where a door is closed in their faces, through another door, down a corridor, cutting between two buildings as bullets chase their heels. They can hear people shouting for help when they cross an open space but there’s no time to stop. Instead, they duck into another building. There’s a room there, filled with candles.

Daryl looks around. ‘What the hell is this place?’

‘These people,’ Michonne pants. ‘I don’t think they’re trying to kill us.’

There are words on the wall around them.

_Never again. Never trust. We first, always._

‘No,’ Rick agrees. ‘They were aiming at our feet.’

There are words on the floor, too. Names, written with white paint. Daryl looks at the one closest to his boot.

 _Judy_.

She had a different last name though.

He still feels sick.

Rick leads them outside and right into a trap. They’re surrounded.

They’re told to drop their weapons and Daryl throws one of his bolts down angrily, staring up at Gareth. Seconds later, the bow clatters onto the concrete, followed by his knife. The rest bends down to put their weapons onto the floor with more care.

‘Ringleader, go to your left. The train car, go,’ Gareth calls out. He threatens Carl.

Rick walks.

Then Daryl.

And Michonne.

And Beth.

‘My son!’ Rick shouts.

‘Go, kid.’

Carl, too.

They enter the train car. The door closes behind them.

Something moves on the other side, in the darkness.

A voice, too hopeful for these circumstances.

‘Dare?’

 

 

_‘One day I’ll give it to you.’_

_Daryl looks up and snorts, ‘what, the watch?’_

_‘Yeah.’_

_‘Why?’ the boy asks as he peers at his friend._

_‘Family tradition,’ the Korean says as he palms the watch, bringing it to his lips and kissing the cold metal before putting it away._

‘You’re here,’ Rick breathes.

‘Dare,’ Glenn staggers forward. One hand reaches out to the boy. ‘Oh my God.’

Daryl runs forward, throwing himself into the Korean’s embrace. Fingers twisting in the man’s shirt, pulling him even closer. He can feel another hand stroking his hair. Maggie. Soft lips kiss his temple. Glenn holds him close, crushes him almost, ‘are you okay?’ he asks frantically. ‘Daryl, are you okay?’

The teenager nods against his friend’s chest.

‘You’re here,’ Rick states again, pride now bleeding into the words.

Glenn puts his hands on Daryl’s shoulders and gently pushes him backwards. He smiles in the dark. ‘Don’t be rude, and say hi to your friend, Dixon.’

Daryl frowns and edges closer to him again, glancing at Maggie who flies into Beth’s embrace. ‘What?’

‘Dare.’

Heavy footsteps in the car. Boots on metal.

Daryl rips himself out of Glenn’s embrace, stumbles in his eagerness to get over to the other side but is easily caught by two hands. And even with his larger frame, his muscles, he’s still easily lifted clean off the ground and into a broad chest. He laughs, wraps his arms around the neck and his legs around that waist. He holds on as tight as he can.

‘Oh, my boy,’ Shane breathes into his neck, squeezing him. ‘Jesus Christ. Thank God _, thank God_.’

Daryl buries his fingers in that thick, black hair. ‘ _Shane_ ,’ he whimpers.

‘I’ve got you,’ the man shushes. ‘I’ve got you, kid.’

Behind them, Rick turns to the door. A beam of light illuminating only half of his face. ‘They’re gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out,’ he murmurs.

‘Find out what?’ A man behind Shane asks.

Rick looks at him grimly. ‘They’re fucking with the wrong people.’

 

 

_‘How many walkers have you killed?’_

_‘Thirty-five,’ the man says with a wild look in his eye. ‘Thirty-six if you’ll let me get that one. Please? I’ll get it for you! Prove myself to you! You!’ The man points at Daryl, ‘you’re a sweet boy. A beautiful boy, even. Yeah, yeah, no-one ever tell you that?’_

_Daryl glances behind him but there’s just empty road for miles and miles. He frowns and tries to see the walker the man’s referring to, but he can’t see it anywhere._

_‘Don’t talk to him,’ Shane cuts in. ‘How many people have you killed?’_

_The man frowns. He looks at his bloody knife. ‘Thirty-five,’ he says._

_Daryl whirls back around, lifting his bow immediately._

_‘Why?’ Shane asks._

_The man looks up at him, ‘there can’t be walkers without people, right? So, if I want to kill them, I have to make them.’_

_‘Make them?’_

_‘The walkers. You need people for walkers. Some wanted it. It’s a new world, a new way! It’s not – it’s not a disease. I’m- I’m setting them free. You can’t fight the end. You’re just slowing it down. And you?’ He asks Daryl, ‘you’re so beautiful. Handsome! I can show you a new kingdom. A new kind of paradise. And it’s going to be just as beautiful as-‘_

_Daryl watches how the man’s skull explodes. He wrinkles his nose._

_Shane puts his gun back into the holster._

_‘Crazy fuck,’ the teenager says before he confiscates the bloody knife, wiping it on the man’s shirt._

A smoke grenade explodes between them all.

Daryl can feel how Shane pulls him back, throws him against the end of the car to get out of the blast zone but it barely helps. Smoke fills his lungs, stings his eyes. He falls to his knees, coughing, until something hits him across the back of his head.

 

 

The sound of a saw buzzing.

A man standing behind a table.

Blood.

Plastic trash bins with _burn_ , _feed_ and _wash_ on them.

A concrete floor.

Daryl closes his eyes and lets himself be dragged away.

 

 

‘Wakey, wakey.’

A stinging pain on his cheek jerks him back to consciousness. He’s kneeling in front of a drain, hands bound behind his back and feet tied together. Panic boils in his veins, making it hard to breathe. There’s something in his mouth, cloth, they’ve gagged him. He works his jaw, tries to push at the fabric with his tongue but it won’t budge.

Someone else falls to their knees beside him.

Glenn.

Daryl glances to his right, where Rick is kneeling.

Bob is there, right next to Rick’s other side. And then Shane next to Glenn. Three others guys he doesn’t know.

A saw whirs again. Daryl looks up to see a man cutting a body to pieces. He tries to scream but no real sound penetrates his gag.

There’s a guy standing at the end of the drain. He’s sharpening a big knife. The sound causes Daryl to almost lose his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see another guy practicing his swing with a baseball bat.

Tears make his vision go blurry. He blinks them away, twists a bit when he notices that the men move to the other end of the drain.

Without a word, the guy swings his bat.

The other one grabs the head of their victim, yanks it back to slit his throat.

Blood splashes into the drain.

Daryl looks away with a jerk. He tries to breathe through his nose, bites down on the gag to prevent himself from screaming. The whole room starts to smell like blood and chemicals. He looks down at the drain. Blood slowly creeps towards him, dark, red.

People are screaming next to him, some are crying. Rick is quiet.

Another swing from the bat. Another throat. More blood swirling down the drain.

‘Hey, guys?’ Gareth comes walking in with a notebook. ‘What were your shot counts?’

‘Thirty-eight.’

Another swing. Another throat. Still more blood.

Daryl looks this time. He tries to scream.

The men move to stand behind Shane now.

One prepares to take the swing.

‘Hey!’ Gareth cuts in, causing both of the guys to freeze. ‘Your shot count?’

‘Crap, man,’ the one with the knife says. ‘I’m sorry. It’s my first roundup.’

‘After you’re done here, go back to your point and count the shells,’ Gareth explains. ‘Kaylee won’t be gathering them until tomorrow. Five from A, three from D?’

‘Yeah,’ the man with the bat confirms.

Bob is screaming something.

Gareth leans forward to remove the gag, an irritated expression on his face. ‘What?’ he snaps.

‘Don’t do this,’ Bob pleads. ‘We can fix this.’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘You don’t have to do this!’ Bob pleads. ‘We told you there’s a way out of all of this. You just have to take a chance. We have a man who knows how to stop it. He has a cure. We just have to get him to Washington. You don’t have to do this, man. We can put the world back to how it was!’

‘Can’t go back, Bob,’ Gareth tells him before replacing the gag. Then he kneels before Rick and pulls his gag down. ‘We saw you go into the woods with a bag and come out without it. I had to pull my spotters back before we could go look for it. What was in it?’

Rick just stares him down.

‘You hid it, right?’ Gareth asks. ‘In case things went bad? Smart. Still, we’ll find it. But it’s too dangerous to go out there right now.’ He takes his knife out and hooks a hand around the back of Bob’s neck, pulling him close. ‘What was in it?’ He asks Rick again. ‘I’m curious. And it was a big bag.’

Rick never blinks.

‘You’re really gonna let me do this?’ Gareth asks with a nod at Bob. The point of his knife is an inch away from the other man’s eye.

‘Well, let me take you out there,’ Rick says, a tiny smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Not gonna happen. This might.’ The knife moves closer to Bob’s eye.

‘There’s guns in it,’ Rick says quickly. ‘AK-47, a .44 Magnum. Automatic weapons. Night scope. There’s a compound bow and a machete with a red – yeah, a _red_ handle. That’s what I’m gonna use to kill you.’

Gareth smiles.

Rick does too.

‘Thanks,’ the man pats the cop on the shoulders and gets back to his feet before pushing the gag back in place. ‘You have two hours to get them on the dryers,’ he tells his men. Then we go back to public face. Now’s the time we can get messy but we need to dial it all in by sundown.’

‘Got it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Gunshots outside.

Gareth grabs his walkie-talkie. ‘Hey, Chuck?’

More gunshots.

The man with the bat looks at his friend. And shrugs.

Daryl turns just in time to see how Shane’s head slams forward, hitting the metal in front of them.

A hand reaches down, pulls his head back up by that thick, black mess of hair. A knife blinks.

Daryl screams again as he watches how Shane’s blood spills into the drain.

 

The explosion comes too late.

 

 


	47. Numb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: explicit self-harm.
> 
> Wow, you guys. I am so sorry. Honestly? This was the plan all along, but I didn't quite expect it to happen on the Christmas update... Eek. That was mean, sorry. 
> 
> I hope you had the best of time. Thanks for the great reactions, they absolutely made my weekend. 
> 
> Thank you, so much.

 

* * *

 

 

 

‘Rick!’

Daryl stares at the blood that’s swirling down the drain. Red against the gray of metal. By now, it’s impossible to tell whose it is. All mixed together, four blood types and all the same color. He narrows his eyes and swallows around the gag in his mouth. It doesn’t even matter anymore whose it is.

The explosion had rocked him. There’s chaos all around him now.

Somewhere behind him, Rick is slaughtering the two men who killed his brother. Daryl can hear how the wooden stake cuts into flesh, breaks bones, splatters blood on the concrete floor and walls. He closes his eyes. Yesterday it had been a knife, now it’s wood and nothing has changed. Not much, at least. Only this time, he’s not afraid that the noise will never stop.

He’s hopeful.

Rick is screaming. Not words, not anything that could ever resemble human speech, just a animalistic sound of pain and loss. Soon it will soften into mourning, into quieter sobs that speak of broken ties and that strong voice will pull their family together again to lead them on. Daryl doesn’t want to hear it. None of that. He never wants the world to go quiet again, wants nothing to soften, doesn’t want to mourn. He doesn’t want to move on. There’s a dullness in his mind. Something is making everything fuzzy around the edges, the sounds not quite registering right, his nerve endings somehow disconnected from his spine. He knows the feeling, of course.

He’s pretty sure that he’s going to see his dad’s empty eyes when he opens his own. That he’s back in that open space, hiding in his dad’s dead embrace, that there will be fire licking his face soon.

‘Rick.’ Glenn grunts next to him. ‘Rick, help!’

The sound is already softening. Rick stops his slashing, looks at what he’s done, and then gets to his feet to stride over to the Korean with mighty steps. Boots clicking on concrete. He drops to one knee and frees his friend, then he cuts Daryl’s ties before moving on to get Bob up.

‘Dare,’ Glenn says softly as the world goes to hell around them. The gunfire won’t stop, the smell of fire fills the air. They can hear walkers, screams, they can hear death itself ghosting through the complex. Hesitant fingers touch his cheek. Daryl shivers. ‘Dare, please, look at me. I’m so sorry.’

Daryl breathes through his nose even though Glenn is removing the gag now. Slow, steady breaths.

The fingers grow bolder now, digging into his skin, cupping his jaw, ‘I’m so sorry, but we need to get out of here.’

His eyes slam open. They can’t _leave_. His body comes to life with jerky motions, his hands going to Glenn’s right shoulder to shove him aside because he needs to see. He needs to know that it’s real, that he hasn’t imagined it, that one of his nightmares didn’t bleed out of the dark and into his real world to trick him into a far darker place.

‘No,’ Glenn objects, pushing back, ‘no, please don’t look!’

They’re both distracted by Rick who walks past, kneels beside his brother’s broken body to pull it out of the drain. Daryl puts his hands on the metal, pushes himself to his feet and watches. Their leader is crying, shoulders shaking as desperate fingers touch the sides of Shane’s face. They slide into that dark hair now slick with cooling blood.

‘No,’ Rick sobs, ‘no no, _no_.’ He leans forward to rest their foreheads together, to savior the last bit of warmth coming from the man he’d loved since he was young.

Daryl watches. He wants to sink down next to the cop, wants to press his face into that broad chest one more time, wants to take that hand and put it on the nape of his neck, just to feel that loving touch one last time.

He doesn’t. His legs won’t move. A coldness settles in his chest as he looks at the blood that’s still running down Shane’s neck.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Rick cries, ‘I’m _so_ sorry, brother.’ His fingers tighten on those thick curls as he takes a deep breath. His shoulders stop shaking. ‘I’m sorry.’ He tilts his head up, leans forward so he can kiss Shane’s forehead, lips lingering on cooling skin before he rips himself away from his best friend. He stumbles to his feet. ‘They’ve got problems, we’ve got a chance.’

Daryl wonders whether he just watched while someone flipped their own switch. The blue eyes are as cold as he feels inside when Rick looks at him. The cop strides over, puts a rough hand on Daryl’s cheek to force his gaze up to his own. ‘Daryl,’ he says, ‘we’ve got time to grieve later. I need you.’

But Rick already got his time.

Daryl looks at the body of his friend. And decides he won’t claim his moment. He nods as he meets Rick’s gaze again. ‘I’m here,’ he says, voice steady.

‘It sounded like a bomb,’ Glenn says.

‘Sounds like a damn war,’ Rick answers, tilting his head to the side while looking into Daryl’s eyes. His brows knit together like he’s seeing something he can’t quite believe. ‘Daryl,’ he says again but no follow up question or command comes. He just looks at the teenager.

‘I’m here,’ Daryl repeats dutifully.

Rick’s frown deepens.

‘Right there,’ Bob says as he moves to a table. There are knives there. Big ones, machete’s, too. The men would have used them to cut their bodies up. The medic takes a machete and passes another one to Glenn.

Daryl turns on his heels, letting Rick’s finger fall from his face, and walks over to the table. He picks a machete up first but puts it down again. It doesn’t feel right. Instead, he takes the biggest knife from the table. Long and sharp. It comes closest to how his hunting knife had looked. He twists it around, holding it upside down so the blade aligns with his forearm.

‘Who the hell are these people?’ Bob asks.

‘They aren’t people,’ Rick growls as he picks his weapon. ‘Don’t,’ he says when Bob moves to jab an icepick into one of the guy’s heads. ‘Let him turn.’

Daryl hesitates when the rest moves towards the door.

Glenn looks at him. ‘They got him in the head.’

Daryl grips his blade tighter.

‘I’m sure,’ the Korean says softly, walking back to him. ‘He won’t turn, Dare.’

He nods.

Together, they follow Rick and Bob down the hallway. They end up in a dark room which smells of blood and scorched flesh. There are chains hanging from the ceiling, torsos dangling from the ends. Beheaded, without arms and legs, skinned. A bloody mess. Some have been carved, revealing white bones and rib cages, spinal cords. There are plates with ribs next to a stove. Spatula’s to flip the pieces of breasts and sides. Horror washes through him, makes him sick, but it’s quickly replaced by that quiet, destructive rage that has been building inside of him since the bat had hit that skull.

‘Cross any of these people, you kill ‘em,’ Rick orders as he walks through the room. ‘You don’t hesitate. They won’t.’

A soft hand on Daryl’s shoulder urges him on. Glenn, looking spooked but fierce with the baseball bat in his hands.

There’s a door on the other side. It has a small window through which they can see the outside. Several walkers are banging on the door of a shipping container. They can hear someone screaming inside.

‘If we run, we can get by them,’ Rick says. ‘They’re distracted.’

‘We need to let those people out,’ Glenn answers. ‘That’s still who we are,’ he stresses when Rick looks at him with doubt in his cold eyes. ‘It’s got to be.’

After a beat of silence, Rick nods. ‘Daryl, stick to Glenn. On three.’

They burst through the door. Daryl doesn’t stick to Glenn. He marches forward, knife flashing as he steps into the sunshine. Due to his latest growth spurt, he doesn’t need to kick walkers down before he can reach their heads. Now, he can just make a slashing move and jab the blade right in. The walker sinks to its knees immediately and the rest take care of the other ones.

Glenn shoots him a concerned look before rushing forward to open the container.

A man comes out, grabbing hold of Glenn before he moves to Rick and is shoved aside. ‘We’re the same,’ he shouts. But they’re not because he stumbles backwards, laughing, and is attacked by a walker instantly.

Rick curls a protective hand around Daryl’s shoulder, holding him back, while Glenn bashes the walker’s skull in.

A group of people from Terminus make their way through the alley. They all have automatic guns. Before anyone can object, Rick pushes Daryl into Glenn’s chest and darts towards one of the cars so he can sneak up on the last guy of the group. Bob joins him seconds later, killing a walker that had been trying to sneak up on the cop. Glenn loops his arm around Daryl’s chest, putting a hand on his heart as they watch how Rick slits the man’s throat expertly. He kisses the dark, sweaty hair, breathing the Dixon boy in, as Rick picks up the gun and murders the small group. ‘We’re going to be okay,’ he whispers.

Daryl nods.

‘Dare,’ Glenn says, fingers tightening against his breast, ‘we’re going to be okay.’

‘I know.’

The Korean turns him around at that, hands on the boy’s cheeks, ducking so they’re on eye-level. ‘Just a little longer. We need to push a little longer and then…’

‘I’m fine.’

‘No,’ Glenn says softly, stroking his left cheek where the beauty mark is. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘I’m here.’

‘Yes,’ his friend nods. ‘And stay here, with us. Don’t get lost, okay? Don’t get lost inside that head of yours.’ He brushes the dark fringe out of Daryl’s eyes so he has nothing to hide behind. Their eyes meet. Bright blue and almost black.

Rick comes back and hands a gun to Bob, ‘we don’t have to double back,’ he says before leading them back towards the train car.

Daryl doesn’t remember much from those minutes. By the time Rick yanks the door open to reveal the rest of their family, Daryl’s not sure how many walkers he’s cut down already. His arm aches. Rick is firing the automatic gun next to him, the sound deafening. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees how Carl runs up to his dad, how they check each other over to make sure they’re fine, Rick reaching out to touch his boy’s face for a moment before they move on. Maggie and Glenn do the same thing, except Maggie touches Glenn’s cheek while her eyes scan for someone else.

‘He’s oka-,’ Glenn starts and then changes his mind, ‘he’s right there!’

Maggie’s gaze lands on him. Daryl pretends not to notice. He pushes a walker up against a wall and drives the knife in as hard as he can.

‘Follow Rick! Follow Rick,’ Glenn shouts now, pushing his wife towards the fences. ‘We’re right behind you! Dare! _Dare_!’

Daryl hesitates. He watches how the walker slides down the wall, leaving a trail of blood and brain-matter on the bricks. They haven’t found Gareth yet. And while the two men back at the drain might have done it, Gareth is responsible. It’s on him. All of it. And he’s going to pay. He thinks about running off, back into the building. He thinks about killing everything that still walks, men and walkers. It’s what he wants. He wants to stagger out of this place tomorrow morning and know that there’s no one left. And he wants that to be on him.

Shane deserved that, at least.

Vengeance.

He’d waited with the Governor. He’d let him get away, had given up and so many people had died because of it. He won’t make the same mistake with Shane. His dad had died in vain, maybe. Shane won’t.

‘ _Dare_!’

But Glenn is waiting for him and his screams cause Maggie to stop running too.

They won’t leave him.

That’s a problem. While he now dreams of staggering out of the complex, covered in blood and hurting but still victorious, he knows that’s a long shot. A slim chance. If he’s perfectly honest, he thinks he might die if he stays here to slaughter all these people. That won’t matter, though. That’s not the point.

Gareth needs to die.

‘ _Dare_!’

But not Glenn. And not Maggie.

He turns on his heels and runs after his family, joining the Korean near the fence. A large man with orange hair is standing next to it, ready to help him over, but Daryl does a run-up and jumps into the chain-link and doesn’t need any help. He flips himself over it, landing in the grass on the other side.

Glenn jumps down next to him, Rick falls over less gracefully and finally the man with the orange hair.

There’s no time to take a breather. Frantic hands push friends to their feet, checking for bites and scratches, shaking voices telling everyone that they’re okay.

Carl is the first to notice. He looks around, turns to his dad with wide eyes. ‘Shane?’ he asks.

Rick shakes his head and holds out his arm. Carl launches himself into his father’s side, burying his face in that lean chest to hide his sudden tears.

‘Oh no,’ Beth breathes, spinning on her heels and meeting Daryl’s eye. ‘Dare….’

Daryl straightens, puts his new knife away and brushes his hair out of his eyes. ‘Yes?’

She frowns, takes a step closer to him, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Something tightens in his face, ‘ya should be tellin’ Rick that. Weren’t nothing to me,’ he says as he brushes past the girl.

‘ _Daryl_!’ The look on Rick’s face is murderous. He looks so angry that it scares the teenager for a second. ‘Don’t you dare –‘

‘Stop,’ Glenn steps forward and puts a calming hand on Rick’s arm. ‘Let’s do this later, we need to get out of here.’

Rick glares at the teenager before taking a calming breath. He rubs at his eyes. ‘Dare,’ he says but the use of his nickname sounds so forced that it causes Glenn to wince, ‘on point.’

 

 

‘What the hell are we still around here for?’ Abraham asks when they make their way along the fence and then into the woods.

Daryl is walking on point, eyes glued to the forest floor, easily retracing their steps. Beth is walking next to him. She’d tried to start a conversation a couple of minutes ago, tried to tell him how sorry she really was, how Shane wouldn’t want him to draw back like this, how he would have been proud of him, but Daryl doesn’t want to hear it. He’d told her to shut up and let him track in peace.

The hurt look on her face had only lasted a second. She’d fallen behind half a step, keeping close to him but not close enough to muck up the trail. If he wanted, he could reach out and take her hand.

He doesn’t. ‘Right here,’ he mutters, pointing at a carving in a tree he’d made earlier. From under a pile of leaves, he retrieves a small shovel and throws it at Rick, who starts digging.

‘Guns. Some supplies. Go along the fences, use the rifles. Take out the rest of them.’

‘What?’ Bob asks as he steps forward.

Daryl leans against the tree and frowns at the medic.

‘They don’t get to live,’ Rick tells him.

‘Rick,’ Glenn says as something tightens in his jaw. ‘We got out. It’s over.’

‘It’s not over until they’re all dead.’ Rick pulls his Python out first, checking the chamber.

‘The hell it is! That place is on fire! Full of walkers.’ It’s the girl with the pigtails and army hat who now speaks up.

‘I’m not dicking around with this crap, we just made it out,’ the big man says as he shakes his head.

‘The fences are down,’ Maggie chimes in. ‘They’ll run or die.’

Anger roars inside Daryl’s ears. He doesn’t understand that they’re giving up so easily, like it doesn’t matter that they’re not sure. That they can live with the possibility that those guys just _run_. He moves towards the bag, ready to claim the bow that’s hiding in its folds. It’s a compound bow but he still knows how to shoot that. His dad had owned one, had taught him how to shoot it.

He’s not as good a shot with it as with his trusted crossbow, of course, but he can make do.

Leaves rustle behind him. He whirls around.

Carol is standing there. She’s carrying his bow and pack.

Daryl stares.

Rick staggers forward. ‘Did you do that?’ he asks and waits for Carol’s confirming nod before taking her into his arms. He sobs into her shoulder, fingers digging into her brown jacket and slim shoulders. ‘Thank you.’

She gently pries him away from her. There are tears in her eyes. ‘You need to come with me,’ she says, the hint of a smile lifting the corners of her mouth up. Then she looks at the teenager, ‘I saw this on the table. I thought you’d like it back.’ She holds the bow out to him.

He nods, bites his lip before moving closer and taking the weapon from her. ‘Thank you,’ he whispers.

‘And your pack. I couldn’t carry all your things,’ she says apologetically to the rest of the group before she turns back to him, ‘but I know you had the pictures in there and – I just… I didn’t want them to have those.’ Daryl nods again. Carol looks up with a slight frown, confused by his muted reaction. ‘what-‘

‘We lost Shane,’ Glenn says.

‘Thanks for gettin’ my stuff back,’ Daryl murmurs as he looks at his feet and holds out his hand for his pack. Instead of the strap of his heavy backpack, something light is placed onto the palm of his hand. The blue eyes widen. His fingers close around his parent’s wedding rings. The silver necklace blinks in the sunlight.

‘Found that, too.’

Daryl remembers being forced to the ground, disoriented due to the gas, and a hand closing around the jewelry, yanking it from his neck. He inspects the necklace but finds that it isn’t broken. With shaking fingers, he puts it on. The rings disappear under his shirt and touch his naked skin. He shivers. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m so sorry about Shane,’ Carol whispers.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl takes his backpack and puts it on before throwing the strap of his bow over his shoulder and turning away from her. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see how Glenn shakes his head slightly and Carol steps away from him.

The cop clears his throat and turns back to the woman. ‘You had something to show us?’

‘Yeah. Come with me.’

 

 

The reunion with Judith should have been heartwarming but Daryl doesn’t feel a thing as he watches how Rick runs towards Tyreese with Carl hot on his heels. Somewhere deep inside of him, he knows he’s glad, relieved, happy, thankful, but it won’t reach his mind or his eyes. He just stares at the ground and hides behind Abraham’s large frame. They don’t need to see the dark look on his face as he stares out over the road. They deserve to be happy for a moment, he thinks bitterly.

‘Hey,’ Beth comes to stand next to him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ he mutters because he doesn’t know what he feels. Nothing, probably. Too much is also a possibility. ‘Shouldn’t you say hi to Asskicker?’

‘Shouldn’t you?’ He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s smiling, one hand on her knife as her bright eyes scan their surroundings. When it’s all clear, she turns to him. ‘You know what I will miss most about Shane? Not his kindness, or that laugh, or the way he liked to stick his nose into everyone’s business. But the walking-talking Dixon-dictionary that he was. Sometimes when you were in one of your moods, he’d know exactly what to say to pull you right out.’

Daryl frowns.

‘Someone would go to him,’ Beth laughs, ‘ _Shane, he’s angry but he refuses to talk again so what should we do_? And he’d be all; _bait him, make him even angrier so at least we know what the problem is._ Other times he’d tell us to leave you be. I’ll miss that,’ she smiles, ‘because I don’t know what to do now.’

‘Don’t got to do nothing. I’m fine.’

‘You’re lying to me,’ Beth says. ‘Never have you ever lied to me before.’

Something pulls at the corner of his mouth and he almost smiles at the reference to their game. It doesn’t break through, however. ‘Did,’ he says simply as he walks away, leaving her behind.

 

 

‘I know you lost something back there,’ Rick tells him in the afternoon. He’s carrying Judith in his arms, kissing her forehead every couple of minutes to assure himself that she’s still safe and sound. The little girl is crying softly, whimpering in her daddy’s arms. The rest of the group is a couple of steps behind them. Daryl can feel their gazes on him, hot and heavy. He wants to curl up in a little ball in a ditch somewhere where they can’t see him. He’s tired of everyone tiptoeing around him. Of the careful touches, the hesitant smiles, the sorry attempts at conversations. He wants to shout at them that he’s _fine_. Wants to scream that they should leave him alone and stop staring at him like they’re just waiting for him to lose his shit. Treading lightly in case he goes off, a ticking time bomb ready to blow up in their faces.

He takes a deep breath and looks at Rick, who’s looking at him, too. ‘She’s hungry,’ he tells the dad because he doesn’t know what to say to his comment. They all lost something back there.

‘She’s fine,’ Rick dismisses. ‘Was a busy morning, she’s cranky, that’s all. Do you want to hold her for a bit?’

‘No,’ Daryl says as he looks away. ‘Don’t want to hold no cranky baby.’

Something tightens in Rick’s jaw but he nods. ‘Okay. I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.’

The teenager frowns because he’d almost forgotten that incident. He rubs at his nose with the back of his hand and shrugs.

‘I know you’re upset,’ Rick says, softer now so their conversation is private. ‘I know you’re so, so hurt. Please… Talk to me, Dare.’

Daryl lifts his hand and bites on his thumb.

‘Okay,’ Rick says. He scans the woods for a moment. ‘We’d been friends since we were born. Our mothers were in one of those classes, you know? For pregnant women, like, a support group or something. God knows they needed it with us,’ he flashes Daryl a small smile. ‘We were best friends, joined at the hip. Rick and Shane, always just the two of us. He used to come over a lot, practically lived at my place,’ Rick murmurs. ‘His mom and dad? They had a big family so they were always busy with this and that. He liked coming back to mine. I had an older brother but he was never around much and my mom _loved_ fussing over people so he became her new target. He liked that. A new captive audience for his stupid stories.’ Rick smirks,’ I was just glad the heat was off of me for a second, you know?’

Daryl nods despite himself.

‘Preschool, primary, high school, we even went to the academy together.’ Rick hitches Judith higher. ‘His mom – she was sweet as can be – she died when we were at the academy. Remember it like it happened yesterday. He’d gotten the phone call late at night and woke me up. It was really unexpected, she wasn’t sick or anything. And I remember just – I don’t know – _panicking_. I mean, what do you say to someone whose mom had just died? I’ve never really been good at talking, he was the extrovert, never shutting up, loving the attention, but I felt like I had to say something. But he just sat next to me on the bed and said; _can you just_ be _here_?’

Daryl scratches at his cheek and glances back at Glenn, who is walking a couple of steps behind him. At the contact, the Korean perks up, a hesitant smile on his face but Daryl quickly looks away again.

‘We sat there all night. Sometimes words can’t make it better, but friends can. _Family_ can,’ Rick stresses. ‘I see how you’re pushing them away. It’s not fair, Dare. It’s not fair to them. When something like this happens? You need to let people help. And they might not be able to make you feel better, but they can take care of other things.’

Daryl frowns and doesn’t understand.

‘Shane and I packed our shit up the next morning and drove all the way home,’ Rick tells him. ‘There wasn’t anything I could say to make things better, was nothing I could do about the pain, but I could make things easier. I could make coffee. I could take out the trash, answer the phone, walk their dog. So I did. And it helped.’ The cop looks at him. ‘Let someone else carry your heavy pack for you. I know Carl offered. Let Glenn take your guard duty just this once. And if Maggie offers to fill up your water bottle, please don’t tell her to fuck off.’

Daryl winces at the memory of earlier this morning.

‘Even if it doesn’t help _you_ , it helps _them_. It makes people feel useful.’ Rick stops walking. He puts a hand on Daryl’s shoulder to stop him too. The cop leans closer, blue eyes meeting blue ones. ‘He was my brother. That makes you mine, too. Let me help.’

Daryl looks down at his boots, kicks one foot against the other and then steps a little closer to the man. Hesitant fingers on Judith’s arm, stroking the skin just to feel her warmth. When he reaches her fingers, they curl around his index finger. She tries to bring his hand to her mouth, wanting to suck on his fingers because she’s trying to taste everything these days. He smiles.

‘She missed you,’ Rick says with a matching smile.

Daryl sighs and looks up at him. He bites his lip, glances at the group that’s staying back and pretending that they’re not trying to listen in. He looks back at those blue eyes. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he whispers.

‘What doesn’t?’ Rick asks quietly.

Daryl feels helpless. ‘ _Shane_ ,’ he says, a little desperate now. ‘When it was my dad, I had a gun in my mouth and almost pulled the trigger, it just hurt so much but now – I can’t even _feel_ it. There’s something _wrong_ with me.’

Rick’s look softens. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Daryl.’

‘Then why doesn’t it hurt?’ He demands.

‘Because you’re in shock,’ he puts a warm hand on the boy’s neck. ‘You need time, Dare. You need to give yourself some time to process it all.’

‘I know what happened. He died. We got out. That’s all. I _have_ processed it!’

‘There’s a difference between knowing it and feeling it. Feeling it takes time. Trust me,’ he pleads when Daryl looks doubtful. ‘Trust me on this. I know, okay? I know pain like this. Sometimes it comes fast and hard, and sometimes it takes a day, two days, longer. But it will come and it will hurt and I am so sorry, Dare.’

‘Yeah. Me, too.’

 

 

_‘We need to talk.’_

_Daryl scowls at his knees and refuses to look up at Shane, who is blocking the only exit. There’s blood seeping into his mouth from his split lip, one of his eyes hurt and his knuckles are bruised. He curls his hands around his knees just to keep them moving like Hershel had said._

_‘Daryl,’ Shane presses. ‘What the hell happened?’_

_Daryl tilts his head back against the concrete. He glares at his friend with one eye._

_‘Talk, now. Right now, or I swear to God.’_

_‘Gonna threaten me now?’ Daryl laughs. ‘Do your fuckin’ worst. Pussy pig like you? Psssh. I can take it.’_

_'You beat a guy up.’_

_‘So?’_

_‘You just go around beating people up now?’_

_‘Maybe.’_

_Shane grits his teeth. ‘You almost broke the guy’s arm.’_

_‘Almost ain’t nothing real. Can’t_ almost _break something, just means ya didn’t. I didn’t, so it don’t matter.’_

_‘What happened, Dare?’_

_‘Got mad.’_

_‘Can you cut the bullshit?’ Shane asks angrily as he walks into the cell and kneels down before the boy. ‘Either talk to me or rot in this cell until you’re twenty one, okay? Don’t give me this bullshit attitude. The guy is in the fuckin’ infirmary because you got mad.’_

_Daryl shrugs and bites on his fingers. He can still taste the blood. ‘He called me trash.’_

_‘He called you trash,’ Shane echoes with disbelief in his voice._

_‘Yup,’ Daryl nods, letting the p pop noisily._

_‘You beat him up until he couldn’t see straight because he called you trash.’_

_‘You deaf?’_

_Shane lets his head hang for a second. ‘Do you promise that that’s what happened? He called you trash and you beat him up?’_

_‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods._

_A hand shoots out and curls around Daryl’s upper arm, yanking him off the bed. The boy flails, yelps a bit as he’s dragged out of the cell and down the stairs. ‘There is something wrong with you, Dixon,’ Shane snarls and Daryl knows he’s really mad because he doesn’t ever call him_ Dixon _. ‘Are you kidding me? Who do you think you are? You’ve got a problem, mister. That temper of yours? It’s out of control.’_

 _‘He fuckin’ started it with his big mouth and now ,‘cause he’s cryin’ like a pussy, ya gonna blame_ me _? That’s fucked up, man! I didn’t even do anything wrong! I defended myself and you’re…’_

 _‘That isn’t_ defending _yourself,’ Shane snarls, jostling him hard. He pushes the boy up against a wall. ‘You have no idea the amount of damage you can do, huh? Jesus Christ. Not everyone grew up in a boxing ring like you, Dare! Not everyone can take it! And they shouldn’t have to. He called you trash? Boohoo. That’s so mean of him. If it bothers you so much, tell him to stop. If he doesn’t, find someone from the council to take care of it.’_

_‘Ya want me runnin’ to the council every time someone calls me trash? Y’all gonna be busy takin’ my damn calls, man!’_

_‘Stop acting like trash then,’ Shane shouts. ‘Act like a civilized human being for once in your damn life.’_

_Daryl snarls and tries to get free. ‘That how it is, huh? Let go! Let go!’_

_‘I’ll tell you how it is,’ Shane snarls back. ‘Today you beat up that guy. Yesterday Carl got a right hook for being too loud or whatever, the day before? You made Beth cry with your mean commentary. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but it needs to stop. Now._ Right now. _’_

_‘Pssh! Bunch of stupid ass democr-‘_

_‘Hello, Will Dixon?’ Shane asks as he knocks on Daryl’s forehead, ‘please leave, thank you.’_

_Daryl freezes and stares at his friend._

_‘I know,’ Shane says, voice softer now and with a hint of regret in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, that was -  I know it’s a year tomorrow, Dare. I’ve seen the calendar you’ve been keeping on the ceiling of your cell. He wouldn’t want you doing this. I know it hurts, but this isn’t right, Dare. You need to stop lashing out at everyone, that doesn’t help.’_

_Daryl frowns. ‘It does.’_

_‘How does it help?’ Shane asks, cocking his head a little to the side._

_‘Fighting? Making Beth cry? That hurts me too,’ Daryl says. ‘It helps because it hurts.’_

‘Glenn?’ Daryl walks over to his friend when they stop for a break. ‘Can you carry my pack for me?’

The Korean looks surprised but holds out his hands eagerly. ‘Yeah! Of course, no problem.’

Daryl nods and squats down next to him. He picks at his fingernails and then looks at Maggie. ‘Sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.’

Maggie reaches out and strokes his cheek. ‘I know. It’s okay.’

‘May I have some of your water?’ The woman gives him the flask. ‘Thanks,’ he murmurs as he takes a couple of sips. ‘I’m going out hunting. We need some food for tonight. Is that okay?’

Glenn looks concerned. ‘We’re going to keep moving until sundown, Dare. Maybe it’ll be best…’

‘I can track you. And I won’t go far,’ Daryl promises. ‘Just gonna find some rabbits, I saw a couple of trails a little way back so…’

Glenn and Maggie share a look.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Beth says as she stands up. ‘You taught me how to hunt. I can help and I’ll be quiet.’

Daryl shakes his head, ‘I just… I just really want to be alone for a bit.’

‘It’s not safe,’ Maggie objects.

Glenn sighs. ‘Okay,’ he says with a nod, ‘But you’re taking a gun, too.’ He passes the boy a handgun and the teenager stuffs it between his jeans and the small of his back. ‘And the same rule as always. _Knife, bow, holler_. Stay within shouting distance of us.’

‘Thanks,’ Daryl nods as he gets back to his feet. ‘I’ll be back before dark.’

‘Do we need to mark the trees or something?’

Daryl stares at the Korean.

Glenn smirks, ‘joke. I know you can track a mouse out here. Go on. _Before_ sundown.’

 

 

When he’s caught six rabbits, he sits down beneath one of the big trees near the path his family is following. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it. He stares at the ground at his feet.

 

 

_Shane laughs and holds his hand up after they’ve completed the work on the gate._

_Daryl laughs and claps their hands together._

_‘Team work!’ the cop says._

Daryl inhales deeply and feels how the smoke scorches his lungs.

_‘Sorry,’ Daryl mutters as he wakes from one of his last fever dreams to find that he’s crawled on top of Shane’s chest._

_His friend mutters something, still half asleep, loops an arm around Daryl’s waist to hold him in place._

_‘What did ya say?’ Daryl frowns as he rubs at his eyes._

_‘I said,’ Shane says, a little clearer now, ‘shut the fuck up and let me sleep.' He pressed his cold nose into the crook of Daryl's neck and smiles when the boy giggles._

He looks at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

 

 

_‘Dare, answer me, over.’_

_‘What’s up, over?’_

_‘Thank God. No – we… it’s getting dark, Dare. Over.’_

_‘Yeah, I’m almost home, I’m at the creek, washing up. Over.’_

_‘We’ve got showers. Come home, now. Over and out.’_

_‘Okay. Meet me at the gate in fifteen. Over and out.’_

Slowly, he lets the tip burn the webbing between his thumb and index finger _._

_‘You know what?’ Shane asks as he stretches._

_‘What?’ Daryl asks._

_‘It’s a goddamn beautiful day,’ the cop laughs. ‘And I fucking love you.’_

_Daryl snorts. ‘The fuck did you shoot up on?’_

It hurts. So much.

 

 

‘ _Nightmare?’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘Want to talk or just sit here?’_

_Daryl shakes his head._

_‘Okay,’ Shane says softly. He turns back to his book._ _He doesn’t say anything when Daryl curls up at the foot of his bunk, one hand tentatively reaching out so he can hold on the bottom of the cop’s jeans. He twists his fingers into the rough fabric and doesn’t let go for the rest of the night._

 

 

When the pain becomes too much, he throws the cigarette away and buries his hands in his hair.

Tears drip down his cheeks.

 

 

 


	48. Denomination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!  
> Stay safe, have fun!

 

* * *

 

 

 

_Daryl is making some new bolts in the courtyard when the group of runners comes back. The gates are opened and closed, the car stops just outside of Cellblock A._

_Shane is the first one to hop out of the truck but the look on his face is one of pure anger. He slams the door closed and stalks towards their cellblock._

_The boy frowns but turns back to his bolts._

_Fifteen minutes later, there’s shouting going on in their home. A couple of people from Woodbury look frightened but Daryl knows the difference between a walker attack and Shane losing his cool with his family members. He just continues, shaking the bottle with glue a little before applying it to the shaft._

_The door slams open beside him. Shane storms out, into the sunlight. He stops, blinks, and sees the people who are looking at him with open mouths. ‘The fuck you’re looking at? Don’t you all have anything to do?’_

_Daryl doesn’t flinch. He blows on the glue to get it to dry faster._

_‘And you!’ Shane turns on him now. ‘What the hell are you doing?’_

_‘Fixin’ my bolts,’ the boy murmurs as he inspects the one he’d just glued._

_‘Fixing your bolts? You’ve got thousands of bolts in your room! What? You couldn’t find anything useful to do? You couldn’t help Hershel or Rick out, or Carol?’_

_Daryl sighs and looks up at the man. ‘What crawled up your ass? We all got jobs to do, huntin’ is mine. So yeah, I need loads of bolts. Sorry about it. Good lord.’_

_Shane deflates a little. ‘And there wasn’t anything more useful for you to do today?’_

_Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘What’s more useful than keepin’ people fed? Sit your ass down. Stop loomin’ over me.’_

_The cop does sit down next to him. Shoulders hunched and eyes on his fingers, nervously twisting them together._

_‘You lost someone out there?’ Daryl asks quietly._

_‘Almost.’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘We brought this guy, jumpy little shit. He’d told us he’d been in the military, that he’d been with the damn marines. Shit. We thought, you know, something ain’t right about that but…. Jesus,’ Shane rubs at the back of his head._

_‘Never been military?’_

_‘Not even a fucking boy scout,’ Shane growls. ‘He panicked and almost emptied a clip on me. Saw my life flashing by, man. Thought I was a goner for sure.’_

_Daryl tilts his head back and looks at his friend. ‘You’re still here.’_

_Shane nods._

_‘Hey,’ Daryl knocks their knees together. ‘You’re still here,’ he repeats when Shane finally looks at him._

_The cop smiles. ‘Yeah.’_

 

 

He wakes up with a gasp, his legs and arms jerking as he rips himself out of his dreams. There’s a campfire burning a couple of feet away from him. It illuminates most of his family members. Orange light ghosts over Glenn’s dark hair, it caresses Carol’s pale skin and seems to blend with Beth’s blonde hair. The Korean is the only one who is looking at him.

Daryl closes his eyes again.

There’s a hand brushing through his hair. Slow, gentle strokes, the nails never catching on his scalp. He moves his hand, folds it over Maggie’s thigh so he can hold on while he tries to sleep in her lap.

‘You okay?’ she asks quietly, not wanting to wake up Tyreese and Bob who are sleeping next to them. ‘Nightmare?’

‘No,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘Just – it felt like I was missing a step on the stairs.’

‘It’s called a hypnotic jerk,’ Maggie says as she brushes his hair out of his eyes. ‘It happens when your body falls asleep too quickly.’

‘The fuck?’ Daryl frowns, nosing at her thigh and getting comfortable again.

‘I read that somewhere.’

‘No, I mean why the fuck are we talkin’ about that? Who the hell cares, just twitched a bit, _sorry_.’

The fingers still for a moment before continuing. ‘I just wanted to talk to you. By now, I don’t even care what we talk about.’

‘Just want to sleep.’

Maggie sighs and puts her hand on his shoulder, squeezing a bit. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I’ll leave you alone. Even if _you_ were the one crawling into _my_ lap,’ she adds teasingly.

He grunts and turns to his back, stretching his legs a bit instead of curling up around hers. Her thigh supports his neck as he gazes up at her. Her features are soft in the light of the fire. There’s a tired smile tucking at the corners of her mouth. It feels like all he does these days is apologizing to her. ‘Sorry,’ he says again. ‘Don’t know why I’m always bein’ a jackass.’

‘It’s the raging hormones,’ she jokes weakly. ‘Mood swings. I was just like that when I was your age.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ she strokes his cheek. ‘Drove daddy nuts. Wild child, he’d call me. Said I was just like my mom, Josephine.’

Daryl bites on his lower lip. ‘You remember her?’

‘Yeah, I remember her.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Yeah,’ Maggie agrees.

Their gazes are drawn by Beth who gets up to relieve Abraham from his watch duty. They switch guns and it still feels strange to see how the little girl throws the automatic gun onto her back before taking a handgun from the large man. She checks the chamber, the safety, nods and sets off to find a good spot for the rest of the night.

‘I haven’t even had the chance to thank you yet.’

Daryl scratches at his chin and yawns, rolling onto his side so his face is pressed against Maggie’s belly. ‘For what?’

‘Keeping Beth safe. She told me what happened out there, how you two survived. Thank you.’

‘’s what we do, right? Was lucky I found her when it all went to shit. I looked but I couldn’t find you or Glenn or Sha-. I couldn’t find anyone else,’ he says quickly. ‘She just grabbed me and we hauled ass. It was crazy. Ended up in a damn funeral home.’

‘Yeah, she told me. What you did to… Whatever you had to do to get back to us? It was worth it. I want you to know that.’ She strokes his hair again. ‘I got out with Shane, Sasha and Bob. We thought Glenn and Beth had been on the bus and we couldn’t find you, so when the tank came down on us? We ran, too. We went after the bus. Turned out neither one of them were on it. Nobody had survived that ride. They’d turned by the time we got there.’

‘Woodbury folk?’

Maggie nods. ‘It took us a while to find the signs but when we did? We figured Glenn would go there. We hoped you would too.’

‘Didn’t see no signs until we’d already met up with Joe and his fuckin’ gang.’

‘At least you found us again,’ she says softly. ‘I love you.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Same.’

‘ _He_ loved you.’

‘Yeah, a’right,’ the teenager says before he rolls to his other side just so he won’t have to look at her when he finally opens his eyes again. He stares at the flames before him.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking right now.’

He knows it’s a technique Shane had used a thousand times to try to make him blurt out whatever was bothering him at the time. Mostly, he’d been too angry to formulate an articulate response to such a blunt request, lashing out with his own harsh truths before realizing that he’d shown his hand. It doesn’t work this time because he’s not angry or upset. He has time to think about his answer. He thinks about just going back to sleep and knows that she wouldn’t demand an answer the way Shane would have done. That she won’t shake his shoulder, force him to look at her and then make him spill his secrets.

But that wouldn’t be fair. She’s been so patient with him. She deserves more than his angry lashings.

With some effort, he rolls onto his back again. He stares up at her.

She smiles down at him, tired but curious.

‘I wanted to kill them all.’

The smile melts away, leaving the first traces of horror behind.

‘I would have if you hadn’t been there. I would have tried.’

The fingers fall away from his hair. He suddenly feels colder than seconds earlier. Maggie tugs one of her own strands of hair behind an ear, fingertips chasing down her cheek before she folds her hand over her mouth. Dark eyes shimmer with unshed tears.

‘I know you wouldn’t have let me,’ Daryl says, ‘that you would have stayed and I just… I couldn’t risk it. You. And Glenn, too. But I wanted it. I had that knife and I just… I wish I would have done it.’

‘You would have died,’ Maggie whispers when her hand falls away, back to his face, cupping his cheek. Her thumb brushing over his cheekbone.

‘They killed him.’

‘He wouldn’t have wanted you to do that. To even _think_ that.’

‘I know,’ Daryl answers simply. ‘That don’t matter though. I weren’t his.’

The fingers on his face tighten for just a second, muscles contracting as she flinches at the words. Then she shakes her head, ‘you don’t get to choose,’ she says. ‘You don’t get to choose _when_ you’re someone else’s. It doesn’t work like that, Dare. You can’t check out just because it hurts now.’

He closes his eyes. ‘It don’t matter,’ he insists. ‘His, or everyone else’s. I wanted it. I wanted it _so bad_.’

Maggie takes a deep breath. ‘Thank you.’

Blue eyes open wearily again.

‘For not doing it,’ she expands. ‘You may regret it every second for the rest of your life, but thank you.’

He just looks at her.

‘We would have stayed. Me and Glenn. Beth. Rick and Carl. Sasha and Bob. We all would have stayed with you.’ She leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead. ‘So thank you.’

 

 

The numbness hasn’t faded. Like the new scar on his hand, he fears it might never go away.

 

 

There’s a man screaming for help.

Carl jumps the gun, turning to his father with pleading eyes and an urgent ‘come on, _come on_!’ but Daryl doesn’t feel the same eagerness to help anyone at the moment. He leans against a tree, picks at his fingernails while Rick makes up his mind. There are squirrels dangling from a string on his shoulder. He did his job today and has already clocked out.

Maybe that is why Rick decides to help the guy. Because his son is screaming that they need to and Daryl doesn’t even care enough to object or agree. A hand pushes Carl’s shoulder, nudging him towards the desperate sounds and Rick nods, ‘go!’

With a sigh, Daryl pushes himself away from the tree to follow his family.

The man is hiding on a huge boulder. There are five walkers around him, trying to get hold of his legs and arms but he manages to scramble backwards. Just as the group breaks the tree line, however, he loses his grip and a walker manages to grab his ankle and pull him down a little way. Instead of kicking the walker in its face, the man just screams.

Carl’s bullet slams into the walker’s skull and launches the assault on the rest. Rick, Michonne and Carol dart forward with their knives. It’s only when a walker comes dangerously close to Carol that Daryl even lifts his bow, taking the corpse out easily before it can get its hands on the woman. He stomps forward when Rick gives the all clear and yanks his bolt back out.

The man is still curled up on the rock. When he finally uncurls, Daryl can see that he’s wearing a suit that seems to be soaked with his sweat. There’s a white strip at the collar. It’s been a long time since Daryl has seen one of those. The collar, and a holy man who wears it. Even with Rick’s gentle coaxing it takes a couple of seconds before the man dares to move. He slides down and off the rock clumsily, hands scraping over the surface. When his feet hit the forest floor and Rick asks him whether he’s all right, he lifts one finger in warning before throwing up.

Daryl scratches at the back of his head with the tip of his bolt and wrinkles his nose.

‘Sorry,’ the man gasps. ‘Yes. Thank you. I’m Gabriel.’

‘Do you have any weapons on you?’

The man laughs at that, if a bit nervously. He looks at Michonne, who’s leaning against the rock behind him but the woman just lift an unimpressed eyebrow. He turns back to Rick. ‘Do I look like I would have any weapons?’

‘We don’t give two short and curlies what it looks like,’ Abraham cuts in.

‘I have no weapons of any kind. The word of God is the only protection I need.’

Daryl scoffs, ‘sure didn’t look like it.’

The father looks at him, smiles, ‘I called for help. Help came,’ he gestures to the group.

That only makes Daryl angry. He scowls at the man. That’s a rabbit hole even Hershel didn’t want to go down. Why are some prayers answered while others go ignored? Why did they came across this man just in time to save him while the explosion came two heartbeats too late? Why was the way to the Governor hidden to him and could Philip find his way back to the prison? And if it’s all part of a larger plan, why is this man a more important pawn than Shane had been? Or his dad? The man seems pretty useless. He’s desperate enough to ask them for food. Daryl wants to snark whether the Lord’s protection doesn’t extend to hunger but he stays silent. He gives Carl the stink-eye when the boy gives Gabriel their precious pecans. He thinks it speaks of a lack of character when the man actually takes the damn nuts. The little things won’t do anything to still real hunger. He shouldn’t have taken them from a kid. With a final disgusted look at the father, he turns his back on him.

‘That’s a beautiful child.’

Automatically, Daryl’s gaze lands on Judith, who is happily babbling away as she sits on Tyreese’s arm.

Behind him, Rick stays quiet. The rest of the group nervously shifts on their feet.

After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, Gabriel runs his mouth again. He seems to be so nervous that he’s just blurting things out. Loose lips. Merle had always said it was the worst of character traits. Only good for one thing and only on people who were on their knees in front of him. Merle always said that he knew just the way to keep those lips occupied. That tongue too.

‘Do you have a camp?’ Gabriel asks.

‘No,’ Ricks says quickly. ‘Do you?’

‘I have a church.’

Suddenly, Rick seems to be done with all the bullshit. ‘Hold your hands above your head,’ he says with a shake and frown. With quick, practiced touches, he feels around for weapons but comes up empty. ‘How many walkers have you killed?’

‘Not any, actually,’ the man laughs nervously.

Daryl turns back around to stare at the man.

‘Turn around,’ Rick helps him by shoving at his side. ‘How many people have you killed?’ he asks as he touches the man’s back and arms.

‘None.’

‘Why?’

Daryl watches intently. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. The man must be lying but Rick goes through with the questions like he believes him. He’s seen Shane shoot a guy who’d told them that he hadn’t ever killed anyone after the Turn, he’s seen Rick punish dishonesty with another bullet when someone claimed that the people had asked for their deaths.

‘Because the Lord abhors violence.’

Rick steps closer to the man and breathes, ‘ _what have you done_?’

The man looks at Carl, at Daryl and then back at Rick. He twitches as sweat beats down his temples.

‘We’ve all done something.’

‘I’m a sinner,’ the man says. ‘I sin almost every day. But those sins? I confess them to God. Not strangers.’

Michonne pipes up from her place at Rick’s left hand. ‘You said you had a church?’

The man nods.

Rick puts a hand on the rock and leans in even closer. ‘Well, lead the way then.’

 

 

The man’s name is Gabriel and he has a church and that’s all they know when they follow him down some path leading further into the woods. He’s a twitchy, nervous guy who talks too much even if he doesn’t get any answers. He runs his mouth all the way downhill, telling Rick that he’s never been beyond the stream, that he doesn’t usually stray far from his precious church. Then he switches tracks, saying that he could be lying, could be leading them into a trap, could be planning to steal their squirrels and Rick stops. Fingers his rifle.

‘Members of my flock had often told me that my sense of humor leaves much to be desired.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl growls. ‘It does.’

Rick gestures with his gun and the man stumbles back only to be spooked by some overhanging branches.

Daryl watches and wonders how the man’s survived for so long. It doesn’t seem fair.

But the man does lead them to a church. It’s relatively small, made of wood and painted white. The roof looks to be in slight disrepair but someone has been tending to the grounds around it. Flowers bloom between fallen leaves. Daryl follows Rick up to the porch and wonders who used to come to such a place as this. It seems to be remote but with the dense forest, a town could be hiding just around the corner.

‘Hold up,’ Rick calls out when the father wants to open the door. ‘Can we take a look around first? We just want to hold on to our squirrels.’ He holds his hand out for the key.

The father hands them over without a word.

‘Daryl, Michonne, Carol, Glenn,’ Rick says softly as he draws his gun. Together, the group moves into the building. The floorboards creak as they move past the empty pews. There’s no dust anywhere, no walkers, no other people. Daryl sneaks forward to one of the doors at the back and waits for Glenn to open it before stepping inside a small room. There’s nothing there, really. A table, paperwork, even a bed but nothing they can use. He rummages through the sheets but there’s not even a knife hidden under the pillow. When he looks up, he’s greeted by a carving of the last supper. He stares at it.

Rick’s whistle calls him back.

‘I spent months here without stepping out the front door,’ Gabriel says when they meet him outside. ‘If you found someone inside, well, it would have been surprising.’

‘Thanks for this,’ Carl nods as he smiles.

Abraham says that they found a bus out back that they could get it up and running in a day or two. The Father doesn't want it.

Daryl frowns and sits down on the porch. He knows why Abraham wants the car. Some tale about Eugene being a scientist who knows how this all started. They say he can fix things if they manage to get him to Washington.

Maggie seems very keen. Glenn, too. Rosita, of course, Tara. Abraham is leading the mission. They’d been talking about it around the campfire the other night but Daryl hadn’t wanted to hear. He doesn’t really understand why they would want to go to Washington. There’s nothing left to fix. Sure, they could get a cure but everyone they have ever known has died already. Fighting fire with fire should be last on their list of priorities, he thinks bitterly, because all they are left with now is scorched earth. They know how to fight the dead now. They know to stab their dead in the brain to prevent them from turning. It’s been years already, surely everyone who is still alive has figured it out by now.

Everyone will stab their dead. And they will kill the walkers they come across. Perhaps one day, in the future, they won’t need a cure. Just a quick blade is enough. It’s not even a cure, really. Cures make people better. And they’re all infected but they’re not sick and the walkers can’t be saved. Maybe they can stop people from ever turning, maybe that’s their pot of gold at the end of all of this. That their dead sleep easy. But what’s the point in never turning if they’ll still die?

The numbness sours into bitterness.

He liked it better when he couldn’t feel anything at all.

Abraham, Rick and Michonne are arguing a couple of feet from him. He still doesn’t care enough to pick a side, figures that he’s on Glenn’s no matter what the Korean decides. Abraham doesn’t want to stop at the church, he wants to push on to Washington. ‘We take a breath,’ he tells Michonne, ‘we slow down? Shit inevitably goes down.’

‘We need supplies no matter what we do next,’ the woman tells him and Daryl agrees. They can’t live off his squirrels all the way to stupid Washington.

‘That’s right,’ Rick nods. ‘Water, food, ammunition.’ It shuts the conversation right down. His family follows him into the church.

Glenn stops next to Abraham on the porch. ‘One way or another, we’re doing what Rick does,’ he tells the larger man. ‘We’re not splitting up again.’ He puts a hand on Daryl’s hair, ‘come on, let’s get inside, Dare.’

Inside, Rick is walking up and down the aisle with Judith on his right arm. The rest of the group is scattered around the church. Glenn guides him to one of the pews at the back with a gentle hand on his shoulder. They sit down side by side, listening to the conversation between the father and their leader.

‘Where did your supplies come from?’

‘Luck,’ the father says and Daryl wants to put a bolt in his left eye because nobody gets lucky anymore. This is _not_ _fair_. ‘Our annual canned food drive. Thing fell apart right after we finished it. It was just me. The food lasted a long time and then I started scavenging. I’ve cleaned out every place nearby. Except for one.’

‘Well, what kept you from it?’ Rick asks.

‘It’s overrun.’

‘How many?’

‘A dozen or so, maybe more.’

Daryl sighs and rubs at his eyes before getting to his feet again. He knows what Rick is going to say before the cop says it.

‘We can handle a dozen.’

‘Bob and I will go with you,’ Sasha offers. ‘Tyreese should stay here, help keep Judith safe.’

‘That okay?’ Rick asks the man.

‘Sure,’ he nods, ‘you ever need me to watch her, need anything for her. I’m right here.’

‘I’m grateful for it. And everything else.’

Gabriel want to draw them a map but Rick insists that he’s coming with them. He won’t be any help but Rick doesn’t care. He’s not leaving a stranger with his family when he’s not around to protect them.

Glenn makes no effort to stand up and let him pass so Daryl jumps over the pew, one hand on the wood as his boots slam down on the floorboards. A couple of people narrow their eyes at him but he just shrugs and leans against the wall near the door, ready to go. Rick walks over to him. ‘Yeah, you’re not coming with us.‘

‘What the hell? Why not?’

‘I don’t have to explain myself to you,’ Rick says. ‘Stay here.’

 

 

They find food. Lots of it.

The church is lit by candle light, soft and warm. Voices ring out, laughter mixing with the stories told over their first hot meal in ages. It almost feels like a party. All the stress seems to melt away for a moment, a moment of safety during which they can just forget about what happened and live now. Judith is in Rick’s lap, feeding him a little bit of pasta. The father makes his eyes go big as he closes his lips around the girl’s fingers, trapping them inside his mouth. She giggles and squirms and everyone who sees it smiles fondly.

‘I like to propose a toast!’ Abraham stands up. ‘I look around this room and I see survivors. Each and every one of you has earned that title. To the survivors!’

Daryl watches as most people raise their glass and echo ‘survivors!’ He’s sitting on the floor next to Glenn’s feet and quietly eats his dinner.

‘Is that all you wanna be?’ Abraham asks. ‘Wake up in the morning, fight the undead pricks, forage for food, go to sleep at night, two eyes open, rinse and repeat? ‘cause you can do that. I mean, you got the strength. You got the skill. Thing is, for you people, for what you can do, that’s just surrender. Now we get Eugene to Washington and he will make the dead die and the living will have this world again. And that is not a bad takeaway for a little road trip. Eugene, what’s in D.C.?’

‘Infrastructure constructed to withstand pandemics even of this fubar magnitude. That means food, fuel, refuge. Restart’

Abraham smiles. ‘However this plays out, however long it takes for the reset button to kick in, you can be safe here. Safer than you’ve been since this whole thing started. Come with us. Save the world for that little one,’ he says with his gaze on Judith. ‘For your big ones,’ he smiles at Carl and Daryl. ‘Save it for yourselves. Save it for the people out there who got nothing left to do except survive.’

Judith coos.

Rick laughs and looks at her, ‘what was that? I think she knows what I’m about to say,’ he smiles at Tyreese, who is sitting next to him on the floor. ‘She’s in. And if she’s in, I’m in. We’re in.’

Everyone cheers.

Everyone except for Daryl. He slowly gets up and silently makes his way out of the church, slinking away from the celebrations to sit down on the small steps outside. He stares out into the night, his crossbow resting on his knees. It doesn’t surprise him that Glenn joins him only moments later. The Korean takes a deep breath before sitting down next to him. He’s still eating his food, fork scraping over the plastic plate. He licks it clean when he’s done. The silence stretches out between them. It doesn’t take very long for him to start fidgeting.

Daryl rests his chin on the palm of his hand, elbow digging into his thigh. His fingertips brush over his lips before he bites down on his nails. There are still a couple of mostly-broken cigarettes in his pocket but he doesn’t want to smoke where Glenn can see. There are already so many reasons for disapproving looks coming his way, he doesn’t want to add another.

‘You don’t like the plan?’

‘Didn’t know we had a plan.’

‘Washington,’ Glenn says. ‘We have a vehicle, food. We could make it.’

They could, of course, but that doesn’t mean anything. If the plan had been Canada or Florida, they could have made that too. It’s not about the vehicle or the food. The plan doesn’t depend on that. It depends on them.

Survivors.

‘I know,’ he says softly. He scuffs his boot on the wooden porch so he won’t have to look at Glenn. ‘What if there’s nothing there? The CDC had fuel, food and the army guardin’ it. It still fell. And that was way at the beginning. It’s been _years_.’

‘Washington is one of the biggest cities. They could have held out.’

Maybe the first couple of months. Maybe a year. But everything falls apart eventually and nothing lasts in this new world.

Daryl scratches at his cheek and grimaces.

‘Eugene says he can fix this.’

‘Ain’t no fixin’ this,’ he answers. ‘The world’s gone to shit. So what if we get to kill this thing, if all the walker just fall down and never get up again? Everyone will still be dead. There ain’t no restarting this bullshit.’

‘ _We_ get to start over.’

He thinks about that. He wonders what it will be like to live in a world that’s free of walkers. In a safe zone with a house to call their own, with food and electricity, with neighbors and shops and communities. With a little hook in a shed somewhere where people will expect him to hang his bow. To put his knife in a drawer and not check it when he wakes up or goes to bed. He can’t even imagine it. And if he’s really honest, he doesn’t want to.

‘Ain’t no restartin’ us either,’ he says. ‘This is who we are. I know what Hershel used to say, that we can come back from this. But we can’t. Not… Rick thought he had, right? With all his farmin’ and everything. And then it all went to shit and he bit a guy to death without thinking about it.’

‘He had no choice.’

Daryl shudders, puts the crossbow aside so he can wrap his arms around his knees. ‘What if he did?’

Glenn looks at him with a slight frown.

‘What if he _did_ have a choice?’ the teenager asks. ‘And what if he’d still done it?’

‘But he didn’t.’

Daryl closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to face Glenn. ‘If Gareth were here right now, anyone of his pathetic crew, I’d have a choice. And I’d still do it.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Of course I do,’ Daryl snaps. ‘I’d kill him, don’t matter how, because they killed him and I… I can’t stop thinkin’ about it. It’s all I think about; how I would kill him. Slowly, I hope.’ He digs his fingernails into his jeans. ‘I’d want it to hurt.’

‘Daryl…’

‘They could be alive out there,’ he says. ‘They could be fine and that’s not _fair_. I don’t care if that makes me a bad person. I don’t care what you think about that. I just don’t care anymore, about anything but that.’

‘You’re not a bad person, Daryl, but this pain you’re feeling? It’s going to tear you apart if you don’t start dealing with it.’

Daryl frowns. ‘How do you start dealin’ with something like this?’

Glenn shifts closer to him. ‘By grieving. By letting yourself feel the hurt.’

‘I tried that. It didn’t work.’

The Korean reaches out slowly as to not spook the boy. He unwraps one of the smaller hands, lets the fingers splay out on the rough fabric of the jeans. His own slim fingers trace the fresh scar. ‘This? This isn’t the way. Please, don’t ever do that again.’

Daryl looks at him.

‘Beth saw,’ Glenn says softly. ‘She told me what you’d… what you’d done. This isn’t the answer, Dare.’

‘Then what is?’ he asks, voice breaking on the words.

‘I don’t know,’ Glenn admits. ‘I – I don’t know. Does it help to talk about it? Him?’

‘No.’

‘Have you actually tried to talk about him?’

 Daryl looks away. ‘No. Ain’t got nothing to say. He’s gone.’

Glenn nods. ‘But it might help if you just talk to someone about him. It doesn’t have to be me, or Maggie. Maybe Beth? I know you two got close while… You two got close. And I know she’s a great listener.’

The boy gnaws on his nail again, pulling his hand away from his friend. ‘Yeah. Maybe, but – ‘

A twig snaps somewhere.

Daryl’s up in a flash. Bright eyes scanning the darkness. He grabs his crossbow and runs down the steps, cautiously stepping into the night.

Glenn is at his side instantly. ‘Do you see anything?’

‘No.’

There’s no sound of other twigs snapping, of leaves rustling, no growls of a walker nearby. Instead, there’s a prickling feeling at the back of his neck. He looks at Glenn, steps closer to push him gently back to the church, to their family.

‘What?’ his friend asks.

‘Someone’s watchin’ us.’

 

 

 


	49. say goodbye

 

* * *

 

 

 

‘ _What did you do_?’

Rick’s scream echoes through the church.

The peaceful mood of just an hour ago is shattered now that Bob has gone missing. He’d stepped outside, had told Sasha that he needed to use the bathroom and hasn’t come back. The news that Daryl thought somebody was watching them had only caused some mild concern. He hadn’t been sure. It had just been a feeling, but now they know he had been right about what his gut was telling him.

And now Rick is standing before Gabriel, demanding to know what the other man has done to deserve hellfire.

Carl had discovered the message on the back of the church, right next to the windows. _You will burn for this_. He’d told Daryl about it first since Rick had been out on the run but the teenager had dismissed his friend, had told him to fuck off and leave him be for a while. He hadn’t cared about the message.

He cares about it now.

Like Sasha said, it’s all connected. Bob has gone missing and someone is watching them and Gabriel brought them here. And he is a bad man. He will burn. What Daryl doesn’t understand is the why.

Gabriel takes shuddering breaths as he avoids Rick’s eye. ‘I lock the doors at night,’ he says. ‘I always lock the doors at night. I _always_ lock the doors at night.’ It almost sounds like a prayer but this one didn’t save him. He chokes back tears. ‘They started coming, my congregation. Atlanta was bombed the night before, and they were scared. They were looking for a safe place, a place where they felt safe.’

Daryl remembers that night. He remembers standing on that ridge and watching the planes fly overhead. Then the fire. The heat. The orange sky. How Will had called it the biggest fireworks he’d ever seen.

‘And it was so early. It was so early,’ Gabriel says, pain written on his face. ‘And the doors were still locked. You see, it was my choice. But there were so many of them, and they were trying to pry the shutters and banging on the sidings, screaming at me. And so the dead came for them.’

Daryl stares. His heart hammers in his chest.

‘Women. Children,’ his voice almost breaks on the words. ‘Entire families calling my name as they were torn apart, begging me for mercy, begging me for mercy.’ He does cry now. Hands on his heart, shoulders curling in shame. ‘Damning me to hell. I buried their bones. I buried it all.’ He finally meets Rick’s eye. ‘The Lord sent you here to finally punish me.’

Rick’s hand moves to his gun when the Father sinks down onto the floor.

‘I’m damned,’ he sobs. ‘I was damned before. I always lock the doors. I always lock the doors!’

As the man hides his face in his hands, a sharp whistle sounds from outside.

Glenn is standing closest to the windows. He peeks around the frame, pushing one of the shutters open. ‘There’s… there’s someone outside, lying in the grass.’

Rick tries to grab Sasha’s arm before she can storm outside but she slips away from him. Daryl knows better than to try too. Instead of stopping her, he takes his usual position of the right-hand man of whoever is on point. He slips outside, haunting her fast footsteps, and scans the woods.

It’s too dark to make anything out.

‘Bob!’ Sasha screams and from the pitch, Daryl knows that something is very wrong. ‘ _Bob_!’

‘His leg,’ Maggie says, voice wavering as she backs away from the man again.

There are two walkers making their way towards them.

‘Dare!’ Glenn points at them even though he doesn’t have to. The first one is already going down due to a bolt sticking out of their cheek and the bow clatters on the ground a second later. He grabs his knife, runs and plunges it into the skull. Sometimes it still surprises him that walker blood is, in fact, warm. Just as warm and sticky and fluid as the blood in his own veins. He doesn’t like to think about that.

‘We’ll take care of him,’ Glenn shushes when Sasha calls for help. ‘Let’s get him inside.’ Together with Tara, he lifts Bob up.

In a flash of moonlight, Daryl can see that most of his left leg is missing. A bloody bandage is wrapped around the stump. It reminds him of Hershel and his amputation, that frantic moment inside the tombs, of Carol pressing down hard on a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

More walkers come. They’re drawn in by the screaming.

Maggie takes one down and Rick move to another but freezes when a gunshot rings out. A bullet hits the ground near him. The cop ducks, pulls his Python and blindly fires back into the night. ‘Get inside,’ he screams at the last members of his family. ‘Go!’

Daryl makes himself small as he runs towards the porch, scrambling to get back into the safety of the light and walls. Someone yanks him inside, he thinks it must have been Abraham and he stumbles back into the church.

Everyone makes it back safely.

They’ve put Bob down on the aisle, right in front of the altar. Sasha makes sure he’s as comfortable as he can be while Rick takes care of the defenses. The doors are closed, barricaded, every window is checked for signs of entry but it stays quiet.

Rick places Daryl and Carl at two windows on opposite sides of the door. Daryl isn’t sure whether it’s just for a guard duty or if he doesn’t want them to see Bob like this. He can still hear the conversation behind him. It echoes through the silent church. With one hand on the shutters, ready to pull them closed if he needs to, he listens to Bob’s gasping words.

‘I was in a graveyard. Somebody knocked me out. I woke up outside this place, it looked like a school. It was that guy. Gareth. And five others.'

Daryl’s fingers go white on the shutter. There’s a ringing in his ears.

‘They were eating my leg right in front of me, like it was nothing. All proud, like they had it all figured out.’

‘He’s in pain,’ Sasha says when the man groans and whimpers, ‘do we have anything?’

‘I think there are pill packets in the first-aid kit,’ Rosita answers.

‘Save them,’ Bob cuts in. ‘Really,’ he adds when Sasha objects. There’s some hissing and more grunts as he moves.

Daryl glances over his shoulder and sees how the man moves his shirt aside. He can’t see what he’s showing the others from this distance, but he already knows. There’s only one reason why someone would refuse pain meds now.

‘It happened at the food bank,’ Bob cries.

He passes out a second later.

Daryl turns back to watch the outside. His jaw hurts from how hard he’s gritting his teeth. There’s a familiar sensation swirling in his guts. Something he has felt for days now, but it used to be just a small speck. Now it roars up into his veins, curing around his hardened heart, breaking it open, tearing it apart.

Hatred.

‘There’s a sofa in my office,’ Gabriel pipes up. ‘I know it’s not much, but…’

It isn’t. But it’s all he has and Sasha thanks him for it.

Tyreese moves closer to Bob and lifts him up to carry him there. As he and Sasha worry over their friend, Rick moves over to the father to ask whether he knows about the place Bob was talking about.

It turns out to be an elementary school about ten minutes away if they cut through the woods. There’s a graveyard south of there.

Judith starts to cry and Beth picks the basket up which serves as her crib. She carries the fussing infant to one of the other rooms while Glenn, Maggie and Rick discuss Bob’s fate. He doesn’t have a fever yet, he’s just warm. Jim lasted almost two days before they left him by the side of the road. He probably won’t last as long in his condition. Jim had been healthy. Bob is dying from two different things at the same time.

‘Time for a reality check,’ Abraham calls out loudly, voice clear and strong. ‘We all need to leave for D.C. Right now.’

‘We’re not going anywhere until we’ve finished this.’

‘There’s a clear threat here to Eugene. I need to extract his ass before things get any uglier. So if y’all won’t come, good luck to you. We’ll go our separate ways.’

‘You leaving on foot?’ Rick calls out when Abraham moves towards the door.

‘We fixed that damn bus ourselves.’

‘There are a lot more of us.’

Abraham turns to face Rick. ‘You want to keep it that way? You should come!’

Daryl’s hand moves to his bow.

‘Bob saved your life. Shane did. _We_ saved your life!’

‘Well, I am trying to save yours! Save everyone’s!’

‘You’re not taking the bus!’ Rick shouts back as he moves to push at Abraham’s chest.

‘ _Do not lay hands_!’ the man roars.

Glenn jumps between the two men. ‘Hey, hey, stop! Now!’ He turns to Abraham when Rick steps back. ‘Do you really think that you’re gonna be any safer leaving right now in the middle of the night?’

‘Yeah,’ Abraham tells him.

‘What about tomorrow?’ Glenn tries. ‘We need each other for this. We need each other to get to D.C. We can get through all of it together!’

‘I have an idea,’ Tara speaks up as she moves towards the men. ‘If you stay just one more day and help, I’ll go with you to D.C. No matter what. Okay?’ The question is directed at Rick, who glowers.

‘Glenn and Maggie, too.’ Abraham nods to his side. ‘And Daryl.’

‘No,’ Rick growls.

‘Good luck, then. I’m not interested in breaking up what you have here. I’m sorry about your people, but this isn’t our fight. Rosita, grab your gear. Eugene, let’s go.’

For the first time, Eugene objects. He doesn’t want to go. It’s not out of loyalty to Rick and his group, Daryl knows. It’s out of fear. He doesn’t hold out for long, another snapped order for him to get up and the man rises.

‘You’re not taking the bus.’ Rick’s voice is low and calm. Just a rumble, like the warning everyone gets before lightning is unleashed in the skies.

‘Try to stop me.’

A moment of silence and stillness. And then Rick strides towards him, big, confident steps, fingers curling into fists. Daryl glances back at him. He’s just a shadow moving towards the burly man.

‘Wait, wait, wait! Hey, _hey_!’ Glenn rushes forward to jump between them again, slamming both of their arms down and keeping them apart with hands to muscled chests. ‘You stay,’ he tells Abraham. ‘You stay and help us and we will go with you.’

‘No!’

‘It’s not your call,’ Glenn tells Rick. ‘You stay, help us get through tonight.’

‘Half a day,’ Abraham bargains. ‘Come high noon, we’re taillights. I’m not waiting for the other damn shoe to drop.’

‘And we will leave with you,’ Maggie agrees. ‘Beth is coming with us, too.’

‘You’re not taking Daryl,’ Rick says as he rolls his shoulders back.

‘We are,’ the woman answers sharply.

‘No,’ Daryl says as he turns around. ‘Ya ain’t.’

 

 

Beth is gently swaying Judith in her arms. Blond hair frizzy and escaping her braid, dirt on her cheeks and forehead and a gun on her hip, but her smile is warm when she laughs at the baby. She’ll walk a couple of steps, hitch the girl higher and take the same steps back to where she started, pacing the room over and over.

Daryl is sitting on top of the desk. His small eyes follow the girls.

‘Never have I ever watched a horror movie.’

‘Have,’ the boy answers. ‘Merle liked them something fierce. I were always beggin’ him to let me watch too. One day, he got sick of me askin’, so he let me watch. Ten minutes in, I were askin’ him if he’d please let me go to bed.’

Beth smiles at him now. ‘Did he?’

‘Hmm,’ Daryl hums as he nods. ‘Was just a little tyke, so he picked me up, carried me to bed. Tucked me in all nice and warm, ya know? Kissed me goodnight, too.’

‘That’s really sweet.’

‘Told me the monsters were under the bed and left my ass there. Cried like a bitch for hours.’

Beth stares at him, mouth open.

Daryl lets a small smirk creep onto his face. ‘He was an asshole, sometimes.’

‘That’s _horrible_.’

He shrugs. ‘My turn. Never have I ever hitchhiked.’

‘Oh, I have! I ran away from home and thought I could go to New York.’

‘ _New York_? You crazy, girl?’ Daryl laughs as he rolls onto his side so he can lounge on the desk more comfortably. ‘What were ya wantin’ to go to New York for?’

Beth giggles and reaches out to run a hand through his dark hair when she passes. ‘You look like a cat,’ she tells him just as he arches into the touch with closed eyes.

‘Vicious creatures,’ Daryl says as he remembers Joe. Outdoor cats and indoor cats.

The smile fades from her face. She remembers Joe, too. Judith has quieted down in her arms and now only whimpers sleepily when the girl puts her back in the box, making sure that the blankets keep her warm enough. A kiss on a chubby cheek and then Beth moves to sit next to Daryl on the desk. She has to shove his feet off the wood to make space and he lets her.

‘Why aren’t you coming to D.C. with us?’ she asks.

‘I’m staying with Rick.’

‘But why?’

‘Just want to.’

‘But _why_?’

‘Please stop. It’s annoying me.’

‘Okay.’

Daryl stares up at the ceiling and marvels, once again, about the fact that that line actually works. At the prison, there were always people around, trying to get into his business. Everyone always wanted to talk to him, wanted his opinion, wanted to know where he was heading next on his hunts, what he’d caught and how he’d caught it. He hadn’t been used to so many people trying to be so friendly all the damn time. Sometimes he’d ask them to stop and leave him alone but most people thought he was joking. Everyone else at the prison just loved to chat. And he didn’t.

So they wouldn’t stop. Even Carl would think he was joking and keep badgering him until the Dixon boy made his annoyance clear with a well-placed right hook and or kick to the shins and angry hisses of _shut the fuck up already_.

Of course it had been Shane who’d dragged him into his cell, had sat him down and told him that he’d just need to ask them to stop. Say why.

Please stop. I’m not in the mood right now.

Please stop. I don’t want to talk about it.

Please stop. I’m too tired and just want to go to bed.

Now, he wonders whether that had been something his parents had taught Shane when he’d been younger. Now that he knows that he’d had a big family with a lot of siblings and a temper that matched Daryl’s own. Wonders whether his father had sat him down, too, to teach him how to channel his rage into civilized discourse and a plea to be left alone.

Probably. But Shane loved being around people, too, so maybe his dad had never had to teach him that he’d actually had to go back to those people later and give them the conversation they’d wanted. That had been something new for Daryl. That he had to accept that people just wanted to talk to him, get to know him, and that he should give them the chance.

Not many people had wanted to know a Dixon before the Turn.

‘Why aren’t you in there with them?’

Daryl looks at the door but it’s closed. Out there, in the church, Rick is coming up with a plan to take down Gareth and his crew. The rest of their family, except for Sasha and Bob, are there to give their input.

He hasn’t talked to Maggie and Glenn yet, even though he could see the hurt on their faces when he’d shot them down earlier. He doesn’t want to leave them. The thought makes him sick, but he can’t leave yet either. Glenn wants to run, wants to leave this group be and get to Washington. Rick wants to tear Gareth apart.

Daryl will stay with Rick. They have the same goal.

Afterwards, they can find them again. They can follow the road down to Washington, follow in their footsteps and maybe they will be there when they arrive. Maybe Glenn will be standing on a barricade somewhere, waiting for him.

Or maybe Maggie will sink to the floor of the last CDC still standing and mourn him after Rick gives her the news of his final hunt gone wrong.

It won’t matter.

‘Dunno,’ Daryl says but he does know. He’s in here because it doesn’t matter how Rick decides to do it. The cop doesn’t need his opinion to come up with a plan. This isn’t like one of their council meetings back at the prison. There, everyone had listened to his opinion because he’d always been outside the gates. He knew which roads were still good, where herds were, where the nearest safe hiding spot. ‘They don’t need me for this.’

‘You don’t care about the plan.’

‘No.’

Beth looks at him. ‘I don’t… Look,’ she reaches out and takes his hand, entwining their fingers. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, okay?’

‘Never have I ever done anything stupid.’

She laughs, squeezes his fingers, ‘you have.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t make me draw up a list, Dixon. You’re gonna throw a temper tantrum before I get to two.’

‘Please stop. You’re fuckin’ wrong and annoying as hell.’

Beth snorts and punches his shoulder, hard enough to actually sting a little bit, like she isn’t used to her new strength yet.

Daryl smirks and then laughs softly, averting his eyes to look at his boots.

A soft knock on the door draws their attention. Rick is leaning against the frame, arms crossed in front of his chest and a small smile playing around his lips. ‘Hey. Can I talk to Daryl for a second, Beth?’

‘Well, you can _try_ ,’ she laughs, shoving his shoulder and hopping off the desk. When she’s at Rick’s side, hand on the wood of the door, she looks back at him. ‘Say goodbye,’ she tells him. ‘If you leave to do this, if we leave tomorrow – say goodbye. It’s important.’

‘Goodbye, Beth.’

‘No,’ she shakes her head. ‘You can’t leave us early. Leave us when you must, not a second sooner, Dixon.’ Another sad smile. She reaches out and squeezes Rick’s lower arm, but her eyes remain on Daryl. ‘And preferably not at all. I’ll see you in a bit.’

Daryl nods as Rick pushes himself away from the door to check on his daughter. He adjusts the blankets even though she was comfortable and warm enough. When the silence gets uncomfortable, he looks at the teenager who’s lounging on the desk. One boot now on the wood, the other leg dangling down. His back a little arched as he works out a couple of kinks. Dark hair falling away from those small, blue eyes.

Rick sighs, stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. ‘I shouldn’t be asking you to be a part of this.’

‘You’re not askin’,’ Daryl points out. ‘And I ain’t givin’ ya a choice in the matter.’

The cop nods. He looks away. ‘The worst thing is… I’m not even sorry. We need you. _I_ need you out there.’ With one steady hand, he pulls collar up higher to keep his neck warm. ‘When we got away, got out of Terminus, found Judith and Tyreese, got Carol back? I thought…. I thought we’d be alright. That it could go back to how it was before. That’s why I wouldn’t let you come with us on the run. Shane wouldn’t have wanted you there. He would have kept you safe.’

Rick walks over to the desk, leans against it, bows his head to look at his boots while Daryl sits up and looks at him. ‘Gabriel called for help and you didn’t care. You would have let him die if you had been alone.'

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s not you.’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘You know what your problem is, officer friendly?’

Rick’s head snaps up at the familiar nickname.

‘Ya keep tryin’ to _save_ me. And then it don’t work and you’re beatin  yourself up over it. Just fuckin’ accept that ya can’t anymore. That you never could. Maybe this is just who I am, okay? I’m not Carl. He’s… He’s good, okay? He’s _good_.  And I’m… I’m tryin’. Sometimes it don’t work and that’s fine because we don’t always need me to be good, right? Sometimes you need to be a little messed up in this world.’

Rick nods slowly.

‘And it’s okay to use that,’ Daryl says as he looks at the cop. ‘To use me.’

 

 

He feels it the moment they step out of the church. That burning gaze from the darkness. It makes his skin crawl. He wants to reach for his bow, which is resting on his back, but he knows that it would give away the crucial part of their plan. Gareth doesn’t know that Daryl knows he’s watching.

They think they’ve got it all figured out.

But a hunter knows when he’s suddenly become prey. He knows all the signs, all the plays. The stalking, the watching, the waiting.

It feels strange for a couple of moments. Too foreign. Everything out of his control. But he knows that that won’t last.

Soon, the tables will turn.

 

 

Rick doesn’t ask him whether he’s sure.

He’s grateful for that.

Instead, the cop puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes his thanks, and then takes point to lead them back towards the church. Their boots echo softly on the tarmac. Their group is almost split evenly. Rick, leading them forward now that Daryl has done his job. He’s guided them in a neat circle, avoiding paths taken by others just a minute earlier. Now Rick leads them back home.

Glenn and Maggie flank the teenager. Their faces unreadable and hands steady on their guns. Sometimes their gazes will land on the back of Daryl’s head, only to meet a second later before focusing on the road ahead.

Sasha is there. Angry footsteps almost too loud. Her sniper rifle is just an extension of her arm these days but everyone knows she’s itching to grab her knife, her machete. Something that would require her to get up close and personal, to get her hands dirty with warm blood, to actually _feel_ it.

Carol, who is just another shadow that tries to keep one eye on the boy.

Michonne, who hadn’t promised Carl that she’d look after his dad, but still had still shared a look with him before leaving.

Tara, who moves swiftly but can’t seem to decide whether to stick to Glenn or fall back.

Abraham, who is their last man.

They’ve got them outnumbered. They take the darkness with them when they enter the church again. Daryl can practically feel it storm around them, cracking under their boots like leather belts snapping, the wind chilling as it tells the whole world to brace itself. He can’t believe that the men won’t turn around. He can’t believe that they don’t even see their deaths coming.

He almost wishes they did.

But two of them die first. Sasha, firing from the darkness, even though it’s Rick who steps forward to claim the kills with a low voice.

‘Put your guns on the floor.’

They threaten to fire into the office where Carl is hiding with Judith. Where Beth and Tyreese are. Bob. Rosita and Eugene. Gabriel, too. They never get the chance. Sasha fires again and Gareth is missing two fingers now. He screams.

It’s not enough, of course, but it makes Daryl feel a little better.

‘Put your guns on the floor and kneel,’ Rick commands as he steps into the moonlight.

Gareth is not entirely stupid. He kneels.

The others do, too. Some ducking towards the ground like the cowards they are while others hesitate until there’s a gun shoved right into their faces. Abraham, having moved down the aisle silently despite his bulky figure, grins. And everyone kneels at last.

Rick walks towards the altar. He stops in front of Gareth, gazes down at him. His expression is an odd mixture of pure hatred and detachment. That nauseating combination that will allow him to do what must be done. He’s not Rick Grimes, he’s not Carl’s father right now, he’s not Judith daddy. He’s nothing to no-one. A ghost. Death, itself.

He has decided.

And Gareth will die where he is kneeling. Maybe not afraid and not sorry, but that doesn’t matter. He will die.

‘No point in begging, right?’

There isn’t.

Gareth looks up at Rick. He’s not thinking straight. Or he thinks he’s worth a bullet. Either way, Rick didn’t want to waste one so here they are. Close enough to touch and feel.

‘We used to help people. We saved people,’ Gareth insists like it matters. ‘Things changed. They came in and..’ He groans, doubling over for a moment. ‘After that?’ he asks when he manages to sit up again, clutching his bleeding hand. ‘I know that you’ve been out there, but I can see it. You don’t know what it is to be _hungry_.’

Rick actually smiles a little at that. A wry little thing that fades quickly.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Gareth says and Daryl almost rolls his eyes from where he’s leaning against a pew. ‘We can walk away, and we will never cross paths again. I promise you.’

‘But you’ll cross someone’s path,’ Rick says, voice rough and low. He aims the gun at Gareth’s head and changes his mind, lowering it again immediately. He’s not worth the bullet. Sometimes it needs repeating. Sometimes rage takes over reason. ‘You’d do this to anyone, right?’

Gareth swallows with some difficulty.

‘I’m really sorry.’

The man blinks, shakes his head a little before looking up at the cop again. ‘For what?’ He sounds tired, like he doesn’t want to play the game, but he really doesn’t have a choice.

‘I made you a promise,’ Rick says as his hand comes to rest on the handle of his red machete.

Gareth’s eyes grow wide when he sees the weapon. ‘No,’ he whispers.

‘You killed my brother,’ Rick tells him as he slowly draws the weapon. ‘And I made you a promise but I’m sorry. I won’t be keeping it.’

The man’s shoulders actually slump with relief.

A small sob escapes the woman kneeling before Michonne.

‘Daryl?’ Rick holds the machete out to him.

The boy pushes himself away from the pew. He walks down the aisle, footsteps silent. A hunter coming up on his prey. He reaches out, fingers curling around the color of blood. The handle feels cold against his skin. It will warm soon. By body heat or blood, it doesn’t matter which.

‘You killed the wrong brother,’ Rick says softly as he takes a step back.

Daryl had thought he’d wanted to say something. Back when the plan was explained, he’d dreamt of this happening. He’d dreamt of telling Gareth about Shane. That he’d been a good man, that he’d deserved better than to be butchered. He’d wanted to draw this out, to make it as long and as painful as possible.

But now he just wants Gareth dead.

So he turns to the man, squares his shoulders, meets his eye, and then brings the machete down in one blow. It drives into the flesh, destroys a collarbone. Blood sprays onto the ground. Daryl yanks the blade out of the body, kicks the chest so the man falls backwards and climbs onto the ribcage. He lifts the machete and brings it down on the head, over and over and over until the skull is split into two.

 

 

The silence is deafening.

Daryl stares at the broken skull, the brain that has been slashed to mush, the two eyes still open in horror but now almost a foot apart. He can’t seem to move. Slowly, it starts to register that the rest of the group has taken care of the other members of Terminus.

Abraham is breathing hard. So is Michonne.

There’s blood on Rick’s hands.

‘You son of a bitch.’

Everyone looks up, movements a little jerky as they’re ripped out of their own little worlds of revenge.

Glenn walks down the aisle. It starts as a stagger, really, but soon dissolves into a run. There’s anger on his face, in his fists, in his dark eyes as they pin Rick down. ‘ _You son of a bitch_!’ he shouts as he jumps over the bodies to tackle their leader to the ground. It must have surprised the cop because the Asian knocks him over easily.

Glenn gets the first punches in. He straddles the man, beats him as hard as he can.

It doesn’t take Rick long to recover but he still needs Abraham’s help in order to turn the tables in the fight. The burly man grabs hold of Glenn’s arm and tries to stop him. It’s enough of a distraction for Rick to completely switch their positions. He pushes Glenn onto his back, pins him down and takes his revolver out.

He presses it against Glenn’s forehead. ‘Stop it,’ he hisses, thumb hovering over the hammer. ‘I’m warning you.’

‘You asshole. What have you done?’ Glenn screams. ‘He’s a kid! _He’s just a kid!_ ’

Daryl looks back at the mangled body beneath him. With a grunt, he rolls off, scrambles a couple of feet away from it and leans back on his hands, breathing heavily. There’s blood dripping down his hands, his arms, his face. He stares at the body.

‘He wanted to do it. It was _Shane_.’

‘He wants a beating every time he thinks he’s fucked up,’ Glenn shouts, struggling against Rick’s hold despite the gun. ‘You’re going to give him that next?’

Daryl’s arms give out. He falls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling of the church. When he licks his lips, he can taste the blood.

‘Stop it,’ Rick hisses as he jostles his friend, pressing the gun harder against his forehead.

The door opens. Carl comes out with his gun raised. Beth follows him, holding her knife just like Daryl had taught her out in the woods. Their gazes fall onto the bodies. Their eyes widen.

They looks so scared.

Daryl laughs and folds his hands over his eyes, smearing the blood all over his skin.

 

 

 


	50. it's important

* * *

 

 

 

Bob is dying inside the church.

Everyone is saying goodbye. Maggie is on her knees by his bed, she kisses his hand and silently promises to look after Sasha for him. There are tears in her eyes when she gets up again. Her hand searches and blindly finds Glenn’s arm. She avoids Daryl’s gaze even though the boy is standing right next to her husband. Shoulder to shoulder, but not touching.

‘Rick,’ Bob calls out when they all prepare to leave. ‘And Daryl. No,’ he objects when Rick turns to hand his daughter to his son, ‘let her stay. I trust her.’

Sasha moves past them, head down but voice steady when she tells them that she’ll be right outside.

‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ Bob murmurs. He sounds tired.

‘For what?’ Rick asks.

‘Before the prison, I didn’t know it there were any good people left. I didn’t know if anybody was left. You took me in,’ he points at the leader. ‘You and Shane. ‘Cause you took people in. That was you, man.’

Rick takes his hand and holds it.

‘What I said yesterday? I aint revising it. Even in light of current events. Nightmares end. They shouldn’t end who you are. And that is just this dead man’s opinion.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Rick nods and Bob smiles.

‘Just look at her and tell me the world isn’t gonna change,’ he laughs. ‘And you,’ he looks at Daryl now. ‘I know what you did.’

Daryl folds his arms in front of his chest and glares at the floorboards. Everybody knows what he has done. Maggie won’t even look at him anymore and Glenn is too angry and upset to be near him. Even Beth had hesitated before reaching out to help him clean the blood off his face.

They all knew it had to be done. And now they all blame him for doing it.

‘You found me,’ Bob smiles at the boy.

 

 

_‘Yo, Shane?’_

_‘It’s Rick here, something wrong, Dare? Over.’_

_‘I found a guy.’_

_There’s just static for a while. Then Rick’s voice returns. ‘What do you mean, you found a guy?’_

‘You brought me back.’

 

 

_‘Well, if nobody has got anything to add, I’ll close the meeti-‘_

_‘I got something.’_

_Everyone turns to look at Daryl, who pushes himself away from the wall to step into the light. It’s the first time that he’s spoken during a council meeting on his own accord. It’s usually Michonne and Shane who ask him questions, who drag him by his ear into the conversations because they know he’s got valuable information to add._

_Hershel smiles at him. ‘Yes?’_

_‘There’s a guy,’ Daryl tells him, ‘out in the woods.’_

_The smile falters a bit. The old man looks confused for a second. ‘Excuse me?’_

_‘I was heading north today and I found these tracks and I thought maybe…’ he glances at Michonne. ‘They weren’t walker tracks, so I followed them and I found this guy. Followed him around all day. He’s alone. I don’t think he’s got a gun.’_

_‘Who is he?’ Shane asks as he leans forward, one elbow on the table._

_‘Fuck if I know,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘But he looks a’right. One of you should come, ask the questions. He was hiding on a truck last time I saw him, he’ll be stuck for a while. There was a herd heading that way. Doubt he’ll travel in the dark, so we can pick his trail up tomorrow. Bet he’s just walking down the road. It ain’t far.’_

_‘Why would we do that? Bring him in?’_

_The boy frowns. ‘Because he’s alone.’_

_‘So?’_

_‘So he needs our help. We took people from Woodbury in, why not him?’_

_‘Because we don’t know him.’_

_‘We didn’t know those people neither! Just ask him the questions, man. He’s good people, I can feel it. And he survived, so he’s gotta be tough as nails, okay? You’re always lookin’ for runners!’ Daryl takes a calming breath, ‘look, Rick said I should follow him for a while so I did and-‘_

_‘You knew he was following some random ass guy in the woods? Are you crazy?’ Shane asks his brother, who looks a bit sheepish._

_‘He said he’d found a guy, that he was a good distance away up in a tree, what was I supposed to say?’_

_‘_ Get your lil’ ass home _,’ Shane hisses at him._

 _‘Shane!’ Daryl cuts in as he slams his hands on the table, leaning over it into the cop’s space. ‘_ Please _! He’s alone out there! We can’t just leave him. That ain’t us, right?_ Right _?’_

‘Thank you so much.’

Daryl grits his teeth. His gaze flickers to the stump beneath the thin blanket, to the shoulder where the bite is still bleeding. ‘Yeah, you’re welcome.’

Bob smiles but it turns into a grimace when pain flares through him. ‘You think it wasn’t worth it?’

‘For you?’ Daryl asks because Bob is their friend and that had been enough for him, earlier. ‘No. Got you killed, in the end.’ If Daryl hadn’t forced the group to take the man in, he probably would have made it.

‘Everything will get you killed in the end,’ Bob says and the laughter hasn’t faded from his dark eyes. ‘But I got to meet Sasha. I got to meet you, and Shane and Rick and this little girl,’ he reaches out and strokes Judith’s leg with a finger. ‘I have friends. And I’m not alone now, so it was worth it.’

‘You have a family,’ Rick says as he reaches out and takes his hand again. ‘And you’re right. It was Daryl who brought you in. It wasn’t easy, we weren’t… we weren’t taking people in at the time, but he convinced us to do it anyway.’

Bob looks at the teenage, who had been just a boy at the time. ‘Why?’

Daryl brings his hand up and gnaws on his nail. ‘Right thing to do,’ he mutters.

‘That’s right,’ the man nods. ‘God,’ he grins, ‘Shane would have been so proud of you.’

Rick bows his head, looks at his daughter and doesn’t say anything.

Daryl feels something freeze inside his chest. Maybe nobody had told Bob what he has done, just an hour ago, after all. He tries to imagine what Shane would have said, had he seen what Daryl had done in his name. All he can see, however, is Will cupping his cheek and calling him his little king in that cruel voice, riddled with laughter and mockery.

When he tries, really tries, he sees Shane dragging him out of a barn, shielding him from Rick’s outrage and asking him what the hell he’s done to Randall.

‘He was _so_ proud of you,’ Bob says, his eyes now closed as his voice starts to fade.

‘Get Sasha,’ Rick tells the teenager.

Daryl nods and doesn’t know what to say to Bob. ‘Goodbye,’ he whispers, because Beth had told him it was important.

 

 

Glenn is digging graves.

Daryl is not sure why. He understands the one under the great oak tree, the one that will be marked by a cross Sasha made, but he doesn’t understand the other ones. They’re shallower and by the side of the road but they’re still graves. The bodies of Gareth’s men have been rolled into curtains and blankets. Soon they will be lowered into the ground.

Gareth, too.

Daryl had hoped they would just leave him there, in the middle of the church with his skull bashed open. That they would leave the doors open for animals to come and feed on the rotting flesh.

Just a couple of minutes ago, Tyreese had gone back into the church when they had heard Sasha break down, a sign that Bob had died.

They haven’t come out yet.

With a sigh, Daryl gets up from the porch and walks over to where Glenn is digging. There’s sweat dripping down his friend’s neck, the black hair plastered onto his forehead, the red shirt is drenched. He glances up when he hears someone approach but something just tightens in his face before he turns back to his work.

‘Hey,’ Daryl says as he grabs hold of the band of his crossbow, wobbling on the balls of his feet. ‘Need me to take over?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ He bites on his lip and thinks about walking away. He decides not to. Instead, he squares his shoulders. ‘Are ya still angry about me not wantin’ to go to Washington with ya?’ he asks. ‘It don’t matter now. We’re all going. Rick’s coming too, so… ’

Glenn sticks the shovel deep into the earth, stomping down on it with his boot.  ‘No. I’m not angry about that.’

‘But you were, right?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re angry about what I did to Gareth then? He killed Shane, man.’

‘I’m not angry about that.’

Daryl frowns. ‘What then?’

Glenn leans on the shovel and looks up at the teenager. He squints a little against the sun. ‘What makes you think I’m angry?’

‘You won’t talk to me.’

‘We’re talking right now.’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘Fine, you’re _disappointed_ then, whatever. Don’t you see it don’t matter that I-‘

‘Oh, I’m not disappointed,’ Glenn says as he hops out of the grave, wiping his dirty hands on his jeans. ‘I don’t care anymore. You got what you wanted, right? Sweet revenge. Yeah, that’s good, Dare. That’s _great_. But you butchered a man and you _laughed_ afterwards. That isn’t one of your crazy defense mechanisms, okay? That isn’t you snarling when we try to help you with anything, that’s not even _you_. And I’ve tried to be understanding, okay? I’ve tried to be there for you, but I can’t….’ Glenn runs a hand through his sweaty hair, ‘I can’t even _look_ at you right now.’

Daryl takes a step back, eyes wide.

‘Do you even know why Abraham wanted to bring you with him to Washington? It wasn’t because we’re one happy little family, okay, because we’re not! I heard him talking to Rosita last night about how, if anyone stood in their way to Washington, they’d just let you loose on them, like you’re some kind of rabid dog! And I can’t even blame them!’ Glenn is breathing hard now. ‘And I’m _sorry_. I’m sorry I failed you, that maybe I wasn’t enough but – I can’t anymore, Daryl. I just _can’t_.’

‘Can’t _what_?’ Daryl snaps as panic starts to close his throat.

‘I can’t watch anymore,’ Glenn shouts back. ‘You’re making us _watch_! I get it, we can’t help and you don’t want us around and-‘

‘I do!’ Daryl shouts back. ‘Of course I want you around! _You can’t leave me_!’

Glenn grinds his teeth together. He grabs the shovel and throws it at Daryl’s feet. ‘Stop making me want to. Dig the damn graves, Daryl.’

He watches how the Korean storms away. Then he snatches the shovel up, pulls his black bandana over his nose and mouth, and starts digging.

He ignores Beth when she brings him water half an hour later.

He ignores Rosita who tells him that she’ll finish the job.

He digs the graves. When he finally climbs out the last one, soaked with sweat and aching all over, he just falls into the grass beside it. Breathing heavily, mouth as dry as the earth had been. Tremors run through his body.

‘You have to drink this. Maggie says you will have a heatstroke otherwise,’ Carl says as he throws his water bottle on the ground next to his best friend. He peers down into the grave. ‘Why did you make them so deep?’

Daryl’s fingers shake as he twists the bottle open, gulping the water down eagerly. He wipes at his face with one clammy hand. ‘’Cause I want them gone, a’right?’

‘All right,’ Carl shrugs as he sits down under the oak tree. If he’d stretch his legs out, he’d be able to kick Daryl. He doesn’t, this time. The playful glint has gone from his eyes. Daryl hasn’t seen it for a long time now. ‘Heard you fighting with Glenn. What?’ He asks when Daryl glares at him. ‘ _Everyone_ heard.’

‘Great.’

‘Yeah.’ Carl picks up a twig and starts snapping little pieces off of it, throwing them into one of the graves. ‘Dad says I shouldn’t try to talk about what happened, but… thanks. I’m not sure I would have been able to do that. I mean – I _would_ , but…’

‘Rick wouldn’t have let you,’ Daryl murmurs as he wipes his face with his bandana. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s done.’

‘Yeah,’ the other boy repeats. He picks a new twig up and starts stripping the layers from it with dirty fingernails. Picking off the bark like it’s a scab. ‘Shane wouldn’t have let you either, you know? If it had been my dad who’d died there.’

‘I know. Ain’t nothing to your old man, so he-‘

‘Cut the bullshit, Dare,’ Carl says tiredly. ‘Of course you’re important to him. You’re my brother, for fuck’s sake. What does that make you to him?’

Daryl snorts. ‘Fuckin’ apocalypse,’ he mutters as he closes his eyes. ‘Damn people keep tryin’ to adopt me.’

That makes Carl laugh. ‘You’re lucky.’

‘Why? Because your daddy is such a good man that he uses kids to his dirty work?’

The smile fades. ‘What?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I don’t give a fuck but that’s what happened, right? I should be lucky such a good man considers me blood?’

‘You should be lucky so many people give a damn about you,’ Carl says through gritted teeth.

‘Don’t act like they ain’t doing the same to you.’

‘They’re not,’ Carl answers.

‘No?’ Daryl leers, ‘and why’s that, huh? My charming personality? They like me better, hmm?’

‘Because your dad used to beat your ass where we could hear you scream,’ Carl says viciously. ‘Because he dumped you on us to live happily ever after in Woodbury instead of coming back to Atlanta for you. And when he finally came back? He opted out and made sure it would be you who would be putting him down.’

Anger causes Daryl to pull his lips back in a silent snarl. ‘What, they’re feelin’ _sorry_ for me?’

‘No. Nobody is trying to adopt me because I actually have a dad who loves me and he’s more than enough.’ Carl gets to his feet and looks down at his brother. ‘My mom said I was going to beat this world. That I was strong and smart and so brave. She told me I had to do what was _right_. Always. What did your dad tell you?’

That he was going to be the king of the apocalypse. The ruler of this new world. That he was going to come out on top, no matter which evils would be unleashed upon him. He would not kneel. And he wouldn’t beg. He’d promised.

But he’d also promised that he wouldn’t lose himself. That he would do hard things and never lose himself in them.

He looks down at his hand, where the burn mark is. Where fire has bitten his skin.

He doesn’t think his mom would have been very proud of him right now. Or Will, for that matter. Shane. Merle.

‘Nothing,’ he mutters because Carl is still waiting for an answer and he doesn’t want the other boy to know that he’d been crowned a king of bones and ashes. ‘He’d turned by the time I got there. Didn’t say nothing.’

‘That’s why they’re trying so hard,’ Carl says. ‘Because you don’t know any better. You’ve always lived in this fucked up world. My mom said I was going to beat this world. And you lost the fight before it’d even started.’

‘We’re back to that now?’ Daryl asks as he scrambles to his feet. ‘What, I’m trash, that it?’

‘Yeah.’ Carl says as he gets up, too. He takes a calming breath and actually looks sorry. ‘Look, I don’t want to fight.’

‘Then why the hell start one?’

‘I didn’t, you said-‘

‘Fuck you!’ Daryl shouts at him. ‘Just get out of my face!’

‘No! He was my friend, too. Shane was my friend, too, Dare, but he’s gone now. And whatever you did, you did, okay? It’s _over_.’

‘So we’re just going to get into that damn van, ride off into the sunset and pretend this didn’t happen? Glenn won’t even look at me! Maggie won’t talk to me! What the fuck am I supposed to do now? Huh? _Huh_?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Daryl.’ Abraham comes walking over, one of the automatic guns in his hands. He glowers at the two boys but focusses mostly on the Dixon, who glares right back at him. ‘Keep your damn voice down.’

‘ _You_!’ He can feel his temper flare into that destructive Dixon rage. ‘You best shut your damn mouth yourself, you fuckin’ ginger asshole. What was your big plan, huh? Rile all them walkers up and throw me in a pit with them? Or were you goin’ for one of those death matches like at Woodbury? Oh fuck! You weren’t even there! Someone beat ya to it, man. Who the fuck even are you, ya dumb son of a bitch!

Abraham grits his teeth. ‘I’m warning you. If you don’t tone it down, kid, someone is going to do it for you.’

Daryl laughs in his face. ‘I ain’t scared of nothing!’

‘Daryl!’ Glenn comes running over. ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck is _wrong_ with you?’ He grabs Daryl’s shoulders and jostles him, hard.

‘Ain’t nothing wrong with me!’

‘Get inside the church!’

‘No, fuck you! Fuck all y’all!’ Daryl rips himself free, stumbles a bit from the sudden momentum and then turns on his heels to run off.

 

 

He’s sitting by the stream. One of his hands has gone numb due to the cold water. He tries to wiggle his fingers but that causes pain to erupt beneath his skin. There are three new burn scars between his fingers. When he closes his hand in a fist he can’t even see them, so he pretends they aren’t there.

The pain had caused him to throw up but everything still feels alien to him. He can barely feel the crushing pain inside his chest, that gnawing sensation that he’s fucked up for good this time.

 

 

_‘Dad?’ Daryl runs into the bedroom and jumps onto the bed, bouncing around until he lands on top of his father with a laugh. ‘Yo, dad! Ya said you’d take me out camping today. Come on, come on! It’s almost sunrise.’_

_‘Fuck off,’ Will mutters into his pillow._

_‘I packed my bag and everything,’ Daryl says as he climbs onto his father’s back while also trying to pull hard enough on his shoulder to get him to roll over. ‘Get up. Come on, you promised.’_

_‘Daryl,’ his dad does roll over now and the boy lands on his side in a fit of giggles. He realizes too late that his father isn’t laughing. Will puts a hand on his small chest and shoves him right off the bed. ‘I said; fuck off. For real.’_

_He lands on the floor with a yelp. His wrist hurts, his ass too, and he blinks up at the bed with wet eyes. ‘Auwch,’ he mutters, shaking his hand a little to get rid of the pain._

_‘Yeah, it’s gonna hurt a lot more if you keep this up. Get the fuck out of my room and leave me be.’_

_‘Dare? Darlina, where you at, kiddo?’ Merle must have noticed the open door because he peeks into his father’s bedroom and spots the boy on the floor. ‘Oh shit, sorry dad. Go back to sleep, okay? I got him. Dare, come here.’_

_Something in the tone of Merle’s voice causes him to scramble towards his brother, jumping up in the lanky arms. Merle grunts but catches him easily. He carries him to the living room. ‘Didn’t know you were already up, buddy. We got oatmeal or… Err.. We got oatmeal, okay?’ He offers when he stars to rummage through the cupboards with the boy on his hip. ‘Wake me up next time.’_

_‘But dad said he’d take me fishing.’_

_‘When was that?’ Merle asks with a frown._

_‘Last night!’_

_‘Yeah, he was drunk and high and sad. Maybe not the best of times to be makin’ promises,’ Merle laughs._

_‘Sad?’ Daryl asks when he scrunches up his nose. ‘Why?’_

_‘Yeah, ignore the drunk and high part, why don’t you,’ Merle says as he prepares their breakfast. He has to put the boy down to do it. ‘Probably fuckin’ used to that,’ he adds under his breath before he frowns. ‘What do you mean,_ why _? Mom died today, a year ago.’_

 _‘I know that,’ Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘But why is he sad_ now _?’_

_‘Because mom died today, you idiot. Done told ya.’_

_‘No,’ Daryl sighs, ‘I mean – he wasn’t sad the day before yesterday. Or when we went to the lake! Why is he sad_ now _? I’m_ always _sad that mom is dead.’_

_Merle sighs and looks at him. ‘It’s just a little harder on the day itself, okay? Dad’s always sad, too, but… It’s just a little harder to hide now. So we’re just going to leave him alone today, so he can, you know, grieve or something.’_

_‘Okay,’ Daryl mutters as he slumps against the fridge. ‘I’m hungry.’_

_‘Yeah, I’m working on it, bud, give me a damn break.’_

_‘Think dad is ever going to be not sad again?’_

_‘No,’ Merle says as he puts two bowls on the table and lifts his brother into his chair. ‘He’s always going to be sad.’_

_‘Oh.’_

_‘You know why?’ Merle asks as he leans forward, glancing at the closed door of their dad’s bedroom. ‘’Cause mom weren’t just some random-ass lady, okay? She were special. Real special. And yeah, he might get better at pretendin’ to not be so sad, and he might find another woman to get his dick wet, but – she were_ mom _, ya know? She were special.’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘But we’re special too,’ Merle smiles. ‘Us Dixon’s? We got weird hearts, you knew that, boy?’_

_‘No,’ Daryl says as he frowns. ‘What’s wrong with it?’_

_‘Pssh! Ain’t nothing_ wrong _with it. ‘s just different than most, is all. They’re tiny, you see? Itty-bitty hearts. Can only fit a few people.’ Mere nods like he’s sharing some wisdom. ‘But you got to be real careful about who those people are, right?  Cause ain’t a lot of space and once they’re in there, they ain’t gettin’ out.’_

_Daryl scrunches up his nose again. ‘What do ya mean?’_

_‘We Dixon’s?’ Merle asks with a grin. ‘We love for life. Ain’t no stoppin’ it once we start. Can’t help it.’_

_Daryl thinks about that. ‘But mom’s dead.’_

_‘Our life,’ Merle explains. ‘We love them all_ our _life. Don’t matter that they’re fuckin’ gone. You still love mom, right?’_

_‘Yeah.’_

_‘See?’ Merle says as he lounges back in his chair. ‘For life, bro. Limited space, I’m tellin’ ya. Gotta be real careful.’_

_‘What happens when it’s full?’_

_Merle blinks. His gaze flits across the room like he’s searching for the answers there. ‘Err… I don’t know – shit, It’s just full, right? You probably stop givin’ a shit about everything else.’_

He takes his hand out of the water and lets the numb fingers curl around the wedding bands dangling from his neck.

 

 

Glenn is already asleep when he finally makes his way back to the church. He sits on one of the pews for a second, thinking about whether he actually wants to do this. Nothing hurts now. That could be over in a heartbeat, two, three, it could be over, in the end. He watches the face of his sleeping friend. He wonders how he never noticed that Glenn has gotten a lot older, too.

His face is not so round anymore, jaw a little squarer now and even in his sleep, the softness has gone. There’s stubble on his chin and upper lip but not much on his cheeks. Still, Daryl smiles and hopes that he’ll still get that shaving lesson one day.

When his boots hit the wooden floorboards, Maggie turns around, blinking against the soft light. ‘Rosita?’ she whispers because she’s next on watch and the other woman would have come to wake her up.

‘Nah, just me.’

‘Dare?’

‘Yeah,’ he kneels down beside the woman. ‘I need to talk to Glenn. It’s important.’

Maggie lets her head rest on her pack again. She looks at him in the near-dark. ‘Then wake him up.’

‘Yeah. I just – I want to talk to you, too, but…’

‘Glenn first,’ she smiles as she reaches out to push some of his dark hair behind his ear. ‘It’s okay. Go on.’

It doesn’t take very long to wake her husband up. As soon as Daryl’s hand lands on his shoulder, Glenn shoots up, eyes wide and heart probably racing as he looks around to see what disturbed him. He calms a bit when he sees that it’s just Daryl.

‘Can we talk?’

‘God,’ Glenn groans as he rubs a hand over his face. ‘Right now?’

‘Yeah. Right now.’ Daryl swallows. ‘Please.’

With a sigh, Glenn gets up, grabs his gun and kisses his wife. Then he waves at the teenager. ‘Okay, go on. Outside, before we wake everyone up.’

 

 

They sit outside on the porch in total darkness. Side by side but not touching.

Rosita walks slow circles around the church and pointedly ignores them. Maybe she’s trying to be polite and give them a sense of privacy, or maybe she’s just gotten sick of all the fights lately. It doesn’t matter why, Daryl supposes. He appreciates it all the same.

Now that they’re out here and ready to talk, he can’t actually find the words. Figures. He’s never been good at that.

But Glenn is patient. He just sits there, yawns every once in a while and shivers before hugging his knees close and staring out into the dark again. It’s been a long time since he’d nervously break the silence, too afraid of Daryl’s quietness and what it could mean to stay still for very long.

‘I’m sorry.’

Glenn glances at him. ‘Don’t tell me things just because you think I want to hear them.’

Daryl nods and sits on his hands, kicking his feet a little. ‘Okay. I ain’t sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean – I ain’t sorry about what I did to Gareth. I’ll _never_ be sorry about that. Rick were right; I wanted that. Told Maggie, before. Fuck, it was all I was thinking about. Last time I let someone like that slip away, Hershel paid the price. Couldn’t let that happen, not again.’

Glenn shakes his head. ‘What happened to Hershel wasn’t your fault.’

‘You sayin’ that doesn’t make it true.’

The Korean lets his head hang for a moment. ‘Can I tell you what I find so incredibly frustrating about this situation?’

‘Shoot,’ Daryl mutters even though he is afraid of what he might hear.

‘I just don’t know what else I can do to help you, you know? I’ve tried to be patient and understanding, I’ve tried to talk to you and be there. When that didn’t work, I gave you space, gave you time to deal with it in your own way. Then I tried getting angry but that fired right back, and now I just don’t know what to do anymore.’ Glenn laughs softly and shakes his head. ‘I would give up all my bullets for Shane to come back for just two seconds. Just so he could tell me what to do.’

‘Yeah. Same.’

‘He really understood what made you tick. It used to make me a little jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ Daryl asks with a frown. ‘Why?’

Glenn shrugs. ‘It always felt like it was natural, him taking a more… like he was… A more parental role, I mean. He was more like a father figure after the farm fell. Whenever we brought in new people at Woodbury, they always assumed you were Shane’s kid. That’s not… he just always knew what to do with you. I was jealous of that.’

The teenager looks at his boots. ‘Didn’t really mattered that he got it. I still managed to drive him crazy.’

‘Only sometimes,’ Glenn smiles.

‘ _Use your damn words_ ,’ Daryl parrots in Shane’s voice.

His friend reaches over, puts a warm hand on the back of his neck and squeezes. ‘Yeah, use your damn words, Dare.’

He sighs and puts his head on his knees, hiding his face. ‘It’s like… I _know_ I’m fucking up all the time but I just can’t stop. A teacher once called me self-destructive but I didn’t really knew what that meant and it just made my dad laugh so I never asked about it again. I get it now. It’s just… What I did to Gareth? That had to happened. But I don’t even remember doing it, or that I laughed afterwards. That’s fucked up. And I really _am_ sorry. But it’s… I don’t know.’

‘Keep going.’

It’s easier when he doesn’t have to look at Glenn. ‘And at first, I didn’t feel a thing and it freaked me out so I tried to force myself to feel it but that didn’t work.’ He flexes his hand. ‘You told me to stop. And I tried talking to Beth but… Everyone is just so damn _nice_ all the time! I just want someone to say it’s my damn fault, that I should have done something to save him.’

Glenn strokes his hair gently.

‘That if it fucking meant something that I loved him, that, you know – I should have done _something_. But I just sat there and I didn’t even _see_ , I just heard that bat and then saw the blood and… And after that, I couldn’t even be a fucking normal person and give a shit. I was so _mad_. And then Rick and… And you were so angry, too, but, like, that _had_ to happen. And it kinda hurt that you were angry, but not enough because… And then I remembered this bullshit thing my brother once told me – how your heart could just fill up, you know? That you gotta be real careful.’

Glenn shifts a little closer to him and doesn’t let go.

‘And I was!’ Daryl says frantically. ‘ _I was_! It was like Mom and Merle and my dad, but then I met you and, like, Maggie and fuckin’ Shane and the rest of the group and I just – I thought – I don’t…’

‘Ssh, ssh,’ Glenn hushes. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not!’ Daryl objects, ‘what if I never give a shit again? What if this is just who I am now?’

‘Ssh, please, stop.’

‘No! No, what if I’m some kind of monster now?’

‘ _Dare_.’

Daryl reluctantly looks up.

Glenn gives him a sad little smile, reaches out until his fingertips brush over his cheeks. ‘You’re crying.’

‘Ain’t,’ he chokes out but he can feel how the man wipes the tears away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says and he can’t even pretend that he isn’t crying now.

‘Come here,’ Glenn murmurs softy.

Daryl throws his leg over Glenn’s and buries himself in the man’s chest, hiding his face in his neck as he cries. Desperate fingers find that checked shirt, holding him close. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobs. ‘ _I’m so sorry._ ’

‘It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you.’

‘I miss him so much.’

‘I know,’ Glenn shushes as he kisses the boy’s temple. ‘Me, too.’

 

 

 


	51. 22

He feels lighter the next morning.

It helps that he’s sandwiched between Glenn and Maggie. The Korean’s slim chest against his back and his legs tangling with Maggie’s as his forehead rests against her shoulder. He wakes up because Glenn gets up, leaving him a little colder, but he shifts closer to Maggie and she wraps one arm around his waist to draw him closer into her warmth. A sleepy kiss is pressed to his temple.

‘Morning,’ she whispers into his hair.

He just groans pathetically and closes his eyes forcefully.

‘Rise and shine and give God the glory.’

He cracks one eye open.

She laughs at him, ‘you’re a mess.’ Fingers comb his hair before rubbing at his cheeks where last night’s tears have left trails in the dusting of dirt. He doesn’t quite remember Glenn leading him back into the church, or the rough hand that had tried to clean him up a bit before they fell asleep, but he knows it probably happened. ‘We’re leaving in about an hour.’

He stretches until all his muscles ache and then slumps again, yawning contently. ‘Is it okay if I run to the creek real quick?’

‘Knife, bow, holler.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he dismisses easily even though he’s glad that those three words have become part of their vocabulary. That it means so much more now than Shane had ever intended. What was once a simple command, a warning perhaps, has now become a comprehended message of love and protection. Of trust. He gets up, grabs his bow and pack and walks towards the front doors.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Rick, Carl and Judith. The man is still sleeping, stretched out along the wall, his face hidden in the crook of his elbow. Carl is playing with Judith, allowing her to crawl over his chest just to paw at his face while he gently pushes her away. She giggles every time she’s shoved down and tries again.

He changes directions and heads towards them. He needs to step over Rosita’s sleeping body and avoid Abraham’s limbs, but he manages to do so quietly. Carl only looks up when the other boy kneels down beside him.

‘Hey,’ Daryl whispers. ‘Wanna come out to the stream with me?’

‘Why?’ Carl asks suspiciously.

‘Take a dive,’ the Dixon boy shrugs. ‘Could go alone, but I thought… I dunno… Maybe ya wanted to come?’

Carl gives him a long, hard look. Then he nods. ‘Yeah, sure, Just,’ he gestures to Judith, ‘one sec.’ When he gets up, his sister safe on his hip, Rick wakes. A hand shoots out to grab Carl’s ankle. ‘It’s nothing,’ the son whispers quickly. ‘I’m just going to the stream. Michonne or Tyreese will look after Judy. Sleep.’

Rick gets up to one elbow and looks up at his boy.

‘Daryl is coming with me,’ Carl says.

The cop slumps back into his former position, drawing his pack closer so he can use it as a pillow. ‘Good,’ he rumbles. ‘Stick together, boys.’

‘Will do,’ Carl mutters before he slinks away to hand his sister to Michonne, who welcomes her with a smile and kiss.

Daryl glances at Rick and starts a little when he sees that the cop is watching him. One sleepy blue eye, the hint of a frown on his face. ‘I’ll look after him,’ he promises Rick.

‘I know,’ Rick says, voice rough and low. ‘We need to talk again when you come back.’

There are few sentences Daryl hates more in his life than that one. _Brace yourself_ comes closest, of course. _We need to talk_ is right up there, too. It’s not that he doesn’t like to talk to Rick, far from it. The hatred he’d once felt towards the guy has been gone for more than a year now and replaced with nothing but love and kinship. He can’t help but wince a little at the words, though. It reminds him too much of his teachers back at school, who’d see the bruises by accident and utter the infamous words.

Merle had always warned him about the words, too. For a different reason altogether, of course. His brother would throw away his cellphone in disgust whenever he got a text with those words from his current girlfriend, grabbing another beer and already considering himself single again before even speaking to the girl in question. He never bothered to actually have the talk.

‘Okay,’ Daryl says even though he feels nervous.

‘You’re not in trouble,’ Rick says, the hint of a smile now tugging at the only corner of his mouth that’s visible to Daryl. ‘Don’t look so scared. Thought ya weren’t scared of nothing?’

He’s teasing now. The smile turning into a sleepy grin.

‘Tough as nails,’ Daryl says as he tilts his chin higher in faked arrogance.

‘Damn right you are.’ The words are soft, like Daryl wasn’t really meant to hear them.

Carl appears at his elbow, ‘good to go?’

‘Yeah, let’s roll,’ Daryl nods as he leads his friend out of the church and into the woods. It’s still early in the morning. The sun has just come up behind the trees but the temperature didn’t really drop overnight. Soon it will be boiling again. Daryl doesn’t mind much. He can’t remember whether their old house used to have climate control, but the trailer certainly did not. The sweat trickling down his neck is as familiar to him as his beating heart in his chest.

The prison had been cool, even during the hottest days of summer, because of the small windows and thick walls. He’d never really liked that. It made the rest of the world seem even hotter whenever he did step outside, like walking into an oven until he got used to the heat again. It didn’t help that the transition made everyone catch summer colds all the damn time. Glenn had told him that used to happen all the time with the AC’s, too.

Half-way to the stream, they come across a walker.

‘Got it, watch my six,’ Carl mutters as he draws his knife and side-steps a bit so he’s in a better position. With one neat kick, he forces the man to fall backwards. One foot on the sternum keeps him down before he plunges the knife in with ease. It makes a scrunching noise when he pulls it back out.

‘All clear,’ Daryl says while the other boy cleans his knife on the dirty clothes of the walker. ‘just dip it in the stream, man. Got my rag to dry it.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ Carl answers, glancing back at him. ‘Thanks.’

The Dixon boy wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘Yeah, you’re welcome. And I’d rather you just hit me instead of this awkward bullshit, okay? You mad about the shit I said?’

‘No. It’s just – you look better today,’ Carl shrugs. ‘Didn’t want to ruin it by starting that up again.’

‘Well,’ Daryl scratches at his upper arm, ‘no need to pussyfoot around me. Won’t break just because you set me straight.’

‘But you’re so precious,’ Carl laughs as he ducks away from a swipe at his head. ‘Come on, where’s that stupid stream again? Left here?’

‘ _Right_ , city-slicker. You can even hear it! Good Lord,’ Daryl snorts as he pushes through some bushes and hops out beside the stream, dumping his backpack near some trees and jumping up to put his bow on a higher branch. ‘You keepin’ our gun on ya?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ Carl answers, ‘just don’t push me in then,’ he warns as he kicks his boots off and rolls his jeans up to his knees. The shirt is thrown over Daryl’s pack, the hat joining the bow up top.

‘Nah, I won’t,’ Daryl offers because the last thing he wants to tell Rick is that his son got killed because his gunpowder got wet. He puts his own gun in his pack before taking his boots off, shrugging out of his shirt and stepping out of his jeans. He dives into the water headfirst, biting through the cold until he breaks the surface with a gasp.

While he swims, Carl sits on the bank and washes his face and arms. He wiggles his toes when Daryl dives down to grab at them, teasing the boy but never dragging him in. It doesn’t take very long before the water becomes too cold and Daryl hoists himself out of it, falling into the grass beside Carl. The sun kisses his chest and legs, warming him up quickly.

Carl stretches out next to him and stares up at the blue sky. ‘So, Washington up next, huh?’

‘Guess so.’

‘Are you still mad at Abraham?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘No. Weren’t even mad to begin with, but he was just stickin’ his nose in and I… I just hate it when people do that. He made a better target than you.’

_‘Ginger asshole_ ,’ Carl parrots with a laugh.

‘Well, he is,’ Daryl snorts. ‘And you’re my best friend, so…’

‘Brother,’ the teenager corrects with a smirk.

‘Brother,’ Daryl nods a he closes his eyes and enjoys the sunshine. One hand comes up to rub at the scar running over his sternum. It still feels kind of strange to not have to hide them all the time. Nobody even blinks anymore whenever he shrugs out of his vest and shirt to clean up or cool down. Gazes never linger and while everyone might hate Will a little more when they see them, they never say anything about it to him. ’It’s a beautiful fuckin’ day.’

Carl laughs and swats at his shoulder, ‘Shane used to say that. _It’s a beautiful fucking day, just as fuckin’ beautiful as you all, ladies_ ,’ he pretends shoot with his fingers at imaginary people, exactly like how Shane used to greet the women at the prison.

Daryl laughs too. ‘Worked though, he got lucky with that red-head once.’

‘No way that worked.’

‘Pretty sure,’ Daryl says with a smirk. ‘She came out of his cell at five in the morning, I’m  _pretty sure_ , man. Went over to get my walkie out of the charger.’

‘Is that why he moved the charger to the –‘

‘Yes!’ Daryl laughs, ‘told him I did not need to know shit like that about him.’

‘Gross,’ Carl agrees. ‘Dad once told me he’d take my mom to the movies, to dinner, brought her a shit ton of stuff before they got together and Shane just strolls in with a wink and his dumb finger guns,’ the teenager laughs as he pretends to shoot the sky with his fingers.

‘Turns out the apocalypse is good for something then. Don’t have to buy girls shit all the time.’

‘Yeah. Maybe we should try the Shane approach sometime.’

Daryl snorts, ‘on who? Ain’t no one around, man.’ Then he rolls to his side to grin at his friend, ‘or you still hopin’ on Beth, huh?’

The blush seems to explode on Carl’s cheeks, spreading instantly to his neck and chest.

‘You are! Ya animal,’ Daryl laughs.

‘I’m not! Jesus,’ Carl objects, aiming a mean kick at his brother. ‘She’s family, man. Stop being gross.’

‘Pssh, I ain’t blushin’ up a storm here.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m just… I dunno.’

‘Aahw, is little Carl a bit embarrassed, huh? Cutie, cutie, cutie!’ Daryl pounces on his friend, trying to pinch his cheeks

They fight for dominance. Carl tries to buck him off, squirming away while Daryl keeps him easily in place. It’s not really a fair fight. Even though Daryl is still an inch shorter than his friend, his muscles are more well-defined, bulging as he pins Carl down. The other boy is better at the hand-to-hand Rick had taught them, but Daryl has Dixon’s innate ability to fight dirty. A knee digging into some muscles, a teasing poke between the ribs and Carl calls for a truce.

‘Stop, stop, peace,’ the boy pants as his muscles go slack. ‘Peace.’

‘Baby,’ Daryl laughs as he slides off him immediately.

‘Yeah, well, you’re fucking heavy, squashing me like that.’

‘You need to work on your sweet talkin’ if ya want Beth to-‘

‘ _Stop_! That was almost two years ago, it was different then. She’s family now. Stop.’

Daryl grins up at the sky but does stop his teasing. He lets his breathing even out again, waits for his heart to stop racing after the sudden attack. Next to him, Carl rolls onto his belly and plucks at some grass. Curious brown eyes examine him and Daryl knows he won’t like the question before Carl has even opened his mouth.

‘What about you, then? I mean, you knew about Beth, that I thought she was…. So,’ he looks at Daryl from the corner of his eye, ‘anyone you think is, I don’t know, cute?’

Daryl snorts. ‘Nah.’

‘Nah? Come on, you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else.’

‘I ain’t ever told anyone about you drooling over Beth neither, so you best keep your mouth shut, Grimes.’

‘You haven’t even told me anything yet,’ Carl points out with a laugh.

‘Hell, everyone here is either blood or old enough to be my mom.’

‘Stop stalling, Dixon. Spit it out.’

He shrugs, ‘fine. Guess Rosita is pretty hot. Stupid that she’s dating that ginger asshole though,’ he laughs, ‘so I’m never making a move on that. Fuck her. And him, too.’

‘I’m never making a move on that,’ Carl parrots as he laughs and rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s a line of people who _are_ going to try that once she dumps the ginger asshole, man. Everyone thinks she’s hot. Have you seen how Eugene looks at her?’ The boy gets to his feet and holds his hand out to his brother. ‘Maybe we should teach him the finger guns technique.’

Daryl claps their hands together and is hauled to his feet. ‘Yeah,’ he grins, ‘but he’s going to fuck it up, man _. It’s a fuckin’ beautiful day_ will always work better _than the combined air pressure and rays of the sun have accumulated to bring forth a day many would consider_ – like, what the fuck? English, motherfucker, vomit that up instead of your science mumbo-jumbo.’

‘Science mumbo-jumbo?’ Carl asks with a frown. ‘You mean you don’t understand what he’s saying?’

Daryl freezes on his way back to his clothes.

‘Are you such trash that you don’t even understand what Eugene is talking about?’ the boy asks incredulously.

Daryl frowns and turns, anger building in his stomach and chest until he sees that Carl is biting back a smile. ‘You stupid fuck.’

‘Your face!’ Carl sniggers. ‘ _Nobody_ understands what Eugene is talking about, ninety percent of the time.’ He throws his arm around his brother’s shoulders as they walk back to the tree to get their stuff.

 

 

Judith is getting pretty big. She doesn’t cry often, which is of course a big relief now that they don’t have big walls to hide behind anymore. Whenever she does fuss or cry, however, it’s usually because no one is holding her. She’s gotten so used to being carried from place to place by warm arms, that she misses them too much when she’s put down in her makeshifts cribs.

Right now, she’s crying while everyone is packing up their things. Glenn and Abraham are pouring over the map while Rick inspects whatever is left in the church and Michonne orders the supplies to be loaded up.

Daryl is the only one who is just sitting there, so he walks over to Judith and peers into the crib. ‘Hey, kicker,’ he says. It’s not enough to make her stop. She just waves puffy arms at him, signaling that she wants him to pick her up. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he mutters, reaching down and lifting her to his chest. The movement is so familiar by now that he doesn’t have to think about how to do it, or whether he’s doing it right.

He takes the small blanket out of the crib, figuring that they’re not going to drag a cardboard box with them to Washington, and ties it to his belt so he won’t lose it.

‘Hmm-hmm,’ he agrees when Judith babbles something while shifting in his arms, trying to look around. ‘There’s your daddy, right there,’ Daryl says as he points at Rick, who is talking to Gabriel now. ‘And your big bro.’ Carl is helping Michonne by carrying a box with supplies towards the bus. ‘Wanna see the bus we’re going to be takin’? Yeah, yeah, you do, huh, sweetheart? Let’s go outside a bit. Ah, there’s Beth. You like Beth, ‘cause she sings real good. Let’s talk to her a bit, eh?’

The girl is standing guard near the road. She smile at the sight of the teenager with the baby on his hip. ‘Hey, you two,’ she greets when they are close enough so she doesn’t need to raise her voice. ‘Don’t you make a cute couple.’ She winks at Daryl, who smirks back. ‘Want me to take her?’

‘No, I got her,’ Daryl says. ‘We need you on guard duty anyway.’

‘I’m usually the babysitter.’

‘Yeah, well, I think I’ll manage.’ He catches a glimpse of the girl’s expression when she turns back to the road. ‘Hey, you know that ain’t all ya are, right?’

‘I know.’

‘You saved my life. Dragging me out of the fight at the prison. Shooting the guy who was beatin’ the shit out of me. And yeah, keepin’ this girl from screaming her head off sometimes and drivin’ me nuts.’ Beth laughs softly as she throws a look over her shoulder. ‘Rick wouldn’t want some stupid babysitter to watch over his kid, anyway,’ he smiles. ‘He needs someone fierce as hell.’

‘Why are you being so nice suddenly?’ Beth almost sounds suspicious.

‘What the hell,’ the boy snorts. ‘What? Never have I ever been nice or something?’

‘You know what I mean.’ She narrows her eyes at him. ‘You look different, too. Better. What happened?’

‘Good lord, I took a bath, okay? No need to throw a goddamn party over it. You Greene girls, always tellin’ me I look a mess. _That_ ain’t nice, girl. Come on, Asskicker, we’re out of here. We don’t need to be hearin’ that kind of bullshit.’ He bops the girl on his hip, kissing her forehead as he carries her back to the bus. Everyone is getting ready to board and get out of here.

He checks whether Glenn has loaded his pack and bow up before claiming one of the spots at the back.

Abraham pushes Eugene onto the bus next, eager to get going.

For a second, Daryl thinks about apologizing to the man for his outburst yesterday, but he shrugs and stick his tongue out at Judith. ‘Fuck him, right?’ Daryl laughs when Judith giggles and reaches up to grab his tongue.

‘Language.’ Daryl hadn’t even noticed that Rick had gotten on as well but now the cop falls into the seat next to him. He reaches out to stroke Judith’s hair but doesn’t make a move to tug her into his own lap. ‘Everything went alright by the stream?’

‘Yeah. Carl took one down on the way there, the rest was clear.’

‘Good,’ Rick nods as he slumps in his seat, one knee against the seat in front of him.

The rest of their family gets on, too. Glenn and Maggie sitting in front of Daryl, Carl with Michonne to their right. Abraham is behind the wheel while Rosita cards her fingers through his hair. Sasha sits with Tyreese at the back, her face hidden in her brothers shoulder as she cries and sleep through her grief.

Gabriel sits at the back, too. He turns around as they drive away, trying to see his beloved church for as long as possible.

Daryl plays with Judith. After a while, she gets cranky and curls up against this stomach to get some sleep. He puts a protective hand on her head and back before glancing to her dad, who’s been watching them the whole time.

‘You’re good with her,’ Rick says.

‘Yeah. Carl taught me. Beth.’

‘Hmm,’ Rick shifts a little to his side, resting his head against his seat. ‘You’ve always been good with her.’

Daryl smiles. ‘She used to freak me out. I’d never been around a baby before.’

‘Your older brother, Merle, right? He was your only sibling?’

‘Guess,’ Daryl mutters as he wrinkles his nose a little. ‘I mean – dad told me that I used to have a sister, but she weren’t born yet and she died so… does that count as.... I don’t know.’

‘It counts,’ Rick says softly.

Daryl nods and brushes Judith’s hair out of her face. It’s getting longer but it’s still that light blonde. He wonders how long it will take before it will fade into Lori’s darker color. ‘How many siblings did Shane have? You said he had a big family, before, but…’

The cop looks a little surprised by the question. ‘He had two older brothers. They both joined the army while we were in high school. One was a medic, the other one a helicopter pilot. The oldest – the pilot- he was stationed in Japan. Okinawa base, I think. I’m not sure about the other one. He was stationed somewhere up North.’ Rick smiles, ‘he had two sisters, too. Younger than him. They’d both gone off to college when it all went down.’

‘In Atlanta?’

‘No, no,’ Rick shakes his head. ‘One of them was on an exchange program in Brussels, she was into politics. The other one was on the East coast. She did Art history, I think. Something artsy, anyway.’

Daryl nods. He glances at Rick again. ‘Was his dad still alive when all this…?’

‘No, he’d died a couple of years ago. Shane was the only one who’d stayed in his old town. They were still very close, though, even though they were spread all over the world.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Hmm. They weren’t really the family who would text or skype all day, but whenever something happened? Yeah, they got together and dealt with it, whatever it was. They couldn’t deal with this however,’ Rick sighs as he looks out of the window. ‘Airports were shut down. None of them managed to get home in time. Nobody thought it would all go down so fast.’

Daryl hums and shifts Judith a little on his chest. His arm is falling asleep. He listens to the rest of his family. They’re talking about the cure, but Eugene is back to his _classified_ bullshit so Glenn switches to questioning the mullet instead.

A fun guy.

Daryl snorts.

‘I got something for you,’ Rick says as he digs around in his pocket. ‘Carol gave it to me after Terminus, but I want you to hold on to it for me, okay?’

‘What is it?’

Out of the pocket of his jeans, Rick pulls the silver necklace. The number 22 blinks in the sunshine. ‘It’s important to me,’ the cop says, ‘so you best keep it safe. It was his high-school football number. He’d want you to have it.’

‘You sure?’ Daryl asks even though he’s already reaching for it.

‘Yeah,’ Rick smiles. ‘Here, let me put it on.’ He unclasps it and then leans close to put it around the boy’s neck. It tangles with the one he’s already wearing, the one that holds his parent’s wedding rings. ‘Looks good on you.’

‘Thanks, man.’

‘You know we can talk about him, right? I may not know everything, but I know a lot,’ Rick says. ‘He was my best friend, and I was serious earlier. That makes you mine, too.’

Daryl nods and glances at him again, fingering the pendant with the number. ‘I know.’

 

 

The bus crashes.

The sound of screeching tires, the smell of smoke, blood trickling down his forehead, it all barely registers as the vehicle rolls over to its side.

Daryl hits his head and blacks out.

He wakes up with Carol gently stroking his cheek. For a second he relaxes, but then he gasps and struggles to sit up, ‘Judy!’

‘She’s fine. You kept her safe.’ She smiles down at him. ‘How is your head?’

‘Hurts like a bitch.’

‘Right. You’ll live,’ she says when she checks his pupils.

‘What happened?’

‘Something went wrong with the bus, it crashed. You hit your head and blacked out. Tyreese had to carry you for a while. There were walkers,’ she explains when he frowns with dismay. ‘Abraham didn’t want to stop.’

‘Asshole,’ Daryl grumbles when he sits up carefully. ‘Where are we now?’

‘Still on the road.’

‘Fucking Washington is going to get me killed,’ the boy mumbles.

Carol gives him a grim smile. ‘Good thing we’re not going there anymore.’

 

 

Eugene is not really a scientist.

Abraham tries to beat him to death.

Rick almost shoots them both.

 

 

The road ahead is endless.

They’ve lost their vehicle. They’ve been walking for days now. It’s just them, the woods, the sun and the walkers. Never before has Daryl thought of their country as deserted but he would give anything to come across a town right now. They’ve hit several places underway. Gas stations, restaurants, a garage, but there hadn’t been a single bottle of water left.

It hurts to move now. Daryl has to force his feet up and forward, conscious of every single step because if he stops paying attention, he’ll just sink down on the hot asphalt. His throat feels raw and dry. There’s sweat dripping down his neck. He hasn’t bothered to look up in ages now, just follows Maggie’s boots to wherever they are going.

When they take a break, he falls into the grass and sleeps. It’s not that he’s particularly tired. It’s just that he doesn’t want to be conscious for longer than he has to.

On the third day, they can’t outrun the walkers anymore.

‘Daryl,’ Rick points to the middle of the bridge.

The boy nods and drags himself towards it, dumping his pack there and sitting down on top of it. With a grunt, he loads his bow, sighing before lifting it to his shoulder and shutting one of his eyes.

His aim is steady, at least.

The group lines up beside the edges of the bridge. They push walkers downhill while Carl keeps Judith safe by taking his spot right behind his brother.

It’s Sasha who breaks protocol by grabbing hold of a walker.

The rest of the group has to grab their knives and help her out. Rick whistles sharply and Daryl lets his bolt fly. It takes the walker down who is closest to Maggie. The whole plan has gone to shit. There are too many people in the way for him to safely take another walker down. He throws the bow aside, inhales sharply before taking off running.

He jumps a walker just before it manages to sink its teeth into Rick’s upper arm.

Rick thanks him with a nod when it’s all over. About a dozen walkers are on the ground, at their feet.

‘I told you to stop,’ Michonne hisses at Sasha.

‘Chonne?’ Daryl asks as he stumbles over to her. ‘Can I have a sip? _Please_?’

Michonne’s gaze snaps to him, the anger morphing into worry instantly. ‘Yeah, here,’ she pulls one of the last bottles of water out of her pack and hands it to him.

He pretends to take a sip but the water doesn’t even touch his lips. Small. blue eyes glance at Sasha. ‘Thanks,’ he murmurs as he passes the bottle back to Michonne.

She runs a loving hand through his sweaty hair before walking back to Carl and Judith, checking on them.

Sasha tilts her chin a little higher. ‘Thank you.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Look, I get it. I was mad, too. But Gareth is dead, okay?  He paid for it. And this rage? It’s going to get you killed. It’s going to get us all killed.’ When he turns, he almost walks into Rick.

The cop looks down at him, puts a hand on his shoulder and gently guides him back to the group. ‘Thank you,’ he says softly, voice rough. ‘I need to ask you to-‘

‘Yeah, I’m going,’ Daryl cuts in as he grabs his bow from the asphalt and hands his automatic rifle to Carl. ‘I’ll cut back through the woods, try to find something. Circle around. You just follow the road and I’ll catch up.’

‘Thank you,’ Rick repeats.

 

 

It doesn’t matter because he doesn’t find anything.

 

 

They eat wild dogs.

They’re too hungry to care.

 

 

‘We can make it together,’ Glenn tells him.

Maggie kisses his forehead every time he goes out to hunt for food and water.

 

 

When he does find something, a barn in the middle of nowhere, it’s no good either.

Not until the storm breaks out, that is.

 

 

There are bottles of water in the middle of the road. A note in Rick’s hands. He holds it out to Daryl so he can read it when he returns from his hunt empty handed.

‘From a friend,’ Rick supplies when the boy has trouble with the simple words.

Dazedly, Daryl grabs his crossbow because they don’t have any friends anymore.

‘What else are we going to do?’ Tara asks.

‘Not this,’ Rick tells her.

They don’t know who left it. There could be something in it.

Eugene offers to test the water for them, quality assurance, but Abraham bats the bottle out of his hands without a word.

‘We can’t,’ Rick says darky. And when his words fade into the rumble of thunder, it starts to rain.

Daryl drops his bow and opens his mouth wide, titling his head back to catch some drops. Soon, everyone is scrambling to get their water bottles out, every container they have, because these storms don’t usually last very long. They do, however, get worse.

Thunder. Lightning. Hell is unleashed above them.

It doesn’t take them long to get scared out in the open like this. Judith starts to cry first, but Carl uses his hat to shield her from the heavy rain and quiets her expertly. Rick looks around, shirt clinging to his wiry frame. ‘Let’s get moving!’ He shouts.

‘ _There’s a barn_!’ Daryl shouts back.

‘ _Where_?’

It’s not far. He leads them through the woods towards the barn and clears it with Rick, Carol, Maggie and Glenn. It’s mostly dry. There’s a woman in a room on the side. It’s a walker now. She had a gun.

‘She could have shot herself,’ Maggie says.

‘Some people can’t give up,’ Carol answers. ‘Like us.’

 

 

He sleeps next to Carl in the hay. Judith bundled up between them, Carl’s hand on her back and Daryl’s hand reaching for his bow.

There’s a fire going on behind them. Rick, Glenn and Maggie, Carol and Beth are sitting around it, trying to stay warm while the storm rages outside.

‘They’re going to be okay,’ Carol says suddenly and Daryl pretends to sleep even though he can feel Rick’s gaze on them. ‘They bounce back more than any of us do.’

‘I used to feel sorry for kids that have to grow up now, in this,’ Rick answers. ‘But I think I got it wrong. Growing up is getting used to the world. This is easier for them.’

‘This isn’t the world,’ Michonne objects. ‘This isn’t it.’

‘Until we see otherwise, this is what we have to live with.’ There’s a long moment of silence before Rick continues. ‘When I was a kid, I asked my grandpa once if he’d ever killed any Germans in the war. He wouldn’t answer. He said that was grown-up stuff, so… So I asked if the Germans ever tried to kill him. But he got real quiet. He said he was dead the minute he stepped into enemy territory. Every day, he woke up and told himself; _rest in peace. Now get up and go to war_. And then after a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. And that’s the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do and then we get to live. But no matter what we find down the road, I know we’ll be okay. Because this is how we survive. We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.’

Another long silence.

‘We’re not them,’ Glenn says.

And Daryl never loved him more.

 

 

He walks his nervous rounds and spots the herd first.

‘ _Tyreese_!’ he shouts because that’s the biggest, strongest guy they have and he’s scared. ‘Abraham!’ He flings himself against the door, heels digging into the dirt. ‘Glenn! Maggie! Rick, _please_!’

In the end, even Carl gently puts Judith onto the cold ground and helps to hold their defenses.

 

 

‘You should get some sleep,’ Maggie tells him the next morning. ‘It’s okay to rest now.’

‘Yeah.’ He leans back and grabs the music box. ‘Carl felt dumb when you found out it was broken, so I fixed it. The gearbox had some grit in it.’

‘Thank you,’ Maggie smiles as she gets up. ‘Get some sleep, okay?’

He nods. Glances up at her. ‘Hey,’ he says softly before she walks away. ‘I – I - . you know that I…’ He scratches at his cheek and looks away. ‘I love ya. You know that, right?’

 Her smile brightens a fraction. ‘Yes. And I love you, Dare. We’re going to be okay.’

‘I know.’

He sleeps and doesn’t have any nightmares.

 

 

Outside, the ballerina in the box twirls to the tinkling of music.

And Maggie and Sasha meet Aaron.

 

 

 


	52. Aaron and Eric

 

* * *

 

 

‘Everyone? This is Aaron.’

Daryl can’t help but stare at the new guy who is being led into the barn by Sasha and Maggie. He’s a couple of inches taller than both of them, clean cut with his flannel shirt and water-proof jacket. There’s not a hole in his jeans. Sturdy boots keep his feet warm. He looks a bit unsure and hesitant, eyes darting around, trying to get everyone in his sight.

‘Daryl.’ Rick snaps his fingers.

The teenager darts past the new guy and checks out front, but he can’t see any threats right away. He shuts the door, gives Aaron’s boot a kick so the man spreads his legs wider before the boy pats him down roughly, just how Shane had taught him at the prison.

‘We took his weapons and we took his gear,’ Maggie says.

Daryl can feel how Aaron tenses beneath his touch. He doesn’t find any hidden weapons and shoves him towards the middle of the barn, closer to Rick.

‘Hi,’ he says with a nod.

Judith starts to cry.

Rick passes his daughter to his son and looks at the stranger warily.

‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Aaron tries as he steps forward as if he wants to shake Rick’s hand.

Daryl raises the bow while everyone shifts nervously, their grips on their guns tightening.

‘You said he had a weapon?’ Rick’s voice is rough and low. He puts his own revolver back in the holster as he takes the gun from Maggie. It’s a smaller revolver, black and loaded. He puts it away before narrowing his eyes at the stranger. ‘Is there something you need?’

‘He has a camp nearby,’ Sasha says. ‘He wants us to audition for membership.’

‘I wish there was another word,’ Aaron jumps in. ‘Audition makes it sound like we’re some kind of a dance troupe. That’s only on Friday nights.’

The joke falls flat. Nobody laughs or even smiles.

‘And it’s not a camp,’ he soldiers on after a grimace. ‘It’s a community. I think you all would make valuable additions, but it’s not my call. My job is to convince you all to follow me back home. I know, if I were you I wouldn’t go either.’ He chuckles but it sounds a little nervous. ‘Not until I knew exactly what I was getting into. Sasha, can you hand Rick my pack?’

Daryl doesn’t like how he uses their names so easily. Like they’re friends already. That’s probably the point, however. It’s a smart trick, he supposes.

‘Front pocket, there’s an envelope,’ Aaron instructs as Rick goes through the beige backpack. ‘There’s no way I could convince you to come with me just by talking about our community. That’s why I brought those. I apologize in advance for the picture quality. We just found an old-‘

‘Nobody gives a shit,’ Daryl cuts in.

Aaron turns to look at him. He has blue eyes, wide and unguarded. ‘You’re absolutely 100 percent right,’ he nods.

‘Dare.’

Daryl gives the stranger a last withering look before he slinks over to where Glenn is standing, allowing the Korean to curl a hand around his shoulder and pull him behind him, away from the stranger’s gaze.

There are pictures in the envelope. From his new vantage point, Daryl can see flashes of them. Gray and out of focus, shadows of houses and walls. Aaron talks Rick through some of them, explaining that the first picture is of the wall that keeps the community save. Nothing else matters unless they know they’ll be safe, the man says.

Daryl doesn’t understand how a couple of blurry pictures can make that happen.

Aaron promises safety. They have a wall made of steel. Nothing, alive or dead gets through that without their say-so. Security is important. There’s only one resource more critical to their community’s survival. The people.

Rick looks at Michonne.

She lifts an eyebrow.

‘Together,’ Aaron says, ‘we’re strong. You can make us even stronger. The next picture, you’ll see inside the gates.’

Rick walks towards him.

‘Our community was first –‘

Rick punches him.

Everyone puts their guns away with a sigh. Aaron is knocked out cold. Maggie and Rosita tie him up.

Michonne doesn’t seem too happy. ‘So we’re clear,’ she says when Rick walks back towards her. ‘That look wasn’t a let’s-attack-that-man look. It was a he-seems-like-an-okay-guy-to-me look.’

Rick ignores her. He orders Carl to put Judith down in the crib and empty the man’s pack to find out who this guy really is. The rest of the group spreads out and peeks through the cracks in the wood, trying to see something outside. Aaron’s people are coming for them.

‘Me and Sasha, we didn’t see him,’ Maggie protests from where she’s kneeling beside the guy. ‘If he wanted to hurt us, he could have.’

Rick ignores her, too. ‘Anybody see anything?’

There are a lot of places to hide. Daryl leans against the wall next to Glenn, trying to catch sight of anything moving beyond the tree line. After a couple of minutes, he gives up and glances at the Korean instead. He wants to ask him what’s going on, whether he thinks Aaron is telling the truth, but he doesn’t think that Rick will appreciate the disruption of their vigilance. Glenn notices his gaze and reaches out without taking his eyes off the trees. His hand is warm on the boy’s shoulder. He squeezes and gently pushes Daryl back against the wall, urging him to keep an eye out, too.

It doesn’t take Aaron long to come to. He groans softly while Maggie dabs at his face with a wet rag. The blue eyes are a bit hazy but he laughs softly as he realizes where he is. Still surrounded by Rick’s crew.

‘That’s a hell of right cross there, Rick.’

‘Sit him up.’

Maggie looks back at the cop, ‘I think it’s better if…’

‘It’s okay,’ Aaron says hastily.

‘He’s fine,’ Rick answers with a gesture at the man. ‘Sit him up.’

‘You’re being cautious,’ Aaron says when Michonne drags him upright. He works his jaw to get rid of the sting there. ‘I _completely_ understand.’

‘How many of your people are out there?’ Rick’s voice is soft and low, dangerous enough to cause Daryl to shiver. There’s anger lurking in the words, a hint of something much darker than that. ‘You have a flare gun. You have it to signal your people. How many of them are there?’

Aaron sighs. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes. _Yes, it does_.’

‘I mean,’ Aaron looks up at Michonne briefly, ‘of course, it matters how many people are _actually_ out there, but does it matter how many people I tell you are out there? Because I’m pretty sure no matter what number I say…. Eight? Thirty-two? Four hundred and forty-four? Zero? No matter what I say, you’re not going to trust me.’

Daryl turns around to stare at the stranger again. He doesn’t know a lot about this Aaron, but he knows one thing for sure; the man’s got balls of steel. He’s looking up at Rick, with his eager trigger finger, the weathered face and wild beard. The strange blue eyes, the indifference about what happens to someone who he doesn’t consider to be his. The coldness that radiates from him as he looks at the stranger.

‘It’s hard to trust anyone who smiles after getting punched in the face.’

‘How about a guy who leaves bottles of water for you in the road?’

Daryl glances at the bottles they brought with them, even if they were unsure about what to do with them. ‘How long have you been followin’ us?’ he asks, stepping forward with a scowl on his face.

‘Long enough to see that you practically ignore a pack of roamers on your trail. Long enough to see that despite a lack of food and water, you never turned on each other. You’re survivors. And you’re people. Like I said, and I hope you won’t punch me for saying it again, that is the most important resource in the world.’

Rick slowly walks over to him. ‘ _How many others are out there_?’

‘One.’

Rick shakes his head.

‘I know you wouldn’t believe me,’ Aaron sighs. ‘If it’s not words, if it’s not pictures, what would it take to convince you that this is for real? What if I drove you to the community? All of you? We leave now, we’ll get there by lunch!’

‘I’m not sure how the fifteen of us are going to fit in the car you and _your one friend_ drove down here.’

Daryl snorts and hides his grin behind his fingers while he chews on his nails.

‘We drove separately,’ Aaron says after a glance at the teenager. ‘If we found a group, we wanted to be able to bring them all home. There’s enough room for all of us.’

‘And you’re parked just a couple of miles away, right?’ Carol chimes in sarcastically.

‘East on Ridge Road, just after you hit Route 16.’

Rick remains skeptical while Aaron builds his case, telling them that if he’d wanted to get rid of them, he would have lit the barn on fire while they slept and then shot them while they ran out of the only exit. Daryl frowns and rubs at his forehead, thinking that that would have been how he would have done it, too. That’s easier than taking a hit to the cheek, easier than getting up close and personal. Easier than risking your life.

‘I’ll check out the cars,’ Michonne says.

‘There aren’t any cars,’ Rick growls back.

There is only one way to find out. Michonne talks to Rick in that low voice, a discussion that spreads to the rest of the group but is just them, matching tempers and wits until Rick bows his head a little to the side, thinking her arguments over.

Maggie takes Michonne’s side.

They can handle themselves. They need to know what this is.

Glenn will come, too.

Rick works his jaw. He shakes his head. Something tightens in his neck, a muscle jumping until he turns his head. ‘Abraham,’ he says.

The burly man pushes himself away from the wall. ‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘I’ll walk with them.’

It sounds like the threat it is.

Daryl watches Aaron, who doesn’t seem worried.

‘Rosita,’ Rick commands.

The woman nods. ‘Okay.’

‘If there’s trouble, you got enough firepower?’ Rick asks Glenn when they meet in front of Aaron.

‘We got what we got,’ the Korean says with a small shrug.

 Here,’ Rick passes Aaron’s gun to him. ‘The walkies are out of juice. If you’re not back in sixty minutes, we’ll come.’

‘Got it,’ Glenn nods. ‘Look after Dare for us?’

The cop tilts his head a little to the side, eyes narrow. ‘Of course.’

Daryl is leaning against a bale of hay, arms crossed in front of his chest. He watches the interaction with indifference. He knows he’s being passed around like a parcel, Glenn always making sure that someone is on watch-Daryl-duty whenever he leaves, unless it’s him who leaves to go hunting. There’s a hierarchy in the group, too. He’s being passed down from Glenn and Maggie to Rick and Carol, only shipped to Michonne or Beth when they are unavailable.

It doesn’t bother him. He knows it’s only for their peace of mind. He can take care of himself but has stopped fighting his family over this a long time ago.

Aaron is watching, too. His gaze now curious, flickering between Daryl, to Glenn and Maggie, to Rick and back, like he’s trying to figure something out. There’s a little crease between his brows when he looks at the boy.

Daryl lifts an eyebrow. ‘Wanna hold on to your teeth?’

Aaron wisely keeps his mouth shut.

 

 

The others make it back within Rick’s time-limit. It seems like Aaron was telling the truth. There had been a car and an RV with enough room to bring them all back to the community. The cupboards had been stocked with food, but Glenn, Maggie and Abraham have brought it all into the barn where Rick claims it as theirs.

No matter what they decide, the food is theirs.

Aaron agrees. He says there is more than enough.

Daryl sits down next to the pile of cans. He reaches out and takes one, turning it over in his hands, scratching at the label with dirty fingernails. It doesn’t even have a dent anywhere. The label is a bit faded, the red not as bright anymore, but that doesn’t matter.

Shards of the discussion reach him but he can’t be bothered to follow the whole conversation.

They’re going to Aaron’s camp. It’s Rick who decides, but Michonne who had made up his mind for him.

‘So where are we going?’ Rick asks as he turns back to Aaron, who is still on the floor. Hands tied behind his back. ‘Where’s your camp?’

‘Well, every time I’ve done this, I’ve been behind the wheel driving recruits back. I believe you’re good people. I’ve bet my life on it. I’m just not ready to bet my friends’ lives just yet.’

‘You’re not driving,’ Michonne snaps as Rick grabs the map off the table. ‘So if you wanna get home, you’ll have to tell us how.’

Aaron hesitates. ‘Go north on Route 16.’

‘And then?’

The man looks up at Michonne. ‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’

Rick studies the map. ‘We’ll take 23 north. You’ll give us directions from there.’

‘That’s… I don’t know how else to say it, that’s a _bad_ idea. We’ve cleared 16. It’ll be faster.’

Rick stares at him. ‘We’ll take 23. We leave at sundown.’

They’re going to do this at night. Daryl cocks his head a little to the side, fingernails catching on the metal tab so it makes that soft clicking sound. It’s better than rolling up to the gates at noon, he supposes. They won’t see them coming this way. Or at least, they will see the community first.

‘No-one is going to hurt you,’ Aaron promises. He won’t, however, give up the location of the camp.

So they leave at sundown.

‘It’s going to be a long night,’ Rick says. ‘Eat. Get some rest if you can.’ He stalks out of the barn in order to inspect the car. Michonne slips out after him.

It doesn’t take long for the group to disperse, many of them trying to find a comfortable place to get some rest. Carl curls up with his sister and Beth in one corner, right next to Carol who watches over them. Maggie and Glenn take another corner, leaning against each other while they talk quietly.

Daryl doesn’t move.

‘S-Ghetti Rings,’ Abraham says as he appears at the boy’s elbow. ‘Good choice. Want me to open one up for you?’

‘I can do it.’ Daryl resists the urge to glare as he grabs hold of the tab and pulls. Instead of opening, however, the tab just breaks off.

The man sits down next to him. ‘Yeah, they did that a lot. Want me to-‘

‘I said I could do it, good Lord,’ Daryl mutters as he grabs his hunting knife and jabs it into the top, cracking it open. Despite his annoyance, a little smile lifts the corner of his mouth. He dips the tip of his knife into the tomato sauce and then licks it clean.

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Maggie scolds from across the room. ‘Be careful!’

‘Sorry,’ the boy mutters. He looks at his fingers, but there’s dirt under his nails and black streaks on his knuckles. Hershel was always telling him to wash his hands before eating or he’d get sick, so he looks around for something else to use instead. They don’t have any spoons.

‘Know the best way to eat that?’ Abraham asks. ‘Just tipping the can back like it’s a shot of whiskey. It’s even better when it’s hot, but this is pretty good too. You ever had it before?’

‘Yeah. My brother used to make it when our dad was out. Said it was fool proof,’ Daryl mutters as he slowly tips the can back to let the tomato sauce drip onto his tongue.

That makes the man huff with soft laughter. ‘Yeah, it was that. Whenever my old lady went out? I would break these out and feed the kids. They used to love it.’

Daryl chews on the rings before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and glancing at the man. ‘You had kids?’

‘Yeah.’ Something tightens in Abraham’s face. He sets his jaw.

Daryl knows better than to ask more. The guy doesn’t have his kids here, and anyone who isn’t here with them is dead. He knows that. A part of him wants to tell the man that he’s sorry, that that’s fucked up, but he stays silent. Instead, he nudges the man’s thigh with his fist and holds out the can to him.

‘Thanks, kid,’ Abraham gives him a smile that isn’t real but he still tried, so Daryl smiles back.

‘It’s not really fool proof, ya know,’ the teenager tells him. ‘Merle managed to fuck it up once. Burned it. Was probably high or something, I don’t remember, but he fucked it up. Took us ages to clean the pan afterwards, was all sticky and stuff, like, black, inside.’ He wrinkles his nose.

Abraham lifts an eyebrow. ‘Your brother was high?’

‘Must have been,’ Daryl snorts. Then he sees that the man isn’t smiling anymore, not even the fake one. ‘What? He remembered to feed me, so it was all good.’

‘Damn, kid. You’re… you’re something else, huh?’

He shrugs as Abraham passes the can back to him.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ the man murmurs, lowering his voice a little, ‘about what you said back at the church. And… there wasn’t a grand plan. The mission was getting Eugene to Washington. I needed Glenn and Maggie in order to do that. You were just…. I knew they would come with you. I was hoping you could convince them to go to Washington.’

Daryl frowns. He dips one finger into the can, smearing some sauce onto his finger until the man bats his hand away, reminding him with a gesture that he needs to tip the can over into his mouth and not use his dirty fingers. ‘Glenn and Maggie wanted to go to Washington all along.’

‘And you didn’t?’

‘Sounded like a bullshit story.’ He’s careful not to look at the man next to him. ‘The whole world has gone to shit. What’s one guy going to do?’

‘Depends on the guy.’

Daryl nods and glances at Eugene.

Abraham smirks a little at them. ‘Maybe we were a little too hopeful.’

‘Or fuckin’ desperate.’

‘That too.’

They look at each other now. Daryl realizes that he doesn’t really know anything about the guy. His name is Abraham. He used to have kids. He thought Eugene could save the world and he was wrong. That is all he knows. 

It’s enough, because the guy still meets his eye and smiles even though the only thing Abraham knows about him is that he kills people.

 

 

 ‘You hungry?’

Aaron looks up and blinks against the dying sunlight that is streaming into the barn. ‘No, thank you,’ he says. ‘But if you could give me some water, that would be great.’

‘Ain’t gonna cut you lose if that’s what you’re thinkin’.’

‘That’s not what I’m thinking,’ Aaron says with a small smile.

‘Good,’ Daryl mutters before he grabs one of the bottles they haven’t dared to open yet. One that had been left on the road by their new friend. He kneels down beside Aaron, unscrews it and then puts the bottle to the man’s lips, gently tipping it over so he can take a small sip.

‘Thank you,’ Aaron nods when Daryl leans back on his heels. Curious blue eyes scan the boy. ‘You’re Daryl, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Thank you, Daryl. How old are you?’

‘Was twelve when it started.’

Aaron closes his eyes for a moment and leans his head back against the pole behind him. He sighs. ‘You’re fourteen.’

‘Yeah. Why?’

The blue eyes open again. ‘There are kids…’ he winces a little, ‘teenagers, I mean, at Alexandria. Not many, but… A couple.’

‘So?’

Aaron huffs out a breath of laughter, ‘ I don’t know, I just thought you’d like that. Friends. They have a bunch of cool stuff. There’s a pool table in one of the garages. One of the houses has a gaming console and-’

‘Yeah, I don’t give a shit.’

A small smile flashes across Aaron’s face before he nods and looks away. ‘Okay. You’re right, of course. None of that matters now. Can I have some more water? Please?’ He looks grateful when Daryl nods and helps him to take another couple of sips. Eventually he leans away, signaling that he’s had enough. ‘Thanks, Daryl.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ the boy mutters before he, too, takes a sip, figuring that the water is safe enough to drink after all.

‘What is Rick to you?’ Aaron asks suddenly. ‘He’s not your dad.’

Daryl lifts an eyebrow. ‘What makes ya say that?’

‘Glenn asked him to look after you.’

‘Maybe I’m Glenn’s, then.’

It’s Aaron’s turn to lift an eyebrow. He laughs when Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘Too young and too Asian, Daryl.’

‘Pssh,’ Daryl scoffs even though a grin starts to creep up on his face. ‘I’m a _Dixon_.’

Aaron frowns and looks around the group.

‘Only one left,’ Daryl says as he stands up. ‘Stop stickin’ your nose in.’

‘It’s kind of my job,’ Aaron smiles at him, a little apologetic.

‘Shitty ass job ya got then.’

‘Well, I mean, it has its ups and downs, I suppose. Downside is definitely Rick’s right cross, but the rest of him seems like-‘

‘Pookie.’ Daryl looks over his shoulder at Carol, who has woken up. She’s slowly walking over, a hand on her knife. ‘Why don’t you go and get some sleep? I’ll watch him for now.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl nods because he’s pretty tired. He walks over to the spot she’s just vacated, ready to curl up next to Tyreese.

‘Daryl?’ Aaron leans forwards to catch his eye. He smiles. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

Carol steps between them, breaking their eye contact. ‘Don’t talk to him,’ she says coldly. ‘Daryl. Get some sleep. Now, please.’

 

 

He’s sitting at the very back of the RV, knees drawn to his chest while he chews on the nail of his thumb. It’s dark outside, about an hour after sundown, just like Rick promised. Soon they will turn onto Route 23. Nobody knows where they will go from there.

When he leans to the side and pushes the small curtains away from the window, he can see glimpses of the car in front of them. For once, he’s kind of glad that he’s not with Glenn right now. The Korean knows him far too well. He’d have seen the nervous tick returning, how Daryl gnaws on his fingers until they’re almost bleeding.

He realizes too late that he’s probably an open book to most of the people in the RV right now.

There’s Beth who keeps the conversation with Carl going just so the other boy won’t go to the back and try to talk to him instead.

There’s Carol, who sits next to him in silence, ready to talk when he finally makes up his mind but only offering silent support until then.

Tyreese shoots him a comforting smile whenever their eyes meet.

Eventually it’s Maggie who walks over and takes his hand, drawing his fingers away from his mouth.

‘Don’t,’ she smiles. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘They’ll be okay.’

‘Yeah.’

‘ _We_ will be okay.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

She sits down next to him. It prevents him from looking outside every fifteen seconds. ‘When we get there,’ she says, ‘and we have settled in, I’m going to cut your hair.’

He glances at her. ‘Why?’

‘It’s getting long. I miss seeing your eyes. You used to wear Glenn’s cap to keep it out of your face, where did that go?’

‘Terminus,’ he mutters because it had been taken from him along with his parent’s wedding bands. He reaches inside his shirt to pull the necklace out, fingering the rings nervously. When he doesn’t get a response, he glances at her again, seeing the sadness that slowly creeping into her eyes. ‘Don’t give a shit,’ he assures her. ‘You can cut it, I don’t care. Think you’re better at it than Merle, anyway.’

‘Merle used to cut your hair?’

‘Hmm. Was fuckin’ expensive to get a haircut, right? So Merle would just do it on our lawn. Didn’t want hair everywhere in the trailer or something. Was always so fucking stupid ‘cause he’d never do it straight, was always crooked as fuck. Think he did it on purpose. Next day at school? Hmm. Everyone would laugh.’

‘Kids are mean like that.’

‘Kids? Was fuckin’ Merle! Hell, I’d laugh my ass of if I’d seen anyone with my damn haircut at school.’

Maggie laughs softly.

‘Anyway, there was a girl down the block. She was learning to be, like, someone who cuts hair, right?’

‘A hairdresser,’ Maggie says. ‘Or stylist.’

‘Yeah, that,’ Daryl nods. ‘She’d fix it up sometimes. Think she were sweet on Merle, never charged me nothing.’

‘Maybe she just wanted to help.’

Daryl snorts before he realizes that she thought that was a serious option. ‘Yeah, _right_.’

‘I once cut my own hair,’ Maggie tells him. ‘A girl in one of the pop groups I liked had cut her hair short, so I wanted that, too. I had this beautiful long hair and I just,’ she snips her fingers, ‘cut it all off. It looked _awful_.’

Daryl smiles at her, ‘yeah? What did Hershel say?’

‘I was too scared to go downstairs,’ Maggie laughs, ‘so I called one of my best friends and snuck out of the house. Her mom used to cut her hair all the time and she fixed it for me. Well, she made it _better_ , anyway.’

‘And your dad was cool with it?’

She gives him a pointed look. ‘You met my dad,’ she tells him. ‘What do you think?’

‘Grounded for life,’ he leers back.

‘Grounded for life and then some,’ Maggie nods.

He laughs. When she gets up to check on Beth, he forgets to keep checking the window.

 

 

‘ _Hold on!_ ’ Rosita screams as the first walkers slam against the sides of the RV.

‘Get us out of here,’ Abraham screams as he makes his way to the steering wheel. ‘Turn it around!’

‘But-!’

‘We’ll find them! They drove us into a fucking herd! Their car will make it through, this thing won’t! _Turn it around_!’

 

 

Minutes later, they see the flare go up.

Carl leans over Abraham, who is sitting in the passenger’s seat now. His face is illuminated by the red glow of the light in the sky. ‘That’s my dad,’ he says with a small smile.

Abraham pushes him back into his seat, ‘why would he send up a flare? He could have just circled back, we haven’t gone off the damn road.’

‘Maybe something happened to the car,’ Maggie says worriedly. ‘Maybe they couldn’t get out.’

‘It’s way over there!’ Abraham argues, ‘if they crashed the car, it would be-‘

‘It’s my dad,’ Carl argues fiercely. ‘Let’s go,’ he says to Rosita. ‘Look,’ he snaps when Abraham starts to object, ‘either he’s there and everything is fine, or he’s there and needs our help, Okay? So we’re going.’

 

 

Except it’s not Rick.

At first, they don’t find anyone. There’s a small town there, just a couple of houses and warehouses, really. A water tower at the edge of it all. Carl swears he saw the flare go up in that area. Rosita parks the RV in an alley, out of sight and the group splits up to look for the rest of their family.

Daryl joins Maggie, Abraham, Rosita and Tara while the rest clears one of the buildings so they have a place to stay for the rest of the night. Abraham leads the way, clearing street after street but never catching sight of the white car, or Rick, Glenn and Michonne.

It’s when Abraham crosses the street to check the next block that Daryl spots something strange. Down the street, there’s a car. A black one, not the one they’re looking for, but there are a bunch of walkers gathered around it. Some are on their knees, trying to reach something underneath it. Most claw mindlessly at the windows.

‘Hold up,’ Daryl whispers as he points down the road. He watches how one of the walkers wriggles under the car, clothes snagging on the metal as he crawls forwards.

He’s stopped by a bullet.

Daryl is running before he can even process what has happened. All he knows is that someone is beneath that car, trapped there and that someone needs their help. It could be one of them. It could be Glenn, trapped there.

He doesn’t bother to stop and load his bow. He just runs up to the car, jumps onto the hood and slashes the first walker across the face with his large hunting knife. It goes down immediately. Hands reach for him now, trying to grab hold of his limbs and drag him down, but he ducks out of reach. Another slash, another walker that goes down.

‘Daryl!’ Maggie screams.

Rosita is quickest of them all. She reaches him first, slamming a walkers head into the edge of the roof of the car and burying her knife into the skull of the next one.

Abraham and Daryl take care of the other ones.

‘Are you crazy!’ Maggie hisses when she reaches the car but Daryl doesn’t listen to her. He drops to his knees, to his hands and peers under the car. ‘ _Glenn_?’

It’s not Glenn.

It’s not Rick either. Or Michonne.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Daryl asks.

‘Help,’ the man whimpers, stretching out an arm towards him. ‘Please help. Something is wrong with my ankle, I can’t move.’

The boy is shoved aside by Abraham, who sticks a gun in the guy’s face. ‘Your gun.’ Seconds later, Abraham throws a gun at Rosita before grabbing the man’s hand, dragging him out from under the car. Then he puts a hand on the man’s throat. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m with Aaron!’ the man pants. ‘I’m with Aaron. My name is Eric. Please.’

‘You’re the one guy,’ Abraham says, a little stunned.

Eric squeezes his eyes shut in pain but still manages to laugh, ‘yes, I’m the one guy.’

Maggie kneels down next to him and carefully reaches for his ankle, ‘what happened?’

‘A couple of roamers pushed a tire onto my leg. I was trying to find – _auch_! – I was trying to make myself useful while waiting for Aaron. I’ll never make myself useful again.’

‘It’s broken.’ She looks up at Abraham. ‘Help him up.’

Abraham grunts and easily helps the other man to his feet. He steadies him when Eric wobbles a bit now that he can’t put any pressure on his left ankle.

The man is slight, especially when he’s standing next to Abraham. A narrow face with ears that stick out a little, short hair and rosy cheeks. His eyes twinkle despite the pain he must be in. He puts his arm around Abraham’s broad shoulders, leaning on him. Then he meets everyone’s eyes, very deliberately. ‘Thank you, Abraham. Maggie. Tara and Rosita. And thank you, Daryl. That was… that was very brave of you.’

‘And stupid,’ Abraham bites out.

‘Never again, punk,’ Rosita scoffs when she clips him over the back of his head.

‘Why did Michonne even give you that bow if you’re not even going to use it,’ Maggie asks him, hands on her hips and a disapproving frown masking her smile.

 

 

He sits on one of the cars and stares up at the sky.

He whistles.

 

 

It takes a long time before Rick replies with a familiar tune that means they’re coming home.

 

 

Daryl knocks on the door and there’s a rushed reunion. Carl flying into Rick’s arms, saying that Judith is fine. Maggie running over to Glenn, telling him that Daryl is okay. Carol and Michonne who embrace fiercely.

Aaron is with them. He seems frantic as he pushes past several of their family members. ‘Eric?’ he shouts. ‘Eric!’

He must have gotten an answer because he rushes into the building seconds later.

‘Dare,’ Glenn hugs him close, breathing him in for a second. ‘Let’s get inside.’

 

 

Inside, Daryl hitches his bow higher onto his shoulder and heads over to the room at the back while the rest catches up. Rick is kissing Judith’s forehead while Glenn embraces Beth and nobody is paying any mind to what the two men are up to in the back. There’s no one on guard duty.

It’s when he almost rounds the corner, when he just catches sight of Aaron’s back, hunched from where he’s leaning over his friend, that he stops dead in his tracks.

‘This is your fault, you know?’ Eric says.

Aaron chuckles as he shifts to sit more comfortably. ‘Is that so?’

‘Because I love you.’

Daryl frowns. Something cold grows in the pit of his stomach.

‘And because when I’m worried, I do stupid things,’ Eric continuous. ‘and when I do stupid things, I wind up underneath a rust bucket surrounded by roamers who roll a rear passenger tire onto my left ankle. And I have to be saved by sixteen year old boys.’

‘Daryl?’ Aaron asks.

‘Yes. I like him, too.’

‘He’s fourteen.’

‘Jesus,’ Eric breathes.

‘Yeah.’

There’s a beat of silence.

‘Hey,’ Eric pipes up, a little more cheerful than before. ‘something good came out of today-‘

Daryl doesn’t care about the rest. He doesn’t understand it either, something about license plates and Aaron losing the car. It doesn’t matter. The RV out front runs, and there’s more than enough room for all of them.

A hand snakes over his shoulder, squeezes it. Rick steps up behind Daryl, runs a hand through the boys hair before kissing his temple absent-mindedly as he watches the two men on the ground. ‘You okay?’ he asks softly.

‘Fine.’

‘Good,’ Rick rumbles before walking over to Aaron and his friend.

 

 

That’s what Daryl decides to believe, anyway. That they’re friends, Aaron and Eric. Rick loves Glenn, after all.

That’s fine.

 

 

It’s only later that he realizes it’s not the same. They’re not _friends_.

Aaron faces Rick again, calm and collected, saying that the only way the cop is keeping him away from being with Eric right now, is by shooting him.

And Daryl knows that tone, that look. He glances at Glenn and Maggie and knows that it’s the same thing.

He frowns again and feels a little uncomfortable. The confrontation dies down thanks to Glenn’s interference and Aaron walks away to be with his… his boyfriend, Daryl guesses.

Aaron is gay, he realizes.

And that’s wrong. Unnatural. He frowns a little as he tries to recall what his dad had told him about those kinds of people. It’s just a hazy memory now, something mentioned in the passing, something he once caught in the bar when the men had had too much to drink already and someone mentioned how pretty Daryl was. The leers to Will that he better not be raising a fairy, something like that.

He starts to feel a little nervous.

Nobody else is reacting. Everyone just goes to find a place to sleep or they head out for their watch duties.

For a second, he’s even scared that he’s mixing things up. But gay means two men together, in _that_ way, and – or – maybe it was two women together, because that’s wrong too, and – no, he’s pretty sure… It doesn’t matter what it’s called, anyway.

It’s _wrong_. He knows that.

‘Daryl,’ Glenn calls softly from the other side of the room. ‘Come on. Get some sleep.’

Daryl looks at his friend, who still isn’t responding to the revelation.

A sinking feeling starts to bloom in his chest. Maybe… He glances at Michonne, who is holding Judith. Maybe his dad had been wrong about that, too. After all, he’d always called people like Michonne niggers and useless behind their backs and Daryl doesn’t really know what that word means, just that it’s something bad.

And Michonne can’t be that.

He bites on his lip and walks over to Glenn. Instead of settling down, he wobbles on the balls of his feet.

‘Yes?’ Glenn asks as he looks up at the boy, because it’s a sure sign that Daryl wants to talk about something he’s not sure how to talk about.

Daryl glances around, looks anywhere but at his friend. ‘Aaron and Eric, they’re – you know.’

‘We don’t have to keep an eye on them, Dare. They won’t hurt us.’

‘Yeah – no, I mean…’ He takes a deep breath. ‘They’re, like, together, right?’

Glenn looks confused. ‘Yes…?’

‘I don’t mean in the room,’ Daryl snaps.

‘Oh!’ Glenn laughs a little, rubbing the back of his head. ‘Then; yeah, I guess so.’

‘And that’s…’ Daryl trails off, looking at his friend.

‘That is….’ Glenn echoes, looking sheepish now.

‘That is _fine_ ,’ Maggie cuts in. She’s trying to hide her laughter behind her scarf. ‘They obviously care a lot about each other, right Daryl? That’s a good thing.’

It takes Glenn a couple of seconds to catch on. His eyes grow a little wide at first, then he hurriedly sits up. ‘That’s _totally_ fine!’ He winces a little at his own fake-enthusiasm. ‘I mean – it doesn’t change anything about them, right? It’s just who they are. And yeah – yeah, they obviously care a lot about each other, so that’s good.’

Daryl nods slowly, eyeing the Korean a little warily. ‘Sure?’

‘Very sure,’ Glenn nods. ‘Besides, Tara’s cool, right?’

Daryl frowns. ‘What does she got to do with it?’

Maggie punches Glenn’s shoulder. ‘Nice one! One hurdle at the time, okay? Nothing,’ she laughs at Daryl. ‘He’s just being stupid. Come on, settle down.’ She pats the empty spot next to her.

‘Whatever.’

 

 

 


	53. Questions

 

* * *

 

 

 

Dawn breaks and it doesn’t take Rick long to order everyone into the RV and car. Aaron has drawn the route to Alexandria on a map so he can stay with Eric in the RV. The man is asleep most of the time, only waking up due to pain or thirst and when Tyreese carried him onto the vehicle. Aaron never leaves his side.

Daryl has to remind himself that it is fine.

When Aaron takes Eric hand and rubs a finger over the knuckles absent-mindedly. That’s fine.

When he lifts the hand and kisses the back of it. That’s fine.

When Eric wakes up in a haze of pain, groaning Aaron’s name, seeking out the comfort of his boyfriend. That’s fine.

When Aaron leans over to kiss Eric, Daryl picks another seat on the RV so he’s sitting with his back to the two men.

He can’t help but feel uncomfortable. It’s not that they’re kissing, of course. He lives with Glenn and Maggie, he’s gotten used to finding them with locked lips every now and then. Quick pecks in the passing and languid kisses before one of them slinks away for their guard duty. That doesn’t bother him. There’s comfort there even, in knowing that they are doing okay despite everything around them.

It’s that they’re both men. He’s never seen that. And he’s never met anyone who’s gay before.

He knows what it means through gossip, leers and that run-down bar were Merle used to hang. He knows that it’s something bad because Merle would push men to their knees in front of him, threatening with ‘some lovin’ from ole Merle’ until the men would either beg forgiveness or show enough of a spine to make it end in a bar fight after all. It’s an insult, too, because his dad would call that guy from the liquor shop a faggot when Daryl came back empty handed because he wasn’t old enough to buy the liquor his dad had asked for. One of his teacher was a fairy for asking Daryl if he wanted to join an after-school art program.

But he also knows that it might just be him or, rather, people like him, who think like that. Once, back when they still hadn’t found the prison yet, he’d accidentally referred to T-dog as ‘that nigger’ when the man had failed to get a campfire going and Carol had jostled him so hard his teeth had rattled inside his skull.

At the prison, he’d gotten into a fight with one of the guys of Woodbury and had to be dragged away by Rick. When he’d screamed that it had all been that faggot’s fault, Rick had told him to never use that word again and stay in his cell until the cop was ready to deal with him. He hadn’t stayed, of course. And later that night Shane had found him up on the roof of the building and had dragged him down, handing him to Rick without a word.

He knows he thinks differently about some things. He used to pride himself on the fact that the Dixon’s had their own ways. Of teaching things, of seeing the world. It didn’t used to matter because they’d been surrounded by people who thought exactly the same. Hell, most his friends used to sport some bruises from time to time, though never quite as dark as Daryl’s had been, and none of them had scarred backs but that didn’t matter. They still bonded over getting smacked around by their parents and sniggered at the pussies who’d be grounded instead.

Everyone in the bar knew the guy who ran the local bakery, saying how the man never skipped a day and was always up at sunrise, working hard every single day. That they knew his kids, smart ones who were polite and funny, that his wife was hot as sin and kind, too. That the man had built his family a good home from the sweat of his back, the highest praise his dad and his friends were capable of. They still called him _that nigger from down the road_ , though.

Now he’s the only one who seems to think those things anymore. And the rest calls him trash behind his back.

Not his family, of course. They’ve never called him that unless he was refusing to listen and reason, stubbornly clinging to the lessons branded onto his back. It were mostly the people of Woodbury. The ones not used to his harsh words, flaring temper and cutting looks. The ones who didn’t even know to search for the hesitance and uncertainty behind that façade.

He’s not sure what to think now. He knows those words were just that; words, but he also knows that Merle and his friends had laughed and beaten someone up when they thought he had an eye on another guy, so it’s not _just_ words.

But still, Glenn and Maggie said it was fine.

It doesn’t _feel_ fine, though.

Daryl glances over his shoulder again to see that Aaron is still holding Eric’s hand, even though he’s now just staring at a spot on the ground.

It doesn’t feel wrong either.

When he sees Aaron kissing his boyfriend, he doesn’t feel that sickness in his stomach as when he’d first seen his dad kiss someone who hadn’t been his mother. That had been unnatural and wrong, to him. The touches between them are loving and don’t remind him of Merle and his girlfriend, so vicious and angry when they were both too high to pretend to love each other.

He’s never met anyone like them, but he’s learned that titles don’t matter anymore. His dad had always despised cops, after all. Shane had always been a pig to him, scum best left outside the gates to rot, only tolerating him because Daryl had grown too fond to let go.

And now another cop tries to lead him to safe zone, tries to be a part of his family again despite their bad first impressions of each other.

Maybe the words don’t matter anymore. Maybe none of it matters anymore.

Aaron and Eric survived. That is all.

He shouldn’t care about who they share their beds with. He hadn’t cared when Tyreese had shacked up with Karen, or Sasha and Bob got together, hell, he never gave a damn about who Beth decided to date either. And he doesn’t even know these guys.

He scoffs.

Beth, who is sitting across from him at the table, raises a questioning eyebrow.

He blushes a bit because he’d been too lost in his own thoughts to remember where he was for a second. ‘Mind your own damn business,’ he mutters.

Beth rolls her eyes and looks out of the window. ‘Don’t hurt yourself thinking so much. It’s not your thing.’

He kicks her foot.

She flips him off.

 

 

Daryl fidgets a bit as he waits for Maggie to go through the medicine cabinet in the RV. It’s time for another dose of painkillers and she’d asked him to give it to Aaron. He’s not sure why she won’t do it herself, the man is sitting at the back of the trailer, it would even be enough to just call him over so he can get it himself, but he won’t argue when she asks him to do a chore. She hardly ever asks for anything.

‘This is it,’ Maggie says as she inspects the label. ‘He’ll know the dose.’

‘Okay,’ he takes the small bottle from her.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asks before giving him a bottle of water as well. ‘Do you want to talk about something?’

‘About what?’

‘I don’t know. About this place we’re going or… I don’t know. Anything, really.’

He shakes his head. ‘Nah. Not really.’

That makes her smile. ‘Okay. Just letting you know I’m here if you do want to talk. Go on,’ she nudges him towards the back of the RV. ‘Give those to Aaron now.’

The two strangers are in the small bedroom. Everything, the walls and the cabinets, seem to be made of wood and it all reminds Daryl a bit of the cabin they used to have back home, or the cabin he’d burned down with Beth. Eric is asleep on the bed, head resting on a fluffy pillow and the blanket draped over his frame. His face is turned away, so Daryl just sees the back of his head and edge of an ear.

Aaron is watching over him. The man seems worried, brow creased a little a he plucks at his fingernails. He looks up when Daryl appears in the doorway.

The boy shakes the bottle with the pills.

‘Oh,’ Aaron glances at Eric before focusing on the bottles. ‘I know it’s time for another dose, but I want to let him sleep until we get home.’

‘Maggie said they’re for you,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Said ya got hurt.’

Aaron looks down at his wrists, where deep marks are visible. Blood-red and probably hurting something fierce. He looks up again and smiles, ‘yeah. Thank you, Daryl.’

Once, when Shane and Rick had caught him with chocolate-stained fingers, they had cuffed him to a desk while they interrogated Carl. Just a playful charade, everyone knew that Michonne was sneaking them candy every chance she got, but while they sometimes slipped Beth some, they hardly ever shared with Rick and Shane. The cops did not approve of that.

So Shane had leaned over the desk, demanding from Carl to know his secrets, how he’d managed to charm Michonne like that, and Rick had stood behind Daryl, threatening to tickle to the boy to death if his friend did not talk.

Carl didn’t talk.

And Rick had descended on him with clever fingers on his ribs.

He’d fought against the cuffs. The marks hadn’t been as deep as Aaron’s are, but they’d still hurt.

Rick had felt guilty for weeks.

Shane had laughed it off only when Daryl started using the wounds as leverage for more chocolate and privileges.

‘Something you want to ask, Daryl?’

Only now does he realize he’s been standing there for a couple of minutes, not saying anything. Aaron is looking at him with slightly raised eyebrows, but there’s amusement in his eyes rather than disapproval. A gentle smile softens his features.

‘Yeah, I just – ‘ Daryl crosses his arms in front of his chest and plasters a scowl back onto his face. ‘Ya said… Ya said something about auditionin’. What’s that about?’

‘Oh, right. We interview everyone before they enter our community. It’s just our standard procedure. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I ain’t worried,’ Daryl snaps back automatically. ‘We do that, too.’

‘The three questions?’ Aaron asks. He smiles when Daryl nods. ‘Our interviews tend to be a bit longer than that.’

‘Why?’ The three questions have been made up by Rick, Shane and Hershel. They have served them well enough. How many walkers. How many people. Why. That’s all that matters anymore. It’s the easiest way to figure out who the bad people are. They’re bad if they know exactly how many walkers they’ve killed. It’s bad if they can’t remember how many people. The reason always matters.

Daryl can’t remember how many walkers he’s killed now.

He’s not so sure about the number of people anymore either.

The reason matters. Sometimes he’d fired blindly, not sure whether he’d hit anyone at all. He doesn’t know how many people had been inside the tank, only that one of them came out. He has a rough estimate.

But he’s still glad he won’t have to answer their own questions.

‘We like to get to know the people who come to live with us,’ Aaron explains, his voice low as to not disturb Eric. ‘Where you’ve been. What you’ve done since the outbreak. What you did before.’

‘Before? Why does that matter?’

‘Maybe people have skills we can use in our community. We always need skilled people. People who can deal with the power grit, who can build things, mechanics. Things like that.’

‘What if you ain’t none of those things?’

Aaron shifts in his seat so he’s facing the boy properly. ‘You all survived. And everyone is good at something. Really, I wouldn’t worry about your friends, Daryl. They seem like good people.’

‘They ain’t my _friends_.’

The man leans back, eyebrows now even higher. ‘I thought you-‘

‘They’re my blood. Kin.’

Understanding dawns on Aaron’s face. He nods gravely. ‘Of course, Daryl. I understand.’

Daryl nods and leans against the doorframe. He scuffs his boot, kicking one against the other. ‘Think they’re gonna interview me? And Carl?’

‘I think so, yes,’ Aaron nods. ‘Does that make you nervous?’

‘No. Just doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘I can ask if someone is allowed to be there with you. Like Glenn, or Rick? If that makes you more comfortable.’

‘Said it didn’t make me nervous,’ he snaps back.

‘Okay,’ Aaron raises his hands in surrender. The bottle with the pills rattles softly. It looks like he wants to say something else but changes his mind. The shoulders sag as he sighs. ‘Thank you for the painkillers.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Daryl mutters before he slinks back to the front to join the little group at the table. With a grunt, he climbs over Tara to sit next to her in the seat near the window. The girl looks a bit perplexed at the sudden closeness of the boy, laughing it off when he settles down with a scowl on his face.

‘Gonna help me or what?’ she asks.

Daryl shrugs and shifts closer again, resting his head on her shoulder so he can see the cards she’s holding. ‘You’re fucked,’ he murmurs.

‘Not in a long time.’

There’s a beat of silence.

‘That is an extremely inappropriate conversation topic,’ Eugene says.

Daryl, however, bursts out laughing. He stomps Tara’s shoulder before leaning against her again. ‘You’re worse than Merle. Damn, girl. Keep that to yourself. Good lord, _gross_.’

‘What?’ Tara laughs. ‘It would be gross if I told you when I was-‘

‘Stop, stop, stop!’ Daryl moans as he covers his ears. ‘Carol, make her stop!’

Carol just laughs and shakes her head. ‘Sorry, Pookie, no help here. You’re adorable when you’re blushing.’

‘ _Pookie_?’ Tara asks in a voice that makes it sound like it’s the best thing she’s heard all year. ‘That is too cute. I’m using that. That is your name now.’

‘No!

But Tara is already leaning over to offer Carol a fist bump and the deal is sealed.

 

 

The battery of the RV dies.

Glenn fixes it because Dale had taught him how to.

 

 

When the RV comes back to life, Rick says something to Michonne and starts to head into the woods. Daryl climbs down from where he’d been keeping watch and runs after him.

‘Rick!’ He hisses, weaving between the trees and still not making a sound. ‘Are you – Can I talk to you?’

The cop looks a little surprised but he nods. ‘I was just taking a moment, gather my thoughts before we go in there,’ he says with a little motion to his head. ‘Walk with me.’

Daryl follows him. The soft light of the morning filters through the trees. The woods are not dense enough for any serious wildlife so he’s not keeping an eye out for any tracks of deer or boars. Out in the distance, he can see the outline of a house, the start of civilization which had scared all the game deeper into the forest. Daryl wonders how long it will take the animals to realize that the humans have gone. How long it will take for nature to reclaim its land.

The house is the beginning of a small town. It stretches for a couple of miles according to Aaron. On the other side is Alexandria.

‘They’re going to interview us when we get there.’

Rick slows his pace just a fraction so Daryl doesn’t have to hurry to match his bigger steps. ‘Yes,’ he says before glancing at the boy. ‘You’re worried about what they’re going to ask.’

‘What I should answers, more,’ Daryl mutters as he wipes his nose on the back of his hand.

‘You know, Carl asked me that before we got to Terminus. _How do you say that_ ,’ Rick recalls his son asking. ‘I told him to just… I told him to tell the truth about who we are.’

‘You still believe that? That that’s the right thing to do?’

‘I do.’ Rick stops walking. He looks at his brother’s boy. ‘What we have done? We did it to survive.’

‘Yeah, I know, but…’

‘Hey,’ Rick ducks his head a little so he can catch Daryl’s eye. ‘You did nothing wrong. It might… It might _feel_ wrong, sometimes, but you did it to protect your family. Yourself. You did what you had to do.’

‘It don’t feel wrong,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Some might not take too kindly, is all. Aaron… I think he knows, though. I think he knows about me.’ His fingers go white on the band of his crossbow.

Rick sinks to one knee. A warm hand comes up to cup the boy’s cheek. It forces his gaze up, chin higher and prouder. ‘What does he know about you, Dare?’ Rick asks with a small smile. ‘He was watching us for a while before the storm hit. What do you think he saw, hmm? He saw a fourteen year old boy trying to provide for his family, a kid who took comfort from the ones he loves. A boy who still managed to make his brother smile despite the circumstances. That is what he saw. That is who he thinks he knows.’

‘ _I killed people_.’ Daryl stares at Rick, fear making him a little sick. ‘ _And I ain’t sorry_.’

‘You did what you had to do,’ the cop repeats.

‘But what if they’re going to ask? What if I fuck it all up for us?’

‘Daryl,’ Rick sighs, a small smile gracing his weathered face. ‘We’ve all done things. And if they turn away a brave, tough, chocolate-stealing fourteen year old kid, then I don’t want my family staying there.’

Daryl shoves his shoulder a little, ‘stop. What if it’s a good place? For Ass kicker. Carl, too. What if it’s real and I’m-‘

‘It’s _us_ ,’ Rick cuts in. ‘All of us, or nobody. Do you seriously think we would let them kick you out? Bye Daryl, we had some good times but now you gotta go?’

‘You sent Carol away.’

Rick closes his eyes for a second. ‘That was – that wasn’t even remotely the same, Daryl, you know that.’

‘If they don’t let us in, we’re gonna die and it would be on me so it _is_ the same-‘

‘Stop, _stop_ ,’ Rick cuts in again. ‘You’re nervous. You’re scared, I get that. No, don’t interrupt. It’s okay to feel like that. _I_ am nervous. I am scared, too. But we have to give this a shot, we have to know what this place is. And we won’t know until we know. Maybe it’s real,’ the cop nods. ‘Maybe everything Aaron told us is true and there’s a community there with steel walls and enough people to guard them. We’ll look around. We’ll see what there is to see. And then we will decide. _We_ will decide.’

‘But what if we decide _yes_ and they still say _no_?’

‘Then we were wrong the first time and they aren’t worth it to protect.’ Rick moves his hand from the boy’s cheek to the back of his beck, hooking him closer until their foreheads rest against each other’s. ‘We’re going to do this together. I need you, Daryl.’

‘I’m here,’ Daryl breathes, leaning against the man.

‘It’s okay to be scared.’

The boy loops his arms around the cop’s neck and hugs him.

‘Just tell them whatever you want them to know, or tell none of it. It doesn’t matter,’ Rick murmurs into his neck. ‘You did what you had to do.’

 

 

Five minutes later, Rick hides a gun in a pile of trash near the house.

 

 

An hour later, the gates of Alexandria open.

 

 

They want to take their weapons.

‘If we were gonna use them, we would have started already,’ Rick challenges, facing a new guy at the gates. His name is Nicholas and he seems pretty intimidated by Rick, even though their leader has Judith on his arm. Dressed in pink and wriggling about, she causes Aaron to smile at Rick even when Nicholas takes a step back.

‘Let them talk to Deanna first,’ Aaron says to his friend.

‘Who’s Deanna?’ Abraham demands to know.

‘She knows everything you’d want to know about this place. Rick, why don’t you start?’

Some close to fear coils in Daryl’s stomach as he realizes that the interviews are starting right now. There’s a possum dangling from his belt. He’d caught them dinner just when the gates opened. The hunting knife gleams in the sunlight. When he glances at the rest of their family, he’s glad to see that they don’t look as clean-cut either.

‘Sasha.’

The woman turns to follow Rick’s gaze. She raises her rifle and takes a walker out with an expert shot.

‘It’s a good thing we’re here,’ Rick rumbles as he follows Aaron down the road, into the town. ‘What about the kids?’

‘What about them?’ Aaron slows his pace so they’re walking next to each other.

‘The interviews.’

‘Ah,’ Aaron looks over his shoulder at Daryl, who glares back and ducks behind Abraham to vanish from sight. The burly man looks amused when the boy dances around him but glares at the scout when he figures out they’re being watched. ‘Deanna will want to speak with Carl and Daryl, too. I’ve told Daryl that there can be someone with him in the room. With Carl, too, of course.’

Rick nods.

Aaron glances at him. ‘Is it going to be a problem?’

‘No,’ Rick says. He looks at the large houses that line the wide road. The sprawling gardens, the flowerbeds, the toys scattered around the guard post. He eyes the picket fences, the pond around which a couple of children chase each other, the men who are seemingly on guard duty on top of the wall but are talking to each other with their backs to the outside world. ‘It’s not going to be a problem,’ Rick assures the scout. ‘They have nothing to hide.’

 

 

_‘Daryl?’_

_Daryl forces himself to look up and meet the man’s eye. They’re sitting in his classroom. He’s still behind his own desk, nails scratching at the wood, erasing a drawing he’d made on it during biology earlier today. The blue ink stains his fingertips._

_The man’s name is David and he’s really nice. Only twenty-six years old, one of the youngest teachers they have at the school, with blond hair and pale blue eyes. Some days it looks like he forgot to shave, but not today. He smiles and leans forward, elbows on his knees, ‘your teacher wanted me to talk to you for a bit. Is everything okay?’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘Good,’ David says, voice light and airy. ‘How was school today?’_

_Daryl shrugs._

_‘Lots of homework?’_

_‘Hmm-hmm.’_

_David nods his understanding and leans back in his chair. He drums his fingers on his thigh. ‘Do you have something fun planned for the weekend, Daryl?’_

_Daryl shifts so he can sit on his hands to stop himself from fidgeting so much. He swings his legs instead, kicking the legs of his own chair every couple of seconds. ‘Dad’s going to take me campin’.’_

_‘Yeah?’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘Do you like going on camping trips with your dad?’_

_‘Yeah.’_

_David nods and scratches at his chin for a second. ‘That’s good. Where are you guys going? Staying local or…?’_

_Daryl glances at the clock before answering. ‘Yeah, near the lake, I guess.’_

_‘Am I making you late for something?’ When Daryl frowns a little, David looks at the clock that’s above the door. ‘You keep checking the time.’_

_‘My brother is comin’ to pick me up. He’s waitin’.’_

_‘I know,’ David says. ‘I spoke to him, he doesn’t mind waiting. He’s in the teacher’s lounge. They have coffee there,’ the man smiles when Daryl frowns again. ‘Your brother is a lot older, right?’_

_‘So?’_

_‘Just making conversation, Daryl.’_

_‘Why?’_

_‘It’s part of my job,’ David smirks. He runs a hand through his messy hair. After a beat of silence, the smirk fades into something more serious. He looks a little older when he leans forward again. ‘You know you can talk to me, right? It’s confidential, so no-one else will know what we talk about. You’re safe here.’_

_Daryl glances at the door. It’s open. Most of the other students have left already, but he can hear the teachers’ voices from other classrooms as they discuss the day they’ve had._

_‘Do you want me to close the door? I like to leave it open when I’m alone with a student, but we can close it if it makes you more comfortable.’_

_‘Don’t care,’ Daryl mutters. He knows that David is one of the teachers at school who counsels students with problems. He knows his friend, Kevin, had once talked to the guy when his parents divorced._

_‘Daryl,’ David says with a gentle smile.  ‘Your teacher is worried about you.’_

_The boy scowls at his knees._

_‘She says you’re late a lot. You don’t contribute as much in class as you used to do. You’ve been getting into fights.’_

_‘Yeah that weren’t on me. Asshole had it comin’.’_

_‘Language,’ David says immediately._

_Daryl rolls his eyes_

_‘You’re talking back a lot, too. She said you’ve become disrespectful.’_

_‘Just because she – she’s ain’t always right, though! What does_ she _know? Nothing.’_

_‘What does she know about what she’s teaching?’ David asks. ‘Or what does she know about you?’_

_Daryl glares at him._

_‘We don’t know anything if you won’t tell us. And it’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me. You can talk to anyone of the staff, you know that. You like Mr. Benton, right? He says you’re one of his top students. That drawing you made for that last project is displayed on the second floor, did you see it?’_

_Daryl nods._

_‘You could talk to him, if that would make you more comfortable.’_

_‘I got nothing to say.’_

_David leans forward, eyes a little narrow now. ‘Is everything okay at home, Daryl? You can tell me anything, I won’t tell anyone else. Maybe I can help.’_

_Panic flares in his chest. ‘I’m done talkin’,’ he snaps. ‘I want to go home.’_

_Disappointment flickers over the teacher’s face but he leans back in his chair immediately. ‘Of course. You’re always free to go, Daryl. I’m not keeping you here.’_

_He’s out of his seat and out of the room before the man can even wish him a fun time on his camping trip._

‘Daryl?’

Daryl forces himself to look up and meet the woman’s eye. They’re sitting in her living room. There is a camera standing behind the couch she’s sitting on, pointed right at him. A little red light tells him that she’s already pressed record. She’d asked for his permission. It was one of those questions that wouldn’t allow a negative answer, so he’d agreed to let her film him.

He’s sitting in a stuffed armchair. Slouches a bit, sinking into the soft fabric and planting his feet firmly on the ground so he won’t fidget as much. Dark hair falls into his face, some strands nearly touch the tip of his nose. He watches her like a hawk.

The crossbow is on the ground near his feet.

The possum, too.

He glances at the bookcase on his right.

‘Do you like to read, Daryl?’

The question comes quick, almost too eager. They’ve been sitting across from each other for a long time now, ever since the woman had introduced herself as Deanna Monroe. Daryl hadn’t answered because, when Aaron had led him into the room, the scout had already told the woman his name.

‘No,’ he says because he doesn’t.

Something flickers over the woman’s face. Disappointment. She’d probably hoped the question was an in for her.

He’ll allow it, just this once, because he wants to get out of here and he doubts she’ll let him go if he doesn’t give her _something_.

‘I like comics though,’ he mutters, rubbing his fingers over his lower lip. He’s careful not to bite his nails and give her a clue about how nervous he actually is. Instead he slouches, looks bored and doesn’t try to drag his crossbow closer with the heel of his foot.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Deanna asks with a bright smile. ‘My boys used to like comics, too, when they were about your age. You know what I liked to do?’

‘No.’

‘I used to play a lot of poker,’ the smile fades into something more serious. ‘I’m exceptionally good at reading people.’

Daryl meets her eye. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards.

She’s not the first to be sitting across from him, wanting to know something he doesn’t want to tell.

She’s not the first to try.

‘That right?’ He asks.

He brushes the hair out of his face and sits up. The flannel shirt he’s wearing gapes a bit, the top buttons not done up due to the heat outside. A part of his chest is showing. The two necklaces, twined together, the rings and the number, the only jewelry he wears. He knows his clothes are dirty, but his boots and vest are spotless. His tan runs from his cheeks to his neck down to his chest and doesn’t stop at his collar. The beginning of that vicious scar over his chest peeks out from under the fabric of his shirt.

He wonders what she makes of that. All of that.

‘I’m not kidding,’ she promises.

It’s a game.

He has played before.

He has never lost before.

 

 

 


	54. Answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the support every week!  
> It really means a lot to me.

 

* * *

 

 

‘It must have been hard, out there, all this time.’

Daryl stares at the woman. She can’t imagine what it has been like, out there, all this time. Just a couple of minutes ago she’d been telling him about the wall. Some stupid story about how her sons had helped, a story about how one of them had nearly dropped one of the steel plates on top of the other, a story that should have made a normal kid laugh, probably. She had laughed, anyway.

He’s not sure what’s funny about almost killing your own brother.

They’ve been behind those walls all this time.

‘Sometimes,’ he admits because it has been hard. He’d thought about just not saying anything at all but he has to make this work. He doesn’t want to let Rick down. So he feeds her little bits of information, little facts he doesn’t mind her knowing, and she laps it up greedily. ‘We had places.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. A farm first. A prison, later.’

‘What happened to those places?’

He shrugs and shifts in his seat. ‘Got overrun.’

Deanna narrows her eyes a little. ‘A prison must have had good defenses against the roamers.’

Daryl tilts his head to the side. ‘Didn’t say it was overrun by walkers. They ain’t the only thing out there to worry about no more. ‘s people out there,’ he plucks at a hole in his jeans. ‘Sick people.’

‘Rick told me,’ Deanna says with a gentle smile. She leans back on the couch. ‘How did you come to join his group? Rick said you didn’t know each other before.’

‘I was with my dad. Near Atlanta, wanted to go to the big city but the roads were all,’ he waves a vague hand. ‘Watched it gettin’ bombed, turned tails and ran. Dad said he knew this place, fresh water and everything, ya know? Some people were already there and we sort of joined, I guess.’ He looks out of the window, at the clear blue sky. ‘Weren’t Rick’s group at first.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ He tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling instead. ‘Don’t matter now. Lost a lot of people. It were Rick’s group after that.’

‘Was your dad one of those people you lost?’

He hums.

‘Daryl.’ She wants him to look at her. When he tilts his head back, she gives him a tiny smile. ‘I’m sorry about your dad.’

‘Thank you,’ he manages to spit out through gritted teeth.

‘You must miss him.’

‘Loads,’ Daryl nods.

Deanna shifts, pushes some of her blonde hair behind her ear. ‘So Rick’s group took you in?’

‘I were already with them,’ Daryl points out, ‘but yeah, I guess… They look after me. They’re good people.’

‘I’m sure they are, Daryl.’

Silence rings out between them. It makes Daryl a little uncomfortable because Deanna is still watching him, she’s still smiling, but she’s not saying anything. It kind of reminds him of Rick, who will sometimes just wait him out until Daryl bursts and spills his secrets. That just means he’s had practice, though. He has learned patience.

After two minutes of silence, however, his gaze wanders through the room again. There are a lot of books piled everywhere. He tries to read some of the titles but doesn’t understand them. There’s a guitar, some kind of flute, some kind of measuring device, there’s even a telescope to watch the stars with. That pikes his interest.

After a moment of hesitation, a glance at Deanna, he gets up and walks over to it. Fingers trailing over the cool metal. ‘Stargazer?’ he asks as he leans forward to look through it. Sometimes its better to break first. The way he can still control which secret he gives away.

‘My husband. You?’

‘Kinda. My dad taught me how to read them so I use them to find my way, ya know? Used to tell all these stories about them.’

‘What kind of stories?

‘I don’t know. Legends? Myths? What the fuck do you call a hunter’s bullshit?’ Daryl murmurs as he pushes himself away from the telescope. He walks back to the table and spots a bowl there. It has oddly colored rocks in it, some are even made of glass, bits of metal, too. He picks them up, rolls them around in the palm of his hands.

‘Your dad was a hunter?’

Daryl looks up at her. Drops the pebbles.

‘I can see where you got it from,’ she looks pointedly as the dead possum near his chair. The crossbow. ‘Do you still hunt?’

He frowns and straightens up. ‘Yeah.’

‘How does that work?’

‘What do ya mean?’

Deanna tilts her head a little to the side. ‘You’re fourteen years old. I can’t imagine Rick letting you go out on your own?’

Daryl scoffs as he moves to the window. ‘If he wants to eat…’

A frown starts to form on Deanna’s face. She seems a little unsure now, gaze roaming over the boy’s face to try and find what he’s not telling her right now.

This is not a secret, however. This isn’t what Daryl is trying to protect so he doesn’t mind telling her.

He glances over his shoulder at her. ‘At the prison, I went out huntin’ all the time. We all had jobs. Glenn and some other guys were runners and security. Rick and Carl worked in the gardens. Everyone had to pull guard duty. Carol took care of everything inside the prison, cooking ‘nd stuff. Beth looked after Asskicker a lot. I would hunt. We all had jobs to do. That one was mine.’

‘And you would go out on your own?’

‘I’m better on my own,’ Daryl nods. ‘Don’t need a bunch of city slickers watchin’ my back. Had a walkie-talkie with me. I once caught a buck so heavy I couldn’t drag it home myself. Had to radio Shane to come and do it for me.’

‘Shane?’

He realizes he’s made a mistake. He freezes.

Deanna leans forward, elbows resting on her knees. ‘Some of the others mentioned him, too.’

Daryl slowly turns around, eyes cold and mouth just a thin line.

‘They said you were very close. What happened to him, Daryl?’

‘He died.’

‘How?’

He swallows. ‘Caught a baseball bat with his head. Sick people.’ She blinks and looks horrified for a split second. He realizes she doesn’t know anything, hadn’t known anything about Shane except that he’d been loved. She doesn’t know about Terminus. And she doesn’t know what happened after that. About the church and the machete with the red handle. ‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ he says even though he means Gareth, kneeling before him. ‘Please?’

‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ Deanna says quickly.

Daryl walks back to the chair and falls into it. He makes sure that his hair falls into his face, hiding his small eyes. He pretends to sniffle a bit, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Thanks,’ he says, just to add another lie; ‘makes me sad, thinkin’ about him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Deanna repeats.

This is too easy, he thinks with a tiny smirk he manages to hide behind his fingers. He makes sure his voice shakes a bit.

‘Can I go, please?’

‘Yes,’ the woman shuts the camera off and guides him to the door once he’s gathered his stuff. The bow strapped to his back, the possum on his belt.

There’s tension in his back from trying to keep the act up. It bleeds away once he spots the rest of family on the porch, waiting for him. Glenn and Maggie whose gazes flash to him immediately, scanning him before their mouths curl into soft smiles. Carl, who shoves his shoulder to check whether he’s okay. Daryl aims a mean kick at him before plastering himself to Tyreese’s back, melting into the man’s strong frame with his chin on his shoulder so he can look at Judith, who is sleeping in the big arms.

Tyreese reaches up to run a hand through his hair. ‘You okay?’

‘Fine,’ Daryl mutters. A trickling sensation on the back of his head causes him to glance back.

Deanna is still watching him. She tears her gaze away slowly, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘Glenn,’ she calls out and waves the man over. ‘I’d like to talk to you next.’

 

 

 ‘Both of them?’ Rick asks.

‘At your disposal,’ Aaron nods. ’I’d call dibs on that one. It’s got more curb appeal.’ He smiles. One side of his face is still discolored from where Rick had punched him. ‘Listen,’ he tells the cop. ‘I know you’re still feeling us out, but I’m glad you came.’

Daryl is standing next to Carl. They’re both staring at the two mansions in front of them. Three floors high, wide porches, painted white and light gray. One of them has a yellow front door. The other one a black one. They remind Daryl a bit of the farm, just because they’re big and he’s never been in another house so big before.

Some of his friends back in his own town had lived in nice houses with big rooms and high ceilings, sprawling gardens with trees in them, but these houses are even bigger. Rick used to live in a nice house, Daryl is pretty sure, but Carl stares at the these mansions in awe, too.

‘Anyway,’ Aaron says. ‘Deanna’s asked everyone to give you your space so they aren’t all coming at you at once. Take your time. Explore. You need anything, you call me.’ He shakes his head and looks down for a second. ‘I don’t- We don’t have phones. I mean –‘ He swallows another smile and points to Carl’s right. ‘ I’m four houses down.’

Rick nods.

‘Thank you,’ Carl says.

Daryl looks at his boots.

When the two Grimes’ make their way towards the porch, Daryl makes a move to follow them before changing his mind. ‘Hey,’ he calls out to Aaron’s retreating back.

Both Aaron and Rick stop. Rick with his hand on his knife.

‘Yes?’ Aaron asks as he turns around.

Daryl whistles before taking a couple of steps towards the stranger so he doesn’t have to shout. On the porch, Rick relaxes at their all-clear-signal and turns back to Carl and the house before them.

‘How’s - ,’ Daryl starts. He frowns, rubs at his cheek with his knuckles and looks away. ‘’s Eric a’right?’

‘Oh! Yeah, it really was a broken ankle. Pete, our doctor, is binding him up right now. I’ll go get him later, bring him home.’

‘Good,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Thank you for asking, Daryl. That’s really nice of you.’

‘Yeah, well, Maggie made me do it so…’ Daryl lies.

‘Oh.’ Aaron eyes him for a moment longer. ‘Tell her thanks, okay? He’ll be fine,’ he says before turning around again and heading home.

Daryl heads into the house. The living room is as big as their entire trailer had been, just a couple of years back. Most of the furniture seems to be made of reclaimed wood. It looks rough, almost industrial and he can’t help but like it. There’s a couch with fluffy pillows, blankets folded on top of the table, rugs on the floors. With the sunlight streaming into the room, it almost looks homely.

Carl is standing in the kitchen. Rick wanders past but freezes when he sees that Carl’s hand is reaching for the tap.

Daryl holds his breath.

Water clatters into the sink.

Carl looks up at Daryl and grins. ‘It’s warm,’ he says when he tests it with the tips of his fingers. ‘Hot showers.’

‘When you come back,’ Rick nods as he checks out the hallway. ‘You still need to do your interview before it gets dark. Run back to Deanna’s place. Look after your sister.’

Carl hesitates.

‘It’ll be here when you come back,’ Rick promises. ‘Daryl and I are staying here.’

‘Okay,’ Carl slinks back towards the front door. He stomps Daryl’s shoulder on the way over. ‘Best not use all the hot water.’

‘Best not take ages then.’

‘Hey,’ Rick calls out before Carl open the door. ‘Be careful.’

‘We’re not safe,’ Carl nods. ‘No matter what I think or feel. No matter what they say. I know.’

 ‘Good. Now go.’

The door closes and the boy is gone. Daryl wanders through the living room, picking up a few trinkets as he goes. The artwork on the walls is different than what he’s used to. There’s something that reminds him of a Ferris wheel, made of black steel. It’s cold when he touches it, trying to figure out whether it really is steel. Probably. Some kind of metal, anyway.

There’s a picture on the other wall. It looks like a star, orange and red mixing together, but one side has faded. It’s made of geometrical shapes, all squares and boxes and sharp edges. He’s not sure whether he likes it. He likes the colors, warm and in contrast with the gray wall, but he thinks he might prefer the painting they used to have back home. Those woods, those fields, none of it distorted or depicted as abstract notions.

When he moves to the next picture, a small one near the front door, he catches Rick watching him with a fond smile.

‘Do you like the art?’

‘I don’t give a fuck.’

Rick just gives him a look.

Daryl scoffs. ‘Like the metal thing. Don’t like the star much. Colors are nice, though,’ he mutters. ‘I like orange.’

‘I hate orange. When we’d bought our first place together, Lori had bought these curtains. They were this god-ugly orange color. She said it reminded her of the sunrise but…’ He shakes his head. ‘It took her years to admit that they’d just been on sale somewhere and we couldn’t afford any better at the time.’

Daryl snorts, ‘you didn’t go with her to pick some out?’

‘No,’ Rick shakes his head, ‘I was picking up extra shifts left, right and center. I mean – the whole place was a dump. We’d just gotten out of college, I’d finished the academy, was just a rookie. She had some low-level job at a local school. We couldn’t afford anything so we bought the dump.’ He laughs a little. ‘She made it a home, though. With those ugly curtains, that saggy couch we’d found on a adds page somewhere. She made it a home, just because she was there with me.’

Daryl nods and bites his lips.

‘I remember coming home from a double shift, dead tired, and the door would jam because the wood was all crooked and the heating wouldn’t work so it was freezing inside that house – just, everything would just _suck_. And she’d be sitting on that lumpy couch with some candles, waiting for me with a disgusting frozen meal-thing and cheapest bottle of wine there is. Aside from Carl’s life-time, those were the times I was happiest. Because it was a place to come home to, and someone to share crappy wine with.’

Daryl laughs softly. ‘Got your shit together, though, right?’

‘Yeah. We rose all the way to upper-middle class life. We moved, Carl was born, everything just fell into place.’

‘And then to pieces.’

Rick nods but says, ‘not everything.’

‘Guess not,’ Daryl murmurs as his hand trails over the railing of the stairs. ‘Asskicker and Carl are a’right. Can I have a look upstairs?’

‘Sure,’ Rick answers, his vice softer now.

Daryl wonders whether the man is sad when they walk up the stairs. The memory of Lori often makes him go quiet. It doesn’t make the glint in his blue eyes go away, however. When he speaks of her, it’s in that fond manner he has. He’ll complain about her all the time, from her tendency to want things to be neat and orderly, to the stupid dinner parties she’d insisted on attending, but it’s clear that he’d give anything to go to one more dinner party if she were there. Mostly, he talks about her to keep Carl’s memory of her alive.

He still wears their wedding rings.

The second floor mostly consists of bedrooms and bathrooms. The beds are huge. The second one he finds used to belong to a boy. A teenager, maybe. Some of the posters have been taken down, maybe hung up in some other teens room now, but he doesn’t care. There are books on the shelves. He hopes there are comics hidden under the bed.

‘We should probably clean up,’ Rick says with a nod at the biggest bathroom.

‘You go first.’

‘No, it’s okay, I-‘

‘You really think Deanna is going to keep those people away? If they come snoopin’, I ain’t opening the damn door,’ Daryl huffs as he looks at the staircase that leads to the attic. ‘I ain’t talkin’ to them.’

Rick laughs softly. ‘Fair enough,’ he walks to the bathroom. ‘You talked to Aaron though. Asked him about Eric? That was nice, even if you tried to blame Maggie.’

‘He seems a’right, I guess. Bit weird.’

‘Weird?’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘Like, different, I guess.’ He shrugs. ‘Go take that damn shower now. Ya stink.’ He runs up the stairs to the attic just as Rick closes the door with a laugh.

It doesn’t take him long to explore the house, top to bottom. He’s kind of surprised when he finds knives in their kitchen drawer, sharp and long. Maybe he shouldn’t have been. They let them keep theirs, after all. The hunting knife is still secured on his belt. After some debate with Rick, they’ve even let him keep his bow.

He’s not sure why. Maybe they’re been stupid enough to believe that it’s not a dangerous weapon. Or maybe they’d just trusted Rick when he’d said he wouldn’t use it inside the gates.

He’s glad either way. Not that he would have given it up himself, but he’s glad that Rick fought that battle for him.

He trudges back upstairs and settles down in the hallway outside of the bathroom to be on guard duty. This way, he can hear Rick moving around inside, the water clattering in different ways as he moves around. It’s a comforting sound. He rummages through his backpack to find his cleanest clothes and then sits to wait until the water turns off.

Minutes of silence. Then the lock turns.

‘I still got to shave,’ the cop says through the door, ‘but you can come in if you want.’

Daryl gets up and slips into the room. It’s still steamy, even though Rick has opened a window. The man is standing in front of the sink, wearing his jeans and gun belt but nothing else. There’s a razor laid out in front of him. Shaving cream. Small scissors.

‘Hot water?’ Daryl asks eagerly.

‘Hot water,’ Rick confirms as he tilts his head to the side and starts to clip his beard.

‘Fuckin’ A.’ The boy plops down on the wet floor and kicks his boots off. He puts his clean clothes up on a rack, carefully placing his knife right next to it. The belt, the vest, too. He shrugs out of his shirt and throws it on top of Rick’s dirty one. He hops around to undo the buttons of his jeans, kicking them off before he darts into the shower. It doesn’t save much of his modesty because the doors are made of clear glass. He still throws his underwear over the doors and turns his back on Rick.

‘Best not be peekin’,’ he warns when he turns the shower on and almost gasps when hot water hits him.

‘Thought you’d be peeking at me,’ Rick rumbles. ‘I thought you wanted to learn how to shave.’

Daryl snorts and scrubs at his face, removing the dirt caked near his hairline. ‘Yeah, well… Glenn’s going to teach me one day. Says I don’t need to yet.’

‘Have you seen this beard?’ Rick asks as he turns around. He sounds almost offended, if it weren’t for the traces of humor softening the edges of his words. ‘It’s majestic.’

‘Cave-man!’ Daryl laughs. ‘Have you seen the mustache Glenn can grow? He looks like a mobster, man. Way cooler.’

‘I haven’t seen it because it takes him years to grow it. This happened in three months.’

‘You’re so mean,’ Daryl snorts. ‘Fuck your beard. Glenn’s teachin’ me.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Rick chuckles as he turns back to spread the shaving cream over his chin and cheeks. ‘Use the shower gel and shampoo. Get clean _everywhere_ , okay?’

‘Good lord,’ Daryl mutters as he searches for the right bottles. ‘You gonna check or something?’

‘I’ll have Carol hose you down in your sleep.’

The boy doesn’t doubt him. He washes his hair with the shampoo, twice, and then uses the shower gel to clean the rest. He starts at the tips of his ears, scrubs the back of his neck, his chest, his lower back and his armpits, running his fingernails through the little wisps of hair there and grinning to himself proudly. He hops around as he cleans his feet, pushing soapy fingers between his toes until the water runs clear. Then his legs, thighs and groin until he’s clean all over.

‘ _Shit_.’

‘What?’ Daryl almost whirls around but stops when Rick isn’t moving either.

‘Nothing,’ the cop says hastily. ‘Cut myself.’

‘Oh,’ Daryl relaxes. ‘Maybe Glenn could teach you, too,’ he sasses.

Rick turns the hot water on at the sink.

Daryl’s water runs cold within seconds. He yelps and jumps away from the steady stream. ‘Fuck you, ya  fuckin’ pig!’

The cop laughs as he turns the water back off on his side. ‘Get warm then get out. Towels are over there,’ he waves a hand at a cabinet while he rinses the rest of the shaving cream off with cold water.

‘What, I’m clean enough?’ Daryl grouses as he ducks back under the hot water. ‘Ya sure, ‘cause I don’t want Carol dragging my ass into the garden to-‘

A knock downstairs shuts him up.

‘Told ya,’ he mutters.

Rick glances at him. ‘Stay here,’ he says before slowly moving out of the bathroom, into the hallway and then down the stairs to check who’s at the door.

 

 

Daryl sits on the stairs while he listens to Rick getting a haircut.

The woman has two boys, Ron and Sam. Ron is the same age as Carl. She could introduce them.

‘Yeah, that’d be great.’

‘And maybe the other boy? With the angel wings on his back? Is he yours too?’

‘That’s Daryl,’ Rick says with a huff of laughter. ‘He’ll probably follow Carl’s lead. He’s… He’s ours, yeah.’

 

 

Deanna gave everyone jobs, except for Daryl and Carl, and Rick and Michonne. That’s the first thing Daryl figures out when his family filters into the house after the interviews. Glenn will be joining the runners which doesn’t surprise him at all. The Korean takes the pillows off the couch and makes a bed on the floor.

‘What else did she tell you?’ Daryl asks curiously.

‘Nothing,’ Glenn looks at him sharply. ‘Did she talk to you about Shane?’

‘She tried.’

‘She apologized to me for upsetting you.’

Daryl shrugs.

‘You weren’t upset when you came out of there,’ Glenn edges. ‘Did you fake it?’

‘Just didn’t want to talk to her no more,’ the boy mutters. ‘Don’t matter now. When’s your first run?’

‘Why?’

Daryl frowns, ‘’cause I’m goin’ with ya.’

His friend looks at him for a moment. ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Dare. They’re trying to set up a real community. They have a school.’

‘I’m not going to _school_! What the hell! Maggie!’

The woman glances between the two of them. ‘It might be a good idea, Dare.’

‘It ain’t!’ Daryl snarls at Glenn, pushing his shoulder a little. The rest of his family turns to watch the interaction with wary eyes. ‘I ain’t goin’ to no dumbass school. I’m not just gonna sit here with my thumb up my ass all day, every day, you hear me? Pssh.’

‘There will be other kids there, too. Carl will proba-.’

‘ _I don’t give a fuck_. I ain’t going to school! If you won’t let me run with ya, I’ll hunt, hell, I’ll clear them walkers from the wall. I don’t care. But I ain’t going to school!’

‘Dare….’

‘Y’all would have starved without me,’ Daryl snarls at him. ‘ _You can’t keep me here_!’

‘Daryl,’ Rick snaps but Glenn raises his hand to silence the cop.

The Korean steps closer to the boy. Stares him down. He’s not afraid of the way Daryl’s hands curl into fists, or the blue eyes that now brim with hatred. He knows that will fade. It’s not even real. Knee-jerk reactions. Defense mechanisms. ‘Take a seat,’ Glenn says softly. ‘And wait until I come talk to you.’

If they’d been at the prison, Glenn would have send him to his cell.

In a week, he’ll send the boy to his room.

But now, they’ll have to do it like they have done it on the road.

Daryl snarls but turns on his heels, stomps over to a clear spot on the floor. It’s beside Eugene but that doesn’t matter. He knows he’s not allowed to talk to the rest of his family. He’s being punished. With a grunt, he falls into the spot, all moody glares and gnawing teeth as he puts his hands in his hair and hides from the sympathetic glances Carl shoots him.

‘Don’t,’ Rick mutters to his son, urging him to look away from the Dixon boy by running a loving hand through his son’s hair. ‘Check on Judy for me.’

It takes an hour before Glenn is willing to listen to his apology. He sinks down in front of the boy on one knee, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

‘I’m sorry,’ Daryl sighs.

Glenn raises his eyebrows even higher.

‘For gettin’ mad,’ Daryl mutters as he plucks at his fingernails. ‘Didn’t listen and just got mad. I’m sorry, okay?’

‘Thank you,’ Glenn says as he takes the spot Eugene vacated just two minutes earlier. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the fake-scientist had kept the time, signaling the Korean that an hour had passed and that it probably had been enough of a punishment to just sit there and not be able to talk to his family. ‘I was angry because you did not listen to me and wouldn’t let me speak. It’s over now. We’re good.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl sniffs, looking away.

‘Aren’t we?’

‘No, we are, it’s just….’ Daryl takes a deep breath and looks at the Korean again. ‘Can we talk about the job-thing still? The school?’

‘Of course,’ Glenn nods. ‘You don’t want to go to school. Maggie and I think it would be best.’

‘Yeah, but I like to hunt. I mean – I can help! I did it at the prison, right? And I did good, so maybe I could… I don’t know. I just.. I don’t want to be _here_ all the time.’

‘Because it feels like they’re locking you up and you don’t know these people.’

‘Yeah.’

Glenn seems to think it over. ‘So what do you suggest?’

Daryl wrecks his brain, trying to think of all the times he’d fought with Shane, back at the prison. The times he’d just ran away even though the cop had told him that he wasn’t allowed to hunt on his own. How they’d settled on the walkie-talkie and rules. ‘Compromise?’ he suggests.

‘Maybe,’ Glenn nods with a laugh. ‘What if we stick to the rules of the prison. Knife, bow, holler, always. But if you go out hunting, you need to tell two people. And we need to find you another walkie-talkie. Maybe they have more of those flare guns, if they do, you’re taking one of those.’

Daryl nods.

‘And we’re sticking to the days. If you go out hunting for a full day, you stay home for two afterwards. It doesn’t matter if you actually caught something.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘And while you stay at home, you go to the school.’

Daryl opens his mouth to protest.

‘Think before you speak,’ Glenn warns.

Daryl thinks. Then he nods. ‘Fine. I mean – yeah. That sounds a’right. I’ll go to their stupid school, if they say I have to, and-‘

‘No. You’re going to their stupid school, if they say you can.’

Daryl grits his teeth. ‘ _Fine_. That. But I get to hunt, like at the prison.’

‘I’ll talk to Deanna. It’s not our call anymore, Dare.’

Daryl frowns, ‘what the fuck am I makin’ a deal for then? Good Lord.’

‘I said; I’ll talk to Deanna,’ Glenn says sharply, shutting down the anger that’s flaring inside the boy again.

‘Fine,’ Daryl grumbles, uncurling a bit and placing his feet father away from his body, letting his knees fall to the side so one of them is brushing against Glenn’s leg. The Korean puts a hand on it, squeezing once before getting up again and joining Rick and Michonne, who are discussing something in the kitchen.

The talk, now finished, is a signal for the rest of their family that his punishment is over. Beth eagerly scoots over to him, talking in a low voice about her interview with Deanna and how she loved being able to shower with hot water again.

He listens and nods in all the right places to keep her going but doesn’t tell her about his own interview.

 

 

Deanna comes to check on them late at night.

Daryl is sitting at the table with Carl, both leaned over the comic Carl had found in the other house. Daryl flips the pages, knowing that the other boy reads faster, and Carl whispers backstory to him because he hasn’t read any of the other issues in the series.

‘Oh, my,’ she breathes when she sees that everyone has settled in the living room. Sasha and Abraham are on guard duty near the windows while Tyreese watches over Judith in her crib. Beth is curled up with Maggie on the couch. Glenn is on the floor in front of them, one hand on his knife since the door had opened. She spots Daryl, even though he tries to hide behind Carl’s frame. ‘Staying together,’ she says. ‘Smart.’

‘No one said we couldn’t,’ Rick answers.

‘You said you were family,’ she points out even though she glances back at Daryl. ‘That’s what you said. Absolutely amazing to me how people with completely different backgrounds and nothing in common can become that. Don’t you think?’

Rick easily shifts the focus by asking about the jobs. He and Michonne will get theirs later. She’s trying to find something suitable for Sasha.

‘You look good,’ she nods at him before turning on her heels and taking her leave.

Glenn scrambles to his feet. ‘Deanna! I’d like to talk to you for a second,’ he says as he dashes to the door. ‘Outside.’

 

 

Carl pushes the pram while Daryl walks next to him. They’re exploring the neighborhood. Judith is babbling away, a little unhappy that she’s not being carried around, but at least she doesn’t start screaming again. With the way people look at them from behind their curtains, Daryl doubts that it will take long before she’s in someone’s arms again.

‘What do you think?’ his brother asks.

Daryl reaches up to touch the strap of his bow but realizes too late that he has left it inside the house. Maggie had ordered him to leave it behind. Instead, he touches his parents wedding rings. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmurs as he looks around. ‘Looks okay, I guess.’

‘Yeah,’ Carl nods.

‘The lady who’d cut your dad’s hair? Said she had two kids. Boys. Wants us to meet them.’

‘Okay.’

Daryl rubs his finger over his bottom lip before stuffing his hands into the pockets of his ragged jeans.

Carl glances at him. ‘Do you want to?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Do you?’

‘Kinda. Maybe that comic was theirs.’ Carl flashes him a grin. ‘Maybe they have more. Look,’ he stops walking for a second. ‘We don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know? But it could be fun. We hung out with Patrick at the prison.’

Some weight falls off of Daryl’s shoulders, anxiety he hadn’t even thought about yet bleeding away now that Carl has said _we._ He relaxes a little and shoots his brother a matching grin. ‘Yeah, okay. Could be fun.’

 

 

 


	55. City slickers and rabbits

 

* * *

 

 

 

The boy’s name is Ron. He lives on another road and talks in that easy way Patrick used to have. A little too relaxed, not really fake but not at all natural. Maybe he’s compensating for the fact that Daryl is not saying anything after he’s introduced himself to the kid under Rick’s watchful eye. Carl makes up for it, too. He asks about Ron’s family. He has a little brother who isn’t around right now, his mom Jessie and a dad.

They follow him into his house which is almost an exact replica of theirs.

Up the stairs to his room.

‘You go to school?’ Carl asks, glancing back at Daryl who is a couple of steps behind him. The Dixon boy pretends to puke and the Grimes boy bites back a grin before turning back to Ron.

‘It’s in a garage,’ Ron says with a nod, hands in his pockets as he leads them further. ‘Little kids go in the morning and then it’s us in the afternoon. Probably you guys, too, right?’

‘Probably,’ Carl nods.

Ron’s bedroom is big enough for a double bed. The sheets have robots on them. There are posters on the walls, baseball players and cartoon figures.  A girl is lounging on the bed with a comic book. Long brown hair pushed behind one of her ears, boots laced up tightly. She must be their age even though she’s a little smaller than Carl.

There’s a boy sitting in front of the television. He’s wearing a shirt and cardigan.

Daryl leans against the doorpost and thinks about how he used to look like one of the kids he and his friends used to beat up behind their school.

‘Guys, this is Carl,’ Ron announces, ‘and that’s Daryl. That’s Mikey, and Enid.’

Mikey jumps up with a smile on his face. All lanky limbs and teenage awkwardness. ‘Hey!’

Enid hardly even looks up from her book. ‘Hi,’ she mutters.

‘Enid’s from outside, too,’ Ron tells them. ‘She just came a few months ago.’

‘Oh,’ Carl reaches into his back pocket and pulls his comic book out. ‘Is this yours?’ he asks, holding it out to no one in particular.

‘Sorry, we didn’t know you guys got that house.’

‘We mostly just hang out there and listen to music,’ Mikey adds. ‘That’s Enid’s.’

The girl grabs the comic and throws it onto the bed without a word.

There’s a beat of awkward silence.

‘Want to play some video games?’ Ron asks eagerly. ‘Or Mikey’s house has a pool table, but his dad is kinda strict about it, so…’

‘It’s okay,’ Mikey says with a huff of laughter. ‘He’s at work.’

Carl seems to have frozen. Overwhelmed by the sudden choice, maybe, or by the people. ‘Uhm,’ he manages to say before taking a hesitant step backwards. A shaking hand reaches behind him, finding Daryl’s forearm, pushing past it to come to rest on his friend’s belt. His shoulders are tense.

‘Sorry, I guess we come on kind of strong,’ Ron apologizes. ‘We can just hang out.’

‘You don’t even have to talk if you don’t wanna,’

‘Yeah, it took Enid three weeks to say something.’

Carl swallows. Takes another minuscule step backwards until his shoulder brushes against Daryl’s.

‘We’ll play some video games,’ Daryl says as he steps forward, plastering himself to his brother’s back and throwing an arm around him, hand over his thundering heart. Chin on his shoulder as he leers at the other two boys. ‘We’ll kick your fuckin’ asses.’

Ron looks surprised but laughs. ‘Yeah? Me and Mickey against you two.’

‘You’re on, but Carl gets to pick the game or it’s not fair,’ Daryl decides because he supposes that Carl has a better chance of recognizing any of the games they have. Maybe he’s even played some of them before. Daryl used to have a gaming console, too. He’d gotten one from Merle for Christmas once, but it had come without any packaging and looked like it had already been used. It took him years to realize that his brother had probably stolen it.

When it had gone missing a couple of months later and Merle was high all the time, he didn’t have to wonder where it had gone.

Carl unfreezes, throws Daryl a grateful look before walking over to the console and sitting down with Mikey to pick out a game.

Daryl glances at the girl on the bed. ‘You don’t wanna play? We can swap, I ain’t too good anyway, so…’

She just raises an unimpressed eyebrow before going back to the comic.

‘He didn’t have to give that back to ya, ya know,’ the Dixon boy grouses as he gesture to the other book. ‘Finders keepers and all.’

‘Dare,’ Carl calls out softly. ‘It’s fine. Come and play. You’re on my team.’

‘Whatever,’ he mutters before settling down in a corner of the room where the edge of his boot touches Carl’s thigh. He’s sitting far away from the other boys, far enough to ignore them most of the time, except for when Carl reels him into the conversation.

They play the game.

They lose because of Daryl. He doesn’t know the game and doesn’t care enough to put some effort in.

Carl jumps him when he loses the last round on purpose, forcing him onto his back. That doesn’t matter because Shane had taught him a dirty trick and he manages to slam Carl onto his side with ease, climbing on top of his brother. Instead of sucker punching him, he taps Carl on the cheek teasingly while he dodges Carl’s attempts to do the same.

‘Hey!’ Ron shouts as he scrambles to get to his feet. ‘Easy! Take it easy, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a game!’

‘Get your fat ass off of me,’ Carl wheezes before he stomps his brother in the stomach, causing Daryl to lose his grip momentarily. Roles are flipped again, Daryl landing hard on his back while Carl looms over him. ‘Beg!’ Carl snarls as he pushes Daryl’s wrists into the carpet.

‘Never, ya mini pig.’

‘I said; _beg_!’ A knee in his stomach now but no weight behind it.

‘Surrender!’ Daryl yelps when Carl pushes his finger under his chin to search for the pain point there. ‘Stop, stop, _stop_!’

Hands grab the Grimes boy by the shoulders, hauling him off his brother.

‘Stop!’ Ron screams, ‘stop, you’ll kill him!’

Carl rips himself free from the boy and falls onto the bed, breathing heavily and with wide eyes now. He stares at Ron, ‘what?’

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Ron pants.

‘Yeah!’ Daryl jumps to his feet, an angry scowl on his face. ‘What the hell, Grimes, you almost killed me!’ When Carl turns to stare at him, he pounces. Jumping on top of Carl, ruffling his hair and rolling around before he manages to shove the boy off the bed. ‘ _Ha_!’ he laughs in victory, panting at the ceiling. ‘Loser.’

‘You’re such an asshole,’ Carl laughs from the floor. ‘I had you the first time! Oh, I surrender, stop, _stop_ ,’ he taunts.

Daryl grins and turns his head slightly, hoping to catch a glimpse of his friend, but instead he’s staring right at Enid, who is still lounging on the bed. She raises another eyebrow at him. This time, however, it’s in amusement.

‘Comfortable?’ she asks, glancing down at his body.

He has almost rolled on top of her during the fight. It’s been a while since he’s had to be so conscious about space with anyone. They’ve been on the road for so long now. At night, he doesn’t care anymore whether he curls up in Glenn’s chest or finds Sasha or Tara to sleep with, whatever keeps him warm and comfortable enough.

‘Sorry,’ Daryl mutters as he quickly shifts away from her.

‘We’re not allowed to fight!’ Mikey says, voice a little shrill.

‘We weren’t really fighting,’ Carl answers as he climbs to his feet, holding a hand out to Daryl. He hauls him up, too. ‘Just messing about. Sorry.’

‘Yeah? Well, we don’t think that’s a game. Or that it’s funny.’

‘Got a problem, jack-ass?’ Daryl challenges as he steps in front of Carl to face Ron.

The boy flinches.

‘Easy, Dare,’ Carl says.

‘No, no, it’s just... nothing. It’s nothing. Come on, we can play another game?’ Ron tries.

Daryl rubs at his nose and glances over his shoulder at Carl, who nods. ‘Can we play some pool now? I’m better at pool.’

‘I’ve never played pool before,’ Carl mutters behind him.

Daryl flashes him an easy grin. ‘You’re on my team.’ Then he turns back to Ron. ‘How about it, city slicker?’

 

 

It’s midday when Rick cautiously opens the door to Carl’s new bedroom. ‘Hey. How was Ron’s house?’

Carl is on his back on the bed. He’s staring at the ceiling. ‘What do you think of this place?’ he asks instead of answering.

Rick sits down on the bed. He has to gently shove Daryl’s booted feet aside to make room. The Dixon boy is lying down next to his son, on his belly, one arm hanging off the bed so he can touch the hardwood floor. The vest has been cleaned, the wings once again stark white against the black.

‘Well,’ the cop starts, ‘I think it seems…’ He searches for the right word. ‘Nice.’

‘Yeah,’ Carl sighs. ‘We like it here. We like the people.’

Daryl grunts.

‘We _do_ ,’ Carl emphasizes.

Rick nods. ‘What do you think, Dare?’

‘Bunch of city slickers and democrats. What did she call it? Communies?’

‘Communists,’ Rick says with a small smile at Carl, who rolls his eyes and mouths _trash_ as an inside joke.

Daryl knows so he kicks the boy even though he’s not looking at him. ‘Stop. They’re… guess they’re nice enough.’

‘We like them, but they’re _weak_ ,’ Carl says. ‘I don’t want us to get weak too.’

Rick nods and bows his head. ‘Dare?’ he asks.

‘Hell,’ Daryl turns and pushes himself into the pillows. ‘They might be a bunch of pussies, but we ain’t. And we’re never gonna be. Everything that we did? We ain’t the same no more. These people have been behind those giant walls this whole damn time. Of course they’re weak. ‘s why they brought us here, right? They need us. And we can’t go weak. It’s not in us anymore.’

 

 

Glenn goes out on his first run.

When he comes back with his group, there’s anger radiating from him.

Daryl is waiting for him at the gates. They’re back sooner than he’d expected but he pushes himself away from the wall against which he’d been sitting. The guard up on the gate hadn’t paid him any mind at all, ignoring him in favor of their newest gossip.

He’s with Aiden who says that they’re not ready for runs yet.

They’ve got that backwards.

They tied up walker.

It had killed their friend.

Aiden says that they have to obey his orders out there, he’s not having this conversation.

‘Then we’re just as screwed as your last run crew,’ Glenn says.

Daryl slinks closer just as Aiden gets into Glenn’s face. The Korean isn’t impressed, however. He’s used to people doing that. Posturing, lashing out. He just stares him down.

Aiden pushes him. He wants a fight.

‘No one’s impressed, man,’ Glenn says softly. ‘Walk away.’

The stranger doesn’t realize it’s his final warning.

Deanna comes running over, demanding to know what is going on. Glenn’s got a problem with how Aiden does things. Why did she let those people in?’

‘Because we actually know what we’re doing out there,’ Glenn says calmly. He doesn’t need Deanna’s scream to know that the punch is coming. Aiden is a big guy, there’s a lot of projecting that Shane had taught them to recognize. He ducks beneath the fist, brings up his own to slam the guy to the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl spots Nicholas, who rushes forward to come to his friend’s aid. He’s so focusses on getting to Glenn, that he never sees the boy coming. An easy check with his shoulder to the softness of Nicholas’ stomach, a roll of his shoulders and kick of his feet, hooking one behind the man’s and they both go down. Daryl lands on top, knees pinning hips to concrete, one hand wrapped around a throat, squeezing tightly.

‘Whoa, whoa!’ Running footsteps and Rick is beside him. An arm around his chest, ‘let’s not do this now,’ he breathes before hauling the boy off the man. He throws Daryl back onto his own feet and keeps pushing his chest every time Daryl tries to get to Nicholas again.

He’s breathing hard. So angry he can barely see.

‘Focus on me,’ Rick says gently, trying to obscure everyone else from his view. ‘It’s me. Calm down.’

When he takes a deep breath and snarls angrily at Nicholas, he catches sight of Deanna, who is staring at him with a mixture of fear and horror.

‘You want to end up on your ass again?’ Michonne asks Aiden, stepping close to him with a challenge in the way she tilts her head to the side.

Glenn isn’t even paying attention to him anymore. He knows that the rest of the group has his back, even though over half of them don’t even know what is going on. ‘Daryl,’ he says sharply. It sounds like a command.

The boy slips past Rick and takes his place at Glenn’s right hand, just a step behind him. Ghosting in his shadow like he’d always done with Shane.

Glenn reaches back to him with an open hand even though he doesn’t turn to look at him.

Daryl reaches out, brushes their fingers together, squeezing them gently to let him know that he’s okay now. The anger disappears as quickly as it had come.

Deanna is watching them closely. Daryl meets her eye, a little warily, almost looking away.

‘I want everyone to hear me, okay?’ the woman says loudly. ‘Rick and his people are part of this community now, in all ways, as equals. Understood?’ She looks at her son.

Aiden shrugs after a second of defiance. ‘Understood.’

‘All of you, turn in your weapons. Then you two,’ she points at her son and his friend, ‘come talk to me.’

When Aiden is gone, Rick and Michonne are made the new constables. That’s who he was. That’s what he will be. It doesn’t surprise Daryl that she’s picked Michonne to be his partner. She already is, in so many ways. The voice of reason whenever he starts to lose it, the decisive nod after every hesitant decision.

They both accept.

‘And you,’ she says, looking at Daryl. ‘Glenn told me about the job you wanted. I’m sorry. I won’t allow it. You’re _fourteen_ ,’ she says with amazement in her voice. ‘I’m not letting you go out there on your own.’

Rick shifts his weight, puts his hands on his belt. ‘That won’t stop him,’ he says with a small smile. ‘I’ve tried that when he was _twelve_. He’s going, whether we like it or not. He’s going to scale the wall, find a way to jump it. And if he can’t? He’s going to charm your people manning the gates. You won’t believe it right now, but he can give you puppy-dog eyes for days.’

Deanna smiles a little.

‘Heartbreaker,’ Michonne grins. ‘And if he can’t charm, he’ll bribe. Trust us. If he wants to get out, he’ll get out. There’s no stopping it.’

Daryl scowls at the concrete, wishing his friends would shut up and stop making it harder for him.

‘But we can take safety measures,’ Rick says now. ‘We had rules, back at the prison. He’ll take his bow, knife, a gun, he’ll take a backpack with water and some food. If you have a walkie-talkie or a flare, we can give him that to use if he’s in trouble.’

‘It’s too dangerous.’

Rick laughs. ‘Yeah. But it’s more dangerous to let him sneak out without those things. Trust us, we’ve tried to keep him inside. Shane and I? We’ve tried to keep him out of the woods, but it’s no use. He’ll find a way. Let’s give him the safest one we know. I’ve seen him out there. He’s smart. He’s fast. He always knows his way. Let him do it, on our terms.’

Deanna looks dubious. She glances at Maggie. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hate it when he leaves,’ Maggie says frankly. ‘Every time he leaves, I hate it. But Rick’s right. If he wants to go, he’ll go. And he always comes back to us.’

After a sigh, Deanna nods. She looks at Rick. ‘I’ll let you decide on this matter.’

Rick raises an eyebrow. ‘Glenn?’ he asks.

Glenn nods. ‘He gets to hunt. He knows the rules. And if he breaks them, he will hand in his bow.’

‘Weren’t part of the deal, man,’ Daryl grouses.

‘It is now. Do you want it, or not?’

He thinks it over. He’s broken the rules a couple of times when he had been hunting near the prison but only because he’d been too stubborn to radio Shane. ‘It don’t count as breakin’ the rules if I ain’t _tryin’_ to break the rules.’

Glenn looks amused for a second. ‘How will we know?’

Daryl grins at him, bumps his shoulder with his own. ‘You always know.’

 

 

The next morning, he goes out to hunt. He hasn’t slept well. The room he’s gotten is big and empty. The bed, too. He’s gotten too used to sleeping next to someone, too used to Abraham’s snores and Beth’s soft singing whenever she couldn’t sleep. Now it had just been him and the shadows. He’d left his curtains open to be able to see the moon, but it hadn’t helped much.

After a soft knock, he pushes the door to Glenn and Maggie’s bedroom open. They’re still asleep. For a second he thinks about not waking them up, but he doesn’t want to screw the deal over before he’s even gotten outside.

He’s supposed to tell two people that he’s going out.

‘Yo, Glenn,’ he whispers as he approaches the bed. ‘Maggie.’

The Korean stirs first. One hand clawing to find the knife on his bedside table. The blanket slides down his bare chest as he works himself up a little.

Daryl slams his hand down on the weapon, ‘it’s me, man. I’m going out.’

‘This is a terrible rule,’ Glenn moans as he buries himself back into his pillow.

‘Hey, you made it. Gotta tell two people, right? You’re two people.’

Maggie giggles sleepily, shifting closer to her boyfriend. ‘What about the people at the gate?’ she murmurs.

‘I don’t know them,’ Daryl says, a little affronted. ‘I ain’t talkin’ to them.’

‘Dare,’ Glenn sighs as he turns around and sits up so he can look at the boy. ‘They’re good people. You’re going to need to talk to them eventually.’

Daryl frowns like he disagrees.

‘You’re going to have to try,’ Glenn urges and he doesn’t mean just talking to other people.

‘Hell, I went and played dumbass games yesterday. I _am_ tryin’!’

‘You’re right,’ Maggie hushes. ‘You’re right. Thank you for letting us know. Are you going out all day?’

‘Maybe. Depends.’

‘Okay,’ she smiles. ‘Be careful. Knife, bow, holler. Did they give you a walkie-talkie yet?’

‘Nah, they ain’t got one.’

‘Grab a flare gun when you get your own handgun out, okay?’ Glenn asks. ‘And be careful.’

‘Okay,’ he mutters before slinking away, closing the door softly behind him.

 

 

The woods are quiet as he walks through them. He spots several old trails and a couple of new ones. There are a lot of rabbits around. When he makes his way back, he’ll rig up some snares but right now he doesn’t want to stop moving. He’s been cooped up inside of Alexandria for two days now. He never thought he would miss the woods this fast.

Fingertips trailing over barks, he weaves between the trees. The bow is a comforting weight in his hands. Stride confident as he hops onto fallen trees, balancing a bit just for fun, before dropping back onto the earth with a soft thump.

He doesn’t come across any walkers. There seem to be fewer of them here. He wonders whether that's because this place was successfully evacuated, or whether walkers just follow the roads with least resistance. Back at the prison he would find walkers caught in bushes all the time. Clothes torn to pieces, pieces of flesh caught on thorns and branches.

Or maybe he’s still too close to Alexandria’s walls.

Close enough not to lose his tail, anyway.

He ducks between two trees, raising his bow. ‘Come out!’ he snarls when he’s finally had enough. ‘ _Now_!’

He’s no quite sure who he was expecting. Glenn maybe, coming to check on him, or even Rick and Beth who can move in the ways he taught them. But instead, it’s Aaron who comes into view with his hands raised in surrender. There’s a riffle slung over his shoulder. Something close to fear hides in those blue eyes as he looks at the crossbow.

Daryl lowers it.

‘You can tell the difference between walkers and humans by sound?’

Of course he can. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything.

‘Can you tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy?’ Aaron asks.

Daryl isn’t sure whether it’s a dig at the fact that the man has been trialing after him for over a mile. Of course, Daryl was well aware and let him without checking whether he really was friendly. Maybe that had been stupid. He won’t make the same mistake next time.

‘Rick doesn’t seem to be an expert at that.’

‘Ain’t much of a difference no more,’ Daryl growls because he hates that the stranger is saying something bad about Rick.

‘That how you feel about your people?’ There’s a little frown on Aaron’s forehead, drawing his eyes together.

The question bewilders Daryl. He’s not sure what to answer and lashes out instead. ‘ _Why are you following me_?’ he snarls as he steps closer.

‘I didn’t know I was. I came out to hunt rabbits.’

Daryl shifts his weight back to his heels and stares at the man. He’s not sure whether he’s lying. That unsettles him a bit.

‘I know why you’re out here,’ Aaron says with a soft smile. ’Mind if I join?’

The boy glares at him. And then turns on his heels to continue along the tracks. ‘Keep up,’ he throws over his shoulder. ‘And keep quiet.’

He’s surprised when Aaron actually stays quiet. He follows the boy, always a couple of steps behind him and never mucking up the trail. He walks with easy grace, managing to keep up even when Daryl slings himself around trees, hops over boulders and slides down small hills as he tries to map the area. Daryl isn’t even hunting, really. He’s just trying to get a sense of where they are.

A horse nickers when he wants to cut through a field.

With amazement, he creeps towards the edge of the field. There’s a horse standing in the middle of it. Black as the night and graceful as he lowers his head to eat the tall grass. Silky manes shifting on the lean neck. Eyes glinting with caution and alertness.

Aaron walks forwards to stand next to the boy. He breathes out a soft laugh. ‘I’ve been trying to catch him for months, bring him inside. His name is Buttons.’

Daryl glances at the man.

‘One of the kids saw him run by the gate a while back. Thought he looked like a Buttons.’

‘He does,’ Daryl mutters as he tries to catch a good look.

Aaron seems to bite back a smile. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while. I was afraid it was too late.’ Out of his backpack, he pulls a long piece of rope. ‘Every time Eric or I come close, he gets spooked.’

Daryl quickly throws his crossbow onto his back and grabs the rope.

‘Have you done this before?’

‘Hershel taught me,’ Daryl answers. ‘But they weren’t out there that long. The longer they’re out there, the more they become what they really are, he always said.’ He carefully walks into the tall grass. _Soft footsteps, relaxed posture, nothing to worry about_ , he chants to himself as he moves closer. He can hear Hershel’s voice in the back of his head, _easy, Dare, easy, don’t move too fast_.

‘I ain’t gonna hurt ya,’ he tells the horse when he’s close. ‘All right? Come on, boy. Yeah. Just keep on eatin’. Yeah. Good boy. Yeah, you used to be somebody’s, huh? Now you’re just yours.’

The rope almost touches the horse’s nose when a walkers snarls. It spooks the animal.

‘Shit!’ Daryl curses as he throws the rope down to grab his bow. Buttons takes off running, prancing a little in his haste to turn around and away, but Daryl is not afraid of the mowing hooves. He takes the first walker down with one of his bolts and sees two others go down thanks to Aaron’s bullets. There’s no time for him to reload so he throws his weapon on the ground before grabbing his knife.

A slide under a couple of branches to escape grasping fingers, then hopping back over to land his boots on a skull of a walker that had tried to follow him. His knife plunges into a chin, driving up to touch the brain and still another walker. He whirls around, ducking beneath outstretched hands to get the next one.

When they’re all truly dead, he grabs his bow. ‘Come on,’ he urges Aaron. There’s a smile on his face as he gestures to the man, ‘let’s go! He went this way.’

The tracks are clear enough. Aaron knows that he’s not really hunting anymore, now too excited by the fact that there’s a wild horse running around to be bothered by rabbits and squirrels. ‘Can you ride horses?’ he asks when they follow Button’s trail.

‘Yeah.’

‘Did… Hershel, was it? Did he teach you?’

‘No, knew some of it before all this,’ Daryl mutters as he leads the man further into the woods. ’He taught me some tricks though. Maggie, too. Michonne.’

‘Well, they seem like tricky people, so… ‘

The joke falls flat when Daryl ignores the man.

After a couple of steps, Aaron speaks up again. ‘I know you’re feeling like an outsider. It’s not your fault, you know? Eric and I, we’re still looked at as outsiders in a lot of ways. We’ve heard our fair share of well-meaning but hilariously offensive things from some otherwise really nice men and women.’

Daryl frowns and rubs at his nose with the back of his hand. ‘’cause you’re gay?’ he asks.

Aaron blinks. ‘Yeah.’

‘Oh.’

‘What gave it away?’ the man asks and he laughs when Daryl narrows his eyes at him suspiciously. ‘People are people,’ he shrugs. ‘The more afraid they get, the more stupid they get. Fear shrinks the brain. They’re scared of you and me for different reasons. They’re less scared of me because they know me. It’s less and less every day. So… let them get to know you. You should go to Deanna’s party tonight.’

‘I got nothing to prove,’ Daryl says. ‘I met a lot of bad people out here doing a lot of bad shit. They weren’t afraid of nothing.’

 

 

They find Buttons just before he’s torn to pieces.

Aaron looks pretty upset about it.

They were trying to help him, Daryl reasons. Sometimes that’s just all anyone can do.

 

 

Aaron drops him off at home. Tara is sitting on the porch, her legs swinging in a steady beat while she munches on an apple. The dark eyes follow the man as he walks towards his own house before they snap to the boy.

‘Did you have fun?’

‘Saw a horse get eaten by a bunch of dead people.’

‘Oh. Damn.’

‘It had a name.’

‘Double damn,’ Tara smiles before she takes another bite and then offers the remaining half of the apple to him. He takes it and sits down next to her. ‘There’s a party at Deanna’s place tonight. If you run, you can still make it outside of the gates before Maggie catches you, you know. It sounds dumb.’

Daryl hums. ‘Can’t go out tomorrow if I stay out all day today,’ he shrugs  ‘Are you bailin’?’

‘And risk the wrath of Maggie? No, thank you,’ Tara laughs. ‘We’re supposed to make an effort. But I’m sneaking out first chance I get. You distract them, I run, okay?’

‘But I’m faster.’

‘Which is why I get a head start,’ Tara reasons.

‘Stop,’ Daryl huffs as he shoves her shoulder. He eats his apple in silence before glancing up at her again. ‘Aaron was following me in the woods, I think. He said something.’

‘He seems to do that a lot,’ Tara grins, kicking their boots together. ‘You can just tell him to shut up, I think. He seems pretty cool.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he say?’ Tara asks when the boy doesn’t elaborate. The smile fades into mild concern.

‘Said I were an outsider,’ Daryl mutters as he squints up at his friend. He brushes some hair out of his face. ‘Said it weren’t my fault, though. But I ain’t an outsider, ‘cause I’ve got all y’all…. Right?’ He sounds a little unsure.

‘Right,’ Tara laughs, putting an arm around his shoulders. ‘He just means that we’re feeling a little on edge around new people because we’ve been out there so long. It’ll be fine. We just have to play it cool, hang out a bit… it’ll be fine.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl throws the remains of his apple into some bushes. He kicks his heavy boots against the woodwork of the porch. The sound echoes down the street. Suddenly, he looks sharply at his friend. ‘Did you know Aaron is gay?’

Tara seems to choke on her own tongue. ‘Err, yeah. I – Err. I did know, actually. I’m pretty sure everyone knows that, Dare.’

‘Glenn and Maggie say that that’s fine.’

‘It is.’

‘Right.’

Tara lifts her eyebrows and leans a little closer, trying to catch his eye. ‘Do _you_ think it’s fine?’

Daryl bites on his lower lip. ‘Dad said they weren’t good people. Like, gay people. Unnatural.’ He rubs at his nose and looks at his boots. ‘But Aaron seems okay, I guess. He tried to save Buttons. The horse,’ he adds when Tara looks confused. ‘He tried to save the horse.’

‘Well,’ Tara says as she bites back a grin. ‘That makes him a-okay in our books, right?’

‘Stop,’ Daryl moans again, ‘I’m serious!’

‘Me too!’

‘You’re not! Stop.’

The door behind them opens and Maggie steps out onto the porch. Her dark hair is tucked behind one ear and she’s wearing clean clothes. ‘There you are,’ she smiles at Daryl. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Aaron is gay but he’s pretty cool because he tried to save a horse,’ Tara says before Daryl can answer. There’s mischief glinting in her eyes. ‘So that’s good.’

‘I said _he seems okay_!’ Daryl protests.

‘Come on,’ Tara needles, ‘he’s pretty cool.’

Maggie raises one of her eyebrows at the woman. ‘Have you told him yet?’

‘Nope,’ Tara grins. ‘One day, I’m going to blow his mind. Let him stew on this for a bit. Aaron, pretty cool, the horse, less cool that he was eaten but hey, gay is maybe okay!’

Daryl rolls his eyes, ‘what are you on about now? Good Lord, you’re so weird.’

‘Come inside,’ Maggie laughs as she waves him over. ‘You need to take a shower before we go to the party. I’ve laid out some new clothes for you, Ron’s mom brought some over, she’s pretty sure you boys all have the same size, so be sure to thank her tonight, okay? Her name is Jessie.’

Tara turns and throws him a grin. ‘Clean up, Pookie. You’ve got a party to go to.’

‘You gonna be there though, right?’ Daryl asks as he walks backwards to Maggie, throwing the younger girl a pleading look. ‘Ya said ya would!’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ Tara nods, feigning innocence when Maggie looks at her sharply.

When Daryl walks up the stairs towards his room, he looks back at Maggie who trailing behind him. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me about Tara.’

‘There is,’ Maggie nods.

‘Y’all are makin’ fun of me for being stupid and not gettin’ it. I’m sick of it,’ Daryl grouses as he runs up the stairs. ‘Where’s Carl? Did he fuck off to the damn party already?’

‘He went with Rick, Judy and Carol. Please, we’re running late already.’

‘Then go without me!’

‘Daryl.’

The boy turns on the top of the stairs and looks down at his friend. Maggie’s expression is a mixture of pain and amusement. He grits his teeth. ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t like these people.’

‘You like Aaron.’

‘Don’t.’

‘ _Daryl_.’

 ‘What? One good guy in this whole town of fuckin’ pussies! And even he were followin’ me, tryin’ to keep an eye on me. Pssh. Catchin’ rabbits. _Right_. What the fuck is this party for anyway? This is such _bullshit_!’ he rages. ‘I don’t want to fuckin’ go!

‘Fine,’ Maggie shouts back before she turns on her heels and walks away. After a couple of steps, she stops and turns back, but the boy has already disappeared into his own room, slamming the door behind him.

 

 

He showers.

He puts on clean clothes. His boots, dark blue jeans, a black tank top and black flannel shirt with short sleeves. His vest. The red rag dangles from his back pocket. He makes sure his knife is secure before stepping out of the bathroom.

The house is quiet.

The rest of his family has already left for the party.

He feels a little sick at the thought of having to go on his own.

He forces himself to walk down the stairs.

Beth is sitting on the last step. Hair braided, clean, wearing a dress with sunflowers on it. She stands. ‘Maggie told me to tell you,’ she grimaces at that sentence and then laughs, ‘she’s sorry. The thing no one wants to tell you about Tara? She’s gay, Dare. That’s why they were teasing you a little bit. She told me it was okay to let you know since you got upset.’

‘Weren’t _upset_.’

‘Sure you weren’t. We like Aaron. Tara is family. Everything is fine.'

Daryl nods.

‘This party is silly but our family is waiting for us, okay?’

He bites his lip and nods again.

She holds out her hand.

 

 

 


	56. Serious spaghetti

 

* * *

 

 

 

The room actually goes quiet when he enters.

There are a lot of people already gathered in the living room and kitchen. Some he recognizes, most he doesn’t know. Men and women standing in small circles, talking to each other with cold drinks in their hands. Kids running around trying to sneak off with more cookies. It all stops when he steps over the threshold.

People even turn to look, not even hiding their curiosity.

He spots Nicholas and Aiden, who are standing on the other side of the room with a couple of their friends. There’s a nasty scowl on Nicholas’ face and he leans over to another guy to whisper something to him. It’s followed by an unnecessary nod in Daryl’s direction.

If it weren’t for Beth’s hand holding onto his so tightly, he would have made a run for the door.

‘Beth! Daryl!’ Deanna breezes over with a smile on her face. ‘So glad you both could make it.’

‘Glad to be here,’ Beth beams, ‘sorry we’re late. Daryl was kind enough to wait on me. It’s already dark outside and… It’s just new to be inside walls,’ she laughs. ‘Your house is beautiful.’

‘Thank you, dear. Help yourselves, there are drinks in the kitchen and there’s food on the table.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters when the woman looks at him expectantly. ‘Thanks.’

When they make their way over to the kitchen, Daryl can feel the gazes burning into his back. He catches whispers that sound like his name and sees poorly concealed fingers pointing at him. Some people look away guiltily while others show some guts and don’t look away at all. They just stare at him until he disappears into the kitchen.

It’s strange to be at a party. Now that he’s out of sight, the conversations start back up. People are laughing. Glasses chime.

‘I wonder if they have peach schnapps here,’ Beth says as she lets go of Daryl’s hand to lean on the table and inspect the bottles.

‘Peach schnapps sounds disgusting, but we have great whiskey,’ a voice comes from their left. A guy with brown hair and some stubble on his cheeks. He smiles easily as he leans one hip against the table, arms folded in front of his chest as he looks at Beth. ‘Can I get you a glass?’

‘Oh no,’ Beth smiles, ‘thank you. It was just an inside joke. Do you have some kind of soda? Something sweet?’

‘Something sweet, huh?’ the guy smirks before he reaches behind him to grab a can of coke and a cup. He pours it, hands it to the girl. ‘Here you go. My name is Spencer.’

‘Thanks,’ Beth beams. She takes the cup and hands it to Daryl. ‘I’m Beth and I’d like some water, please.’

‘Damn, girl,’ Spencer laughs but he turns around to fill another cup with water for her. ‘Hey, you’re Daryl, right?’

The boy nods into his cup.

‘Well, when Nicholas told me he had been beaten up by a Daryl, I wasn’t expecting a twelve year old.’

‘I’m fourteen.’

‘You’re small.’

Daryl narrows his eyes, ‘so? Don’t change the fact I’m fourteen.’

‘He _is_ small,’ Beth cuts in with a gentle smile, her hand trailing over the angel wings on the boy’s back. ‘What? You are! It’s not a bad thing, Dare, calm down.’

‘Yeah, Dare, calm down. We’re all friends here.’

Daryl glares at Spencer, ‘don’t call me that.’ Then he turns to Beth, ‘I’m gonna find Glenn. Wanna come?’

‘I can introduce you to some people,’ Spencer says quickly, hand darting out to briefly touch Beth’s elbow to get her attention. ‘There are some people you’d best avoid, but my brother is okay. You haven’t met Aiden yet, right?’

‘No, not yet,’ Beth says before turning to Daryl, ‘I think I saw Glenn and Maggie near the windows back in the living room. See you in a bit, okay?’

‘Fine,’ he mutters before he slinks back into the other room. There are more people here than in the kitchen. Deanna is standing next to her husband, surveying the party. Her gaze lands on Carl, who is talking to Mikey and Ron while Sam hops around them. They’re playing some kind of card game. Ron groans when Carl hold out his hand for a cookie, telling him to pay up.

He thinks about going over to them instead but doesn’t really want to. Carl is laughing easily, bumping shoulders with Ron and teasing Mikey now. The hesitance of their first meeting has melted away, the anxiety completely gone now. And it’s just building in Daryl. He hadn’t really felt it yesterday but now it’s starting to dawn on him that they are meant to stay here. With these people.

And they’re all looking at him with that strange mixture of awe and fear.

He makes way to the middle of the living room. People look at him but don’t talk to him. Their gazes all linger. Some elbow their neighbors, nod his way before looking pointedly at Nicholas and Aiden. Others whisper about the crossbow and interviews they had watched.

They know what he can do.

They know what he does.

‘Dare!’ Maggie smiles a little hesitantly from her spot on the couch. ‘We’re over here.’

He brings his hand to his mouth so he can gnaw on his thumb as he slinks over.

Glenn is sitting next to his wife, one arm looped around her shoulders as he talks to a guy. The conversation is a little halted, Glenn not quite sure how normal conversations work with people who don’t know him that well, but the man is laughing after a couple of seconds so he must have worked it out pretty quick.

‘You showered.’ The smile turns cheeky when he reaches Maggie.

‘Brushed my damn teeth ‘nd everything,’ Daryl says as he plops down on the armrest of the couch.

‘Daryl the stargazer.’ The boy’s head snaps up to see that Deanna’s husband followed him. The man is older, with gray hair and glasses. He’s wearing a shirt, cardigan and jacket. Daryl knows that his name is Reg. ‘I watch all the tapes,’ he says by way of explanation. ‘You liked my telescope.’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Or do you like the name Daryl the hunter better?’

‘Don’t give a damn about what ya call me.’

‘Daryl,’ Maggie chides. ‘Don’t be rude.’

‘That ain’t rude, would be rude if I told him to fuck off and leave me be.’ Daryl glares at his own knees.

‘ _Daryl_! I’m so sorry,’ Maggie says hurriedly, standing up and putting a warning hand on the boy’s shoulders, keeping him in place. ‘I don’t know what’s gotten into him.’

‘I’m not easily offended,’ Reg smiles. ‘I understand that it’s all very new for you. Everyone deals with it differently.’ He pointedly looks at Carl, who has moved to a corner of the living room with Jessie’s boys and is showing Sam a magic trick. It’s one Merle had taught Daryl and Daryl had taught Carl.

Daryl scowls.

‘Yes,’ Maggie smiles as she pushes Daryl off the couch and towards the door. ‘Excuse us for a second. Glenn?’

The Korean looks up from his conversation. His eyebrows shoot up when he sees his wife practically shoving the boy out onto the porch. He excuses himself hurriedly and follows. ‘What’s going on?’

The night air helps a little. Daryl breathes in deeply as he folds his arms in front of his chest, scowling darkly at his boots.

‘I don’t know,’ Maggie breathes as she runs a hand through her hair. ‘Dare?’

‘I want to go.’

‘No, no,’ Glenn says. ‘You’re not bailing. We’re in this together, man.’

‘You’re here with us now,’ the woman adds. ‘You’re with family.’

‘Everyone’s lookin’ at me,’ Daryl mutters, scuffing his boots together.

‘They’re not looking at you.’

The boy glares at the Korean. ‘I ain’t stupid, ya know.’

‘Fine,’ Glenn sighs. ‘Okay, they’re looking at you, but… you realize that most of them only heard stories, right? Hardly anyone looks at those dumb tapes, so what do they know about you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘They know some things.’

Daryl narrows his eyes, ‘like what?’

‘They know you’re just as old as Ron and Carl, but won’t stay inside the walls. First chance you got was this morning and you took it. Out of those gate like bullet.’

‘So?’

‘So why aren’t you scared out there? Ron won’t go outside. But maybe more telling is; why are you allowed to go? What fourteen year old is send out into the world with three words and a kiss to his forehead? That’s what they are wondering. And how you worked Nicholas to the ground, wouldn’t let him go until Rick tore you off of him?  They’ve got a pretty good idea, Dare.’

Daryl bites on his lip.

‘Let’s show them something else, okay? Come on,’ Glenn curls an arm around his shoulder and guides him back into the house.

It’s not really better this time around. He follows his friend, leans against his side while the man talks to other people but doesn’t join the conversation. After a couple of minutes, he slowly tears himself away from the Korean.

Glenn glances down at him.

‘I’m gonna find Carl for a bit.’

‘Okay. Don’t leave without letting me know.’

‘I won’t,’ Daryl murmurs before he slinks off to find his friend. Carl is sitting at the kitchen table with Ron, Sam and Mikey. They’re still playing their card game. Daryl leans against the back of Carl’s chair.

Sam is even worse at hiding his curiosity than the rest of the people at Alexandria. ‘Who are you?’ he demands to know.

‘Daryl,’ the boy mutters as he squints at Carl’s cards. He reaches out and pulls two from his hand, throwing them on the table. The Grimes boy nods and hums happily.

‘You beat Nicholas!’ Sam almost shouts but Ron shushes him quickly with a worried glance at Daryl. ‘You’re not getting a stamp.’

‘What?’ Daryl asks with a frown.

‘A stamp,’ Sam repeats slowly, like he’s too dumb to understand the concept. ‘I’ts for the people here. It makes you an official member.’

‘Of what?’

‘Alexandria,’ Sam sniffs. ‘You’re not getting a stamp.’

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Daryl mumbles into Carl’s hair and the boy sniggers. When Carl rearranges his cards, Daryl spots the stamp on his hand.

It really shouldn’t matter. It’s a fucking stamp.

‘I’m leaving,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Wanna go home?’

Carl frowns and turns half in his seat, ‘I’m in the middle of a game, Dare. Help me out here, then we can go.’

‘No. I’m leavin’ right now. You commin’ or not?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Carl says. ‘I want to finish this. There’s chocolate on the line, man.’

‘Fuck that,’ Daryl grouses as he pushes himself away from the chair and stomps back over to where Glenn is now talking to Rick and Carol. Their heads bend close together. He only manages to get shards of the conversation as he approaches.

‘- time. You know what it was like at the beginning,’ Carol says to Glenn. ‘He came, you can’t expect him to – Hi, Daryl.’

Daryl narrows his eyes, ‘y’all talkin’ about me now?’

‘Yes.’ Carol doesn’t bother to look apologetic. She just looks at him, almost daring him to get mad about it.

He doesn’t. Instead, he turns to Glenn. ‘I’m leavin’. For real now. I’m goin’ back to the house, see ya tomorrow.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing,’ Daryl snaps. ‘I just want to go back to the house.’

‘I’ll walk you,’ Carol says happily.

Rick frowns and opens his mouth to say something but changes his mind at the last second. Understanding dawns on his face. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘that’s a good idea. Thank you, Carol.’

‘You’re welcome. Come on, Pookie.’

Daryl frowns but Glenn shakes his head minutely so he just rolls his eyes. ‘Fine. Let’s go.’

On the way to the door, Carol tells anyone she knows that she’s just walking Daryl back to the house. She acts different now, voice all chipper and with that strange smile on her face. The one that makes her look soft and naïve. She excuses herself, saying that yes, they know they’re save but he’s just a kid, so….

It doesn’t bother him. He just hunches his shoulders and ignores most of the people. In the hallway,  he crosses Tara’s path. She’s nursing a beer and heading over to the staircase where Tyreese and Sasha are hiding out for the time being. She looks affronted.

‘You’re bailing? What about our plan? I was supposed to run first!

‘It’s my bedtime,’ Daryl says with a smirk. ‘I’m just a kid,’ he glances at Carol, ‘and apparently I’m afraid of the dark or something. I don’t fuckin’ know. You can bail, too, ya know.’

‘Rick will have my head. After Maggie is done with it,’ Tara points out with a faked shudder.

‘Sucks to be you,’ Daryl nods. Then he holds out his hand for a fist bump. ‘We cool?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tara smiles, ‘are we?’

‘Yeah. Totally.’

She bumps his fist. ‘Good.’

 

 

‘What are you even supposed to be?’ Daryl asks when Carol walks him back to the house. ‘Like, a sad housewife or something?’

‘Or something,’ Carol nods.

He stops walking. ‘I’m gettin’ real tired of everybody treatin’ me like I’m fuckin’ stupid, okay? What the fuck are you walkin’ me home for?’

‘Because Olivia arrived at the party and that means that there’s nobody at the armory anymore. We’re planning on taking some guns, just to be sure. I made sure the latch was open this morning so I can sneak in. I was planning on just disappearing from the party, but you made a great excuse to get out. So I’m walking you home.’

‘And then you’re going to rob the armory.’

‘Yup.’

Daryl rocks on the balls of his feet. ‘What’s the pretend for then? You’ve been acting all weird.’

‘It’s called normal and the people here like it,’ Carol says with a small grin. ‘There’s a police officer with a cute baby and a rowdy teenager. A nervous military man with a hot girlfriend. A Korean man with a farmer’s daughter and a wild child. Nobody is looking at anyone who is normal in that mix-up. I can just disappear.’

‘Oh.’ He thinks that over. ‘Can I have a gun, too?’

‘No. And you can’t tell the others.’

‘Does Glenn know?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t approve.’

Daryl hums.

‘Want to tell me why you suddenly wanted to leave?’

‘Because I don’t get to be invisible. Wild child? They’re lookin’ at me like I’m a wild _dog_. ‘s like my dad always said, right? With those city slickers… One of them days, they’re gonna scrape you off of their heels like you were dog shit. Guess he meant all y’all, you know? The group, but… ‘s different now. We’re blood, right? Can’t shake that.’

‘No. You can’t.’

‘Don’t give a damn about what they think,’ Daryl mutters as he scuffs his boot on the curb.

‘You do, that’s why you’re sulking,’ Carol tells him bluntly. ‘I know it’s annoying to hear, but you’re one of the sweetest boys I’ve ever met,’ she smiles and reaches out to stroke his cheek. ‘You have to give them time to see that. _We_ didn’t see that at first, but you gave us time and now we’re never letting you go.’ She pulls him into a hug, stroking his hair when he relaxes against her frame.

The front door of the house next to them opens. Warm light spills onto the porch.

‘Daryl!’ Aaron calls out. ‘And Carol, hey.’

The boy draws back from the hug but lets his fingers curl around Carol’s belt, keeping her close as he looks at the man warily. ‘Thought you were going to that party over there?’

‘Oh,’ Aaron puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs a little, ‘I was never going to go ‘cause of Eric’s Ankle. Thank God.’ He laughs softly.

‘Why the hell did you tell me to go then?’

‘I said try,’ Aaron answers easily. ‘You did. They have parties like that all the time. It’s the sort of thing that gets harder to commit to the more times you put it off, you know? Next time won’t be so bad. Or scary.’

‘Weren’t scared,’ Daryl bites back immediately.

‘No. Of course not, I’m sorry.’ Aaron glances at Carol and seems to be hiding a smile. ‘Is the party over already?’

‘Not yet,’ Carol smiles. ‘I’m just walking Daryl home. We knows it’s… I just wanted to make sure he got home okay.’ She curls an arm around his shoulders and squeezes. ‘I’ll go back once he’s settled in. So many people to meet still!’

Daryl winces at the shrill sound of her fake voice and then just glares at the concrete.

‘We can look after him for you,’ Aaron offers. ‘Have you eaten yet, Daryl? Come in and have some dinner.'

Carol looks down at him and waits for his answers. She’s leaving this up to him.

He’s not sure.

‘Come on,’ Aaron laughs and nods to his house. ‘It’s some pretty serious spaghetti. Good night, Carol.’ He turns on his heels and walks back into his home. He leaves the door open.

 

 

Daryl carefully walks into the hallway. After a last glance at Carol, who is quickly walking down the street to head over to the armory, he closes the door behind him. He knows the rough lay-out of the house because they are all the same.

Aaron and Eric’s house seems a little less generic, however. There are boots in the hallway, caked with mud and probably belonging to Aaron. Maybe he had just kicked them off when he’d come home this afternoon, after he’d spend most of the day in the woods with Daryl.

The coatrack holds Aaron’s parka and Eric’s jacket. Various scarves are thrown over it as well. Some with obnoxiously loud colors but most in muted brown, gray and black. He thinks the ones with the loud colors might have been put there as a joke. He can’t imagine Aaron going out of the gates wearing that. It would make him one hell of a target.

There’s one license plate screwed to the wall.

He looks at the boots and shoes gathered beneath the coatrack and thinks about kicking his own off. He decides not to. Nerves are causing his fingertips to tingle. If he needs to make a run for it, he’s going to need his boots.

 ‘-didn’t forget the salt. Just sit down.’

‘But did you put in _enough_? Let me taste. Aaron, let me taste it!’

‘It’s fine. Okay, let me grab a spoon, just sit down.’

‘Just give me that one, it’s-‘

‘No! I used that to put the raw meat in, are you crazy? Here.’

Daryl follows the voices into the living room. It’s pretty dark in here. None of the lights are on. There’s light coming from the kitchen, however, along with the smell of spaghetti. Daryl’s mouth waters. It didn’t used to be his favorite food, he’d only eaten canned spaghetti rings when he was younger, but he’s grown to like it since the apocalypse. Even cold, it’s one of his favorite things to eat now. And this smells ten times better than the stuff they find in dusty cupboards.

The table is set for two people. There are candles on either side. Eric is sitting on the chair closest to the kitchen. Right now he’s tasting the sauce, passing the spoon back to his boyfriend and nodding enthusiastically.

‘Yeah, you’re right. It tastes great,’ he laughs. Then he spots Daryl. The boy is standing in the living room, nervous fingers plucking at his lower lip, dark hair almost hiding his small eyes. ‘Daryl! You came in!’ Eric says, so surprised that Daryl flinches and wonders whether he wasn’t really meant to come in after all. That it was just one of those polite things people said.

‘Yeah, I mean,’ he takes a hesitant step backwards, glancing at the door. ‘Aaron said that…’

‘That we have some serious spaghetti,’ Aaron says as he steps out of the kitchen, carrying two plates of steaming pasta. ‘And we do. Come on in,’ he puts one of the plates down in front of Eric, and the other one next to him. At the place that hasn’t been set for it. Then he grabs another plate off the kitchen counter and puts it on the other side of the table.

‘Fork, knife, spoon!’ Eric hisses at his boyfriend, waving a frantic hand at the kitchen.

Aaron puts his hands on his shoulders, kissing the red hair with a laugh. ‘I’m all over it, relax. Do you want something to drink, Daryl?’

‘Just water,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Thanks.’

Aaron hums as he grabs the utensils and a glass for the boy. There are already wine glasses on the table and he passes a bottle to Eric so he can fill them. A water pitcher is placed on the table as well and Aaron throws a bunch of napkins down before he falls into his own seat.

Daryl slowly walks to the chair next to Eric. He sits down gingerly.

‘Great!’ Eric beams at Aaron. Then he looks at Daryl. ‘Do you want to say grace? We don’t, usually, but if you want to, we can take a moment of course.’

‘What?’ Daryl frowns. ‘Oh. No. I mean – I…’

‘It’s fine,’ Aaron cuts in. ‘Enjoy.’

The pasta is steaming hot. Daryl hunches over his plate, shoveling the food into his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Eric twirls it onto a spoon before neatly eating it, but he has never learned that trick so he just slurps the strands that don’t quite make it into his mouth back inside.

He hums a little under his breath, shifting in his seat to get more comfortable as the heat of the food slowly starts to spread through his body. His boots tap against the legs of his chair as he wolfs the food down.

He misses the amused look Eric shoots Aaron. Or the way Aaron hides his smile by taking another bite.

When his plate is already half-empty, he suddenly remembers that he’s being rude. He looks up at Aaron, through his fringe and mumbles, ‘’s good. Thanks.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’

‘Yeah.’ He glances at Eric’s plate and sees that the man has hardly even made a dent in his pile yet. He makes a conscious effort to eat more slowly.

‘Hmm!’ Eric swallows quickly and wipes his mouth on the napkin. ‘How was the party, Daryl? Did you get roped into a conversation with Mrs. Neudermeyer? She’s the one who always talks about wanting a pasta maker. We’re all really trying to get her to shut up about it, but it hasn’t worked so far. I mean, we have crates of dried pasta in here but she wants to make her own or something. I really think she just wants something to talk about.’

Daryl shrinks into his seat. ‘Nah,’ he mutters, ducking his head a little, ‘didn’t really talk to nobody. Talked to Reg, I guess, but…’ He glances at Aaron who’s looking at him curiously. ‘Didn’t go too well.’

‘Oh!’ Eric waves a hand. ‘Never mind that, just be glad you didn’t get stuck with her. Next time when there’s party, you just stick with us and we’ll make sure you never have to hear the story about the pasta maker. Or Aaron could just, you know _, find one_.’

‘It’s the end of the world,’ Aaron says with a small smirk, ‘I’m sorry, but pasta makers haven’t been my top priority for a while.’

‘Or ever,’ Eric answers before he turns to the boy again. ‘When I met Aaron, he was still eating those instant noodles, like, always. He kept using these excuses, right? He worked abroad a lot and when he came home he didn’t want to go to the store first thing, so he’d just live off instant noodles for the first week. And then he’d be off again so…’

Daryl glances between the two guys. ‘Right.’

‘So I just moved in and took care of it,’ Eric shrugs.

Aaron snorts into his wine. ‘You just didn’t want to live in that bachelor pad of yours.’

‘I had a perfectly nice home, thank you very much,’ Eric sniffs.

Aaron looks at Daryl and winks.

Daryl smiles back before continuing eating. He clears his plate before the two men do. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, a smear of tomato sauce now marring the skin. After a guilty glance at Eric and Aaron, who both didn’t notice, he grabs one of the napkins and cleans his hands and mouth.

‘Do you want some more?’ Eric asks. ‘There’s more, right?’

‘There’s more if you want more,’ Aaron nods.

‘I’m good,’ Daryl mutters.

‘He wants more,’ Eric says confidently, grabbing Daryl’s plate and practically throwing it to Aaron. ‘What?’ he asks when the other man lifts an eyebrow. ‘I can’t walk! He’s hungry, Aaron, come on. And he’s still growing! Fourteen years old, don’t act like you weren’t hungry all day every day when you were that age. Get him some more.’

‘Since you asked so nicely,’ Aaron says with a roll of his eyes as he gets up to make Daryl another plate.

‘I’m good, really,’ Daryl objects half-heartedly.

‘Shush,’ Eric says quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re too skinny. It’s painful to look at you, really. Do you want some more water, too? Aaron. He wants more water.’

Aaron sighs and puts the plate down in front of Daryl. He leans on the table for a second, drawing the boy’s attention. ‘Don’t mind him, okay? He talks a lot but, really, he means no harm.’

‘Water, Aaron!’

‘Yes, my love, my darling, my everything,’ Aaron sighs as he walks back to the kitchen.

Daryl snorts and draws the plate closer, ‘thanks. It’s really good.’

‘ _Anyway_ ,’ Eric says with a pointed look at his boyfriend’s back. ‘you need to eat a lot, grow some muscles because that frame? It weighs a ton. Let me tell you, I thought about getting rid of it because Lord knows Aaron’s not going to figure it out on his own, so I tried moving it. Nearly broke my back. So we just left it there. Turns out it’s a good thing now, but, you know,’ Eric shrugs, ‘eat up.’

Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘What?’

Eric looks at him. And then at Aaron. ‘I thought you’d told him this afternoon!’

‘No,’ Aaron says as he falls back into his seat, passing Daryl a fresh glass of water. ‘I didn’t have the chance.’

‘To tell me what?’

‘I have something to show you,’ Aaron says with a small smile, ‘after dinner.’

The boy puts his fork down and looks at him suspiciously.

Eric glances at him, at Aaron, before shifting awkwardly due to his broken ankle. ‘You want to hear something I heard today?’ He wags his eyebrows.

Daryl is still staring at Aaron.

‘It’s juicy,’ Eric leers as he tries to get the boy’s attention.

‘It’s a surprise,’ Aaron tells Daryl. ‘It’s in the garage. Don’t worry about it now. Eat your dinner, Dare.’

Daryl narrows his eyes at the nickname but lets it slide.

Eric waves his fork around and sighs, ‘anyone want to hear my juicy story or are we really that invested in the motorcycle you have hidden away in the garage for him to work on so he doesn’t have to go hunting when he wants to retreat somewhere?’ The man smirks at Daryl, who’s staring at him now. ‘It’s a motorcycle. That’s what he wants to show you. What?’ he asks when Aaron groans. ‘He doesn’t like surprises, Aaron. Jees.’

‘A motorcycle?’ Daryl echoes.

‘Yeah,’ Eric smiles. ‘You can see it when we’ve finished. Listen to Aaron, eat your dinner, Dare.’

Daryl has the weird feeling that he’s being played. He glances at Aaron, who’s staring at his boyfriend with a look of annoyance and amusement, then at Eric who is picking at his pasta again while humming under his breath.

He eats his dinner.

 

 

The motorcycle is in pieces.

Daryl slowly lopes down the small set of stairs and steps into the well-lit garage. There’s a workbench on his left, overflowing with parts of an engine. There’s a headlight that he picks up and examines. The metal feels cool against his skin.

‘When I got this place,’ Aaron says as he follows the boy, ‘there was that frame and some parts and equipment. Whoever lived here built them.’

‘’s a lot of parts for one bike,’ Daryl mutters as he puts the light back down.

‘Whenever I came across any parts out there, I brought them back here. I didn’t know what I’d need. I always thought I’d learn how to do it.’

Daryl walks over to the frame that’s covered by a piece of cloth. He peeks under it, sees nothing but a metal frame and glances a little guiltily at Aaron, like he’s not sure whether he was actually allowed to look. The other man is leaning against the work bench with one hip, hands in his pockets. He’s smiling.

‘Maybe it’s time you learn how to do it,’ he tells the boy.

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t have the time,’ Aaron says honestly. ‘And because Glenn told me that you don’t want to go to school? I mean, I can’t guarantee that this will replace sitting in that other garage with the rest of the teens, but… it’s something, right? You could come here in the morning, evenings, whenever you want and just work on it.’

Daryl narrows his eyes a little as he grabs a wrench, tapping it against the palm of his hand. ‘My brother used to have a bike. He’d let me hang out with him while he worked on it, hand him shit, get him a new beer. Didn’t do nothing myself. Don’t know shit about it.’

‘You know something about cars,’ Aaron says. ‘Shane used to teach you.’

‘How the fuck do you know that?’

‘Glenn.’

‘Showin’ me how to change the oil and top it off ain’t the same thing as fixin’ a bike from scratch.’

Aaron shrugs. ‘No, but it’s a start. There are a lot of people around here that know their way around an engine. They could teach you. It’s not much of a school without teachers.’

‘Who’s that?’ Daryl asks suspiciously.

‘That’s for you to find out,’ Aaron smiles back. ‘Talk to people. Find out what they know. What they can do.’

‘Their skill, right?’

‘Or their hobby,’ Aaron nods. ‘It’s fine if you don’t want to do it. It was just an idea Eric and I had, you seemed….’ He laughs and shakes his head a little, ‘you seemed like the type of kid that would like this sort of thing. I’m sorry. Even I can’t escape stereotyping.’

Daryl gives him a weak smile and pushes his hair out of his eyes.

‘You’re good out there, but you don’t _belong_ out there, Dare. I know it’s hard getting used to people getting used to you and I understand that you need to be out there sometimes. That’s why you like to hunt. It makes you feel useful, and it gets you out of here. Win, win, right?’

The boy bites on his lower lip and avoids the man’s eye. He nods.

‘Maybe this can be that place for you, too. You don’t have to go outside the walls just to get away. You can come here. We won’t bother you while you work,’ Aaron says, ‘though I can’t promise we won’t feed you anymore spaghetti at the end of the day. Eric was right. You’re skinny.’

Daryl snorts and peeks under the blanket again.

‘So, what do you say?’

‘I still get to hunt?’

‘We all have jobs to do. That one is yours, right? That’s what you said.’

Daryl looks at him. ‘Right. So there’s people out there who know shit? How to get it runnin’, and ya want me to get them to teach me. That right?’

‘That’s right. We have a couple of cars, but a bike would be great for scouting. Gets you in and out quick. Sometimes the roads are clogged.’

‘If I fix it up,’ Daryl says as he leans on the frame, ‘you’ll let me ride it?’

Aaron laughs. ‘You’ll have to ask Glenn that.’ He turns to walk back to the living room. ‘But it seems a little unfair to have you do all the work and not have you ride it. But that’s just my opinion, you’ll have to convince Glenn. And Maggie of course. Rick, too. Michonne –‘

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daryl laughs as he rounds the frame and jogs to catch up with the man. ‘Everyone but Judith. You gonna give me clues, at least? ‘bout who knows what around here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Bet I can get Eric to spill.’

Aaron turns around. The skin around his blue eyes is wrinkling due to his smile. He reaches out, slowly, giving the boy enough time to dart away from his touch. The hand lands on a bony shoulder instead. He laughs softly, squeezes. ‘Bet you could, Dare.’

 

 

 


	57. Flares

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl is sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter. There’s a chocolate-chip cookie in his hands. It’s still warm. He slowly breaks a piece off and puts it in his mouth, enjoying the way the sweetness melts on his tongue. The whole kitchen smells of chocolate. The oven next to him is open and still cooling after Carol used it.

The woman walks back into the kitchen with Judith on her hip. They’d been watching her on the small monitor. A couple of minutes ago, the little girl had started to get fuzzy. The small sobs had grown into a full-blown tantrum which had lasted until she’d cried herself back to sleep. When she woke up again, Carol had decided that she’d had enough sleep for now and went upstairs to get her.

‘Can you watch her for a second?’ Carol asks as she breezes back in. ‘I need to clean the table.’

Daryl nods and takes the little girl, placing her into his lap. Little hands reach up to touch his hair but he holds out his pinky and she makes do. The cookie might be a bit much for her to handle, but he smears some of the melted chocolate on his finger and lets her suck it off.

‘She’s going to have the same sweet tooth as you do, if you keep that up,’ Carol smiles at him.

‘Ain’t no bad thing. Every Dixon had their poison, ya should be glad mine’s chocolate.’

‘And cigarettes,’ the woman says, ‘don’t think we can’t smell them on you.’

‘Haven’t lit one up since before.’

‘Before?’

‘Before we came here.’

Carol’s hands still where they’d been wiping down the counter. Soap bubbles grow between her fingers as she squeezes the cloth, fingers twitching a bit even though the rest of her doesn’t move. She’s staring at a spot on the counter, eyes distant.

‘What?’ Daryl asks. He pops a piece of the cookie into his mouth and lets Judith nibble on a tiny piece as well.

‘It used to be: before all of this. Before the quarry,’ Carol says with a small laugh and a shake of her head. ‘Can you even remember the quarry? It seems like decades ago. Before the CDC. Before the farm. The prison.’ She takes a deep breath and turns around so she faces him. ‘And now this place.’

‘Yeah,’ the boy answers slowly. He looks a bit uncertain. ‘That’s what this is, right? A new home?’

The woman slides her mask back in place. He can see it happen. That fake smile that leaves her eyes cold still, the way she won’t quite meet his gaze. ‘Of course!’ she says cheerfully, ‘I’m just being silly.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what, Pookie?’ she asks as she wrings the cloth out and puts it up to dry.

‘That stupid act ya do when you wanna be normal,’ Daryl says as he lets himself slide off the counter, landing on the floorboards with a hard thump. He walks over to the living room and puts Judith in her playpen, making sure that she has her favorite blanket before leaving her. ‘Don’t understand why ya even try it on me. You really think I’m stupid or something?’

‘Maybe it’s not a stupid act. Maybe this is just who I am. You don’t know me.’

Daryl laughs, ‘yeah. You keep tellin’ yourself that. I’m goin’ over to Aaron’s, work on my bike.’

He doesn’t wait for her answer. His boots wreak havoc on the porch steps, and his footsteps echo down the street as he makes his way over to Aaron’s place. The place starts to feel more familiar already. It’s only been one week now but it’s more like the prison every single day. The routine hasn’t changed. He goes out to hunt for a full day and then stays in for two days to rest up and relax. When he can’t go out, Aaron or Rick checks his snares for him, always bringing back a couple of rabbits.

He doesn’t go to school with Carl. Instead, he spends his free days in Aaron’s garage where people come by to teach him all kinds of things.

‘Good morning, Daryl!’

Daryl looks up to see that Jack is heading towards the gate with his crew. There’s an axe slung over his shoulder, they’re clearing an area for when Alexandria is going to expand. The boy raises his hand in greeting.

‘Did you clean the parts like I told you?’ The man asks as he walks backwards, trying to keep up with his crew while also talking to the boy.

‘Yeah, got it, man.’

‘Glue that baby up, okay? Make sure it seals tight. One part didn’t need glue, tell me which.’

‘The one with the ring,’ Daryl answers immediately.

‘Very good! You fix that up and I’ll come check your work when my shift ends. Who’s teaching you today?’

‘Mack.’

‘Good luck with that!’ Jack laughs. ‘See you later, Daryl!’

‘Yeah, later,’ Daryl mutters as he watches how the guy turns back around and slings an arm around his friend’s shoulders. The rest of the crew is laughing about something, pushing him around a little.

‘What?’ Jack laughs, ‘he’s a good kid. Leave him be.’

When he gets to Aaron and Eric’s place, Mack is already waiting for him at the kitchen table. The mornings are usually spend on theoretical stuff. Mostly chemistry and anything to do with electricity so he understands what’s going on inside an engine. He now understands how batteries work, how they get charged and how to hook them onto anything. Chemistry is more difficult because he’d hardly ever heard about molecules before. The wriggly lines and symbols still confuse him but Mack is one of the most patient people.

He doesn’t mind explaining something three times, in three different ways, until Daryl finally gets it. They build molecules out of things in the living room because it’s sometimes easier for Daryl to understand the concepts when he can see and touch them. When he can manipulate molecules, not in his head, but by moving the pillow that represents carbon monoxide.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Daryl says as he slides into his seat. ‘Judith was throwing a bit of a fit and Carol was busy, so… Sorry, sir. Here,’ he grabs his notebook from his backpack and hands it to the man. ‘I didn’t understand the last problem, but I think I got the rest.’

Mack looks over his work, sometimes squinting a bit to see what the boy had written down – his handwriting is terrible but getting better now that he has practice – and nods. ‘Did someone help you with this?’

‘No,’ Daryl says as he shifts restlessly in his seat. ‘Wanted to do it myself. Did I fuck up?’

‘Language,’ Mack murmurs as he goes through the problems. ‘And no, not at all. You did really good. Sit still and I’ll show you how to solve the last one.’

Daryl sits still and learns.

 

 

Maggie laughs when he enters their home just before dinner time. The skin around her eyes wrinkling, hands reaching out to pull him to her chest to prevent him from ducking away once he realizes that she’s laughing at him. She brushes his hair back, kisses his forehead, the lips still curled in a smile.

‘No, no, no,’ she laughs, ‘I’m sorry. Why are you looking like you crawled through an engine?’

‘’cause I did,’ he grouse, pushing her away from him. He rubs at his cheek but only smears more oil onto his skin.

Glenn is smiling at them from where he’s seated at the dinner table with Rick and Carl. ‘How did it go today, Dare?’

‘Real good,’ he nods, giving Maggie’s side a squeeze before walking over to the Korean, leaning onto the bony shoulders and resting his head on the top of Glenn’s. ‘Think I’ll have it up and runnin’ next week. I’ve put the tires on today, handlebars and everything, the engine is lookin’ good too, but I need Jack’s help some more. He didn’t have a lot of time today. I fucked up installing one piece but he fixed it for me.’

Glenn smiles, ‘yeah?’

‘Yeah. Eugene’s going to help me with the wiring and everything, but I’m gonna need someone to bend me some fenders. We know anyone who knows metal work?’

‘Thought it was your job to get to know everyone’s skills?’

Daryl shrugs, ‘never talked to so many people in my goddamn life. Never mind. I’ll ask Eric for a hint, he’ll know someone. I’m going to clean up a bit.’

‘Don’t take too long,’ Glenn warns, ‘dinner is almost ready.’

The boy salutes him before making his way to the stairs, humming under his breath.

‘Hey Dare?’ Glenn calls out after him. He smiles when he turns around, one eyebrow lifted in question. ‘I’m really proud of you, you know?’

Daryl grins, ducks his head a little, almost shy. ‘Wait until you see my bike.’

‘I can’t wait.’

The boy laughs softly before running up the stairs. He throws his vest onto his bed and undoes the buttons of his shirt before ducking into Sasha’s room. She’s on her bed, reading a book. ‘Hey Sasha, Eric said Aaron is going out tomorrow. Where are you going?’

‘There’s a warehouse up north he wanted to check out. Just scouting, the runners will go in later if we think it’s worth it. Why?’

‘Thought maybe you could drop me off a couple of miles out, but never mind then.’ He leans against the doorpost. ‘You doin’ okay?’

The woman nods, ‘yeah. I’m just glad they gave me that job, you know? Keeps me busy,’ she gestures at the book and rolls her eyes. ‘This gets boring quick.’

‘The whole gated community thing makes everything go boring quick,’ the teenager grins.

‘I know. They’re good people though.’

‘Yeah, they are,’ Daryl nods. ‘I got to clean up, so…’

‘I can see that,’ Sasha laughs. ‘Did you just dip yourself into oil or..’

He flips her off before walking to the bathroom. The shirt lands on the floor carelessly. He runs the hot water and scrubs his face until his cheeks are red. Then he takes a washcloth out of a drawer and lathers it with soap, scrubbing at his hands, wrists and arms. The water turns black. It stains the white sink.

‘Hey.’

Daryl glances up at the mirror, catching Carl’s reflection. ‘Hey, bro.’

Carl works his jaw and looks at his boots.

‘Spit it out.’ He knows Carl better than most people. It’s obvious that he’s dying to talk about something, even though he’s not sure how to breach the subject. 

‘Can I help you with the bike tomorrow?’

Daryl frowns, ‘what the fuck do you know about wiring?’

‘Nothing, but I can just hang out with you. Hand you shit.’

‘Psssh. Don’t need people handin’ me jack-shit,’ Daryl laughs. He sobers up a bit when he catches the dark look on his friend’s face. ‘The fuck are you askin’ for anyway? You can always come hang out. Not tomorrow though. I’m going out to hunt.’

‘Right,’ Carl sighs as he lets his head thud against the doorframe. ‘Just feels like I haven’t seen you in ages. You’re always at Aaron’s place now.’

‘Yeah, and you’re always hanging out with Ron, Mikey and Enid and you don’t hear me bitchin’ about it.’ Daryl says as he grabs a towel to dry himself off.

‘I like them,’ Carl nods, ‘but it’s not the same. They don’t get it. Any of it. And that’s fine, I guess, it’s just… I don’t know. It’s just different with them. I think Enid might understand though. Did you know she climbs the wall sometimes?’

Daryl frowns. ‘No. Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You followin’ her?’

‘No! I was sitting in the living room and she walked by. She climbed it right outside our window, I just saw.’

‘ _Right_ ,’ Daryl leers.

Carl rolls his eyes and folds his arms in front of his chest. The dark hair falls into his face, nearly hiding his expression. He needs a haircut. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ he mumbles. ‘I don’t think she likes me much.’

‘But you like her loads, right?’

Carl blushes. ‘Well, I mean… she’s pretty, I guess. I’m pretty sure she’s with Ron though.’

‘Know what my brother used to say? If they ain’t got a ring, they ain’t taken.’

‘That’s…’ Carl laughs, ‘that’s terrible.’

Daryl laughs and shrugs at the same time, throwing the towel into the hamper. ‘Worked for him.’

The grimes boy glances at his friend. ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

‘Think she’s a bratty, sarcastic little shit, is what I think.’

Carl gapes at him.

Daryl sniggers, ‘kiddin’, didn’t know I were already insulting your girlfriend. She seems all right. Hell, I don’t really know her. But I ain’t gonna steal your girl, if that’s what you’re really asking. Or Ron’s girl. Or whatever. Keep me out of that bullshit, okay?’

‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

Daryl reaches out to tap Carl on the forehead, ‘you listenin’? I said: keep me out of it. Come on, let’s go get something to eat, huh? I’m fuckin’ starvin’.’

The rest of their family has come to Rick’s house to have dinner, too. Tara and Rosita carrying two bowls of pasta, with Eugene carrying pitchers of water to the table. Abraham talks with Tyreese, trying to get the guy to join the building team. Beth is laughing with Carol and Sasha while Michonne tries to get Judith to eat. After four attempts, Rick takes his daughter, gently scolding her for making the woman’s life so hard but Michonne just laughs and calls her as stubborn as her old man.

 There’s not really enough room at the table for all of them, so Daryl and Carl crash onto the couch. Feet on the coffee table, shoulders pressed together because Daryl has a comic in has lap and Carl tries to read, too.

‘Does double trouble want two plates or are you sharing?’ Maggie asks from the kitchen.

‘Sharing,’ Carl and Daryl answer at the same time.

‘Don’t smear sauce all over that,’ Michonne warns. ‘I still want to read it.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Daryl mutters while Carl accepts the plate with two spoons from Maggie. It’s kind of hard to read like this. Their arms bumps, spoons clashing when they go after the same bit of rabbit. Sometimes he can’t flip the page or he pauses to take a bite and Carl whines about how slow he is, or he bitches about how Carl is eating more than his fair share.

They don’t stop doing it, however. They read the comic and listen to the roar of laughter coming from their family at the dinner table.

Carl passes Daryl a spoon full of food. He tips it too far to the right and some of the sauce drips onto the comic.

They look at each other with wide eyes. Glance at Michonne. And hide their sniggers behind each other’s hands.

 

 

Glenn loses Aiden on a run two days later.

Tara has head trauma.

Daryl goes to the infirmary, motor oil still on his hands, and sits by her side. Her wounds have been cleaned by Pete. She just needs a lot of rest. Until she wakes up, he has no way to tell how bad her injuries are.

So Daryl sits by her side and waits. He refuses to leave when a woman from Alexandria tells him to go home and get some rest. It’s dark, his family is waiting for him, there’s nothing he can do.

An hour later, the door behind him opens, closes. A warm hand on the back of his neck. Rick rubs soothing circles into his skin, draws him into his side, close enough so the cop can lean down and kiss his hair.

‘Come home,’ he whispers into the dark strands. ‘Glenn needs you.’

Daryl takes a deep breath, shakes himself out of Rick’s embrace so he can stand. He reaches out, curls Tara’s fingers into a fist and bumps it with his own.

 

 

‘We think Pete is hurting Jessie.’

Daryl looks up from where he’d been prepping his bow. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Why are you tellin’ me?’

‘You know why.’

Rick is standing in his bedroom. It’s still dark outside. The only light comes from the lamp on Daryl’s desk. The teenager is going out to hunt today. The knife has been cleaned and sharpened, the bolts checked, gears oiled. The boots laced tightly. He puts the bow on the bed and fastens his belt.

He’s not wearing a shirt at the moment, having just woken up. Muscles shift beneath his pale skin. There’s a faint trial of hair going from his belly button to the edge of his jeans now. It’s only patchy because the hair won’t grow on his scars.

‘No,’ the teenager says with a small frown. ‘I really don’t.’

‘I was hoping you could talk to Ron and Sam.’

‘Why?’ Daryl goes through his closet to find his black shirt. He shrugs it on before tying his red rag to one of his belt loops. With a grunt, he sits down on the floor, putting on some socks and his sturdy boots.

‘Because you’ve been in that position. You know how hard it is to ask for help.’

Daryl frowns as he looks up through his fringe at the cop. Rick has moved towards the bed, sitting down on it and playing with the edge of Daryl’s blanket just so he has something to do with his hands. When he realizes that he’s fidgeting, he resolutely shoves the blanket aside and folds his hands together.

‘What’re ya sayin’?’ the teenager asks. ‘You want me to roll up to some stranger’s house, barge in, get them to rat on their own dad? Fuck that, man.’ He pulls at the laces of his boots, ‘and it ain’t the same thing, neither,’ he adds as an afterthought. ‘Send Carol over. _That’s_ the same thing.’

‘Jessie doesn’t want me to intervene. I doubt she’ll talk to Carol.’

‘Then maybe you should mind your own damn business, how about that?’

 ‘Daryl. He won’t stop. It’s only going to get worse.’

‘Because you’re stickin’ your nose where it don’t belong,’ Daryl nods.

‘Dare…’

‘What?’ the teenager asks as he gets to his feet and buttons up his shirt, hiding the scars and the wedding rings. ‘If he’s done something wrong, if he’s beatin’ his wife? Lock his ass up or throw him out. What the fuck do you need me Scooby-dooing around for? You know what’s happening. This is a new world, man. You don’t need piles of evidence anymore.’

Rick sighs and shifts on the bed, ‘what if we throw him out and she follows him?’

‘Her choice,’ Daryl shrugs.

‘Like how it was your choice to follow your dad after Woodbury?’

Daryl doesn’t answer. He puts his vest on.

‘You were crying. You didn’t want to go but you still left with him.’

‘I were crying because you were kicking me out,’ Daryl snaps, ‘not because I was leaving with my dad. I’m done talkin’ about this. Stop actin’ like it’s the same damn thing.’

‘He’s abusing her,’ Rick says. ‘How is it not the same thing?’

‘Because I ain’t a goddamn housewife, ya fuckin’ pig. And my dad didn’t,’ he works his jaw, always stumbling on the word. ‘My dad didn’t abuse me.’

Rick huffs out a breath of amazed laughter. He rubs at his forehead with shaking fingers. ‘No,’ he laughs sarcastically, ‘of course not. He loved you _very much_.’

‘Yeah, he did. Talk smack about him again and I’ll fuck you up. Don’t ever think I won’t,’ the boy warns as he puts his bow onto his back. ‘My dad loved me. And I ain’t some damn victim, okay? I earned what I got and I might have learned the hard way, but at least I fuckin’ learned. You say I know how hard it is to ask for help? I didn’t need help. I needed people to stop stickin’ their noses in and stop making it worse.’

Rick shakes his head. ‘So we should just let him _beat his wife_?’

‘No. _You_ should do something. Protect and serve, right? But keep me out of it.’ He moves towards the door.

‘Can you please just _talk_ to them?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I got nothing to say,’ Daryl shrugs.

The door falls closed between them.

The sky is starting to turn gray as he walks towards the gates. Dawn is breaking over the wall. The guards are the only people up at this time of day. They’re dark silhouettes, shadows ghosting over the metal structure and in the clock tower. Sometimes he can see their scopes flashing in the early morning light, flashlights snapping on and off to signal something to the other side of time; mostly the all-clear.

He whistles sharply to get the attention of the people up there. ‘Vámonos! I’m opening it up!’

One of the woman comes running over to close the gate behind him again. Black hair in a tight braid and an automatic rifle on her back. ‘When can we expect you back?’

‘Dusk,’ he mutters.

‘Do you have your gun and flare?’

‘Check and check,’ Daryl nods. The gun is in his holster on his thigh, the flare tucked between his waistband and the small of his back. Beth had checked them out of storage for him yesterday.

‘Good luck, shoot straight,’ the woman smiles as the gate rattles and opens for him.

 

 

It’s almost noon when guilt starts to gnaw on his bones.

At first, he’s not sure what it is. He walks through the woods, checks his snares and follows trails until he loses them. One of the last snares is near the town, almost at the edge of it. He can see the shadows of civilization through the trees. Well, not really civilization anymore.

Curiosity drives him into the small town. He jumps over a rickety fence at the edge of a garden and noses around in a shed for a while. There are a lot of tools there, none of which he needs for his bike, and all the canisters are empty. He’s not going to find anything useful in this town. It’s on Alexandria’s doorstep, if they haven’t raided this yet, they’re more stupid than he’d even thought. He’s not even looking for anything useful. Instead, he’s looking for something fun to do.

He likes going through houses. He used to hate it, back when this all started, because it felt like he was just another vulture, picking at the remains of somebodies life. It feels different now. The wounds are not so fresh anymore. The pictures on the walls have faded, most of the people have been dead for a long time now.

Dust covers every surface. He ties his black bandana in front of his mouth as he rummages through cupboards and closets. Most of the doors of the houses have been broken open. He wonders whether Aaron and Eric did that, or Aiden and his running crew.

Some walls have messages on them. Black marker, paint, anything permanent. There’s one written by a woman called Lucy and she says goodbye to someone named Al. Tim wrote Vanessa to meet him at the safe zone: he had to go. Tariq warns Lamar not to head to the big city, it’s not safe. Some don’t have names. Most of those are _I love you_ and _I’m sorry_.

He’s in one of the houses near the center now. He slowly makes his way down the stairs towards the cellar. It’s dark. The bow is heavy in his hands. Boots tentatively touch the creaking steps, until they hit concrete.

Daryl takes a deep breath and flicks his flashlight on.

There’s a small hallway and one door. It has a note on it that says _don’t forget to knock, Henry_!

Daryl wonders how many times the guy had forgotten before their partner had put up the sign.

The door is open but Daryl knocks anyway. He listens for any movement inside but it stays quiet. With his foot, he pushes the door open further so he can slip inside.

It’s a darkroom. He knows that immediately because there are still pictures hanging from wires all over the room. They’ve lost their shine to dust, but he can still make out the images when he walks by with his flashlight. He recognizes some places. The living room upstairs, the street outside, the backyard that has a swing made from an old tire.

He takes the last picture on one of the lines down. It’s a group picture, taken in the kitchen of this house. Nine people, dressed up and laughing at the camera. One of them, the guy is the middle, is wearing a party hat. The woman at his side kisses his cheek. The rest of their friends are frozen mid-cheer, some with raised hands, others with open mouths.

Daryl smiles as he puts the picture down.

It must have been an old one. Others start to show signs of the Turn. Another candid shot of the guy, now just walking down the street and passing a row of armored tanks. There’s a picture of a door that has been taped closed by the police. The woman taking a picture of herself by using the mirror, her face covered by a gasmask. The two of them at a small airport, pointing up at a display above them that states that all flights have been cancelled, looking both confused and sad.

He’s glad that the last picture on the line is a shot from their back garden. It’s a little unfocused but that doesn’t matter. The sprawling garden, until it hits the forest and then the dying sun hiding between the leaves. It’s beautiful.

Daryl takes the picture down and puts it in his backpack.

He thinks about taking the first picture, too. It made him smile so that should be enough, but when he looks at it again, he’s not so sure anymore. The woman is blonde. She’s smiling.

‘Fuckin’ pig,’ Daryl mutters because the woman now reminds him of Jessie and that makes him think of Rick and that makes him a little sick.

He doesn’t take the picture with him. He leaves it on the floor instead.

The rest of his explorations are not as fun. He tries four more houses, picks up a couple of games he thinks Carl will probably like and finds three packages of cigarettes in a kitchen drawer, along with a bunch of lighters. He will give the lighters to Olivia when he gets back. He’ll keep the cigarettes.

He doesn’t smoke much, never had, but Will had been right; it’s a great way not to feel hungry. Or anything at all, for that matter. Sometimes it helps to keep him from crawling out of his own skin. Nerves going haywire over nothing, mind racing, fingers shaking.

He lights one now because there’s something sticking to his skeleton. An itch, a nervous energy, something he can’t quite place and it’s robbing him of everything he likes about exploring the houses; the quiet and the peace.

Smoke fills his lungs as he walks the streets. He kicks at a rock, angry at himself and a little frustrated. It only takes him three blocks to figure out that Rick’s words are still bugging him.

That it is guilt that is making his hands tremble.

The cigarette doesn’t help much.

He tries to tell himself that it’s not his fault that the woman is getting hurt. It’s not her fault either, probably. Not like it had been his fault that Will had taken the belt to his back and chest for fucking up all the time and breaking the rules. He can’t imagine that Pete does it for the same reasons as Will did.

He bites on the butt of his cigarette.

But that would mean that Pete is doing it _just because_.

And that’s just not fair.

He frowns and wipes his hair out of his eyes. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is. Pete is hitting his wife and that makes him a sick son of a bitch, even by Dixon standards. He’d seen Will and Merle fight with women all the damn time. There’d been a lot of screaming, punching the wall and posturing. Will planting his hands on the wall beside the woman’s head, towering over her and trapping her. Or Merle, throwing a glass at the opposite wall before jabbing his finger into a girl’s face and telling her it was all her fault that he got so riled up about nothing. The two oldest Dixon men sitting on the couch together, drinking beer and calling their last conquests every name in the book.

He’d also seen Will beat Merle when the girl he’d been dating had a bruise on her upper arm and wouldn’t tell him how she got it. He’d seen Merle get up from his seat at the bar to put one of his friends straight when he got too forward with a girl who’d said _no_.

That had been the Dixon way. All talk when it came to women: never laying a hand.

Daryl knows that it doesn’t make them good men. There are a few things more terrifying in the world than _expecting_ something bad to happen. He knows how scary it is to be backed up against a wall and have Will Dixon breathe down on you, trapping you, telling you to brace yourself. Or to have Merle Dixon rage at you, with those bulging muscles and that cutting tongue, so unpredictable that it was hard to tell which laws were sacred to him.

It didn’t matter that the blows never came, he supposes. Most of those girls had been scarred for life anyway.

Terror is something you never truly forget. It simply takes too long to fade.

He takes another drag from the cigarette before jumping over a fence and walking back into the woods.

Maybe he _should_ talk to Ron and Sam. Maybe he should talk to Jessie.

Maybe he could help, like Rick wanted him to.

Or maybe he’ll just make everything worse.

He has not yet forgotten his own lessons from the times people had tried to stick their nose in his business. The scar on his back, one of the fainter ones, one that will fade in time, the one that had taught him to keep his mouth shut about anything that was going on at home.

He hadn’t needed any help.

He throws the cigarette onto the floor and stomps it out with the heel of his boot.

And Rick is already on the case. What’s he going to do but cause more trouble?

The nicotine hasn’t chased the guilt entirely, but at least his hands are steady when he ducks between the trees and disappears from sight.

 

 

Two hours later, he stumbles upon a campsite.

He frowns and looks around.

The tracks are fresh but he can’t quite tell how many people were here. Someone ran, others followed, that’s all he can tell. With a frown, he follows the tracks. The woods around him are quiet. He can hear his own heart start to pound in his chest. Sweat pricks at the back of his neck and in the palms of his hands. Fingers go white on his bow.

The tracks end in bloodshed.

He freezes. Stares.

There are severed limbs scattered on the ground. Arms. A set of waists and legs. There’s blood seeping into the forest floor.

He feels sick when he realizes that the bodies aren’t complete. There are no chests. No heads. Where are the other two arms?

The blood is still wet.

This just happened, he thinks hazily, looking around.

The woods are quiet.

He keeps on walking. He’s careful to move from tree to tree, trying to stay behind some cover for most of the time. It’s hard when he doesn’t know where the threat is coming from.

It doesn’t take him long to find the third body.

A woman, tied to a tree. She’s naked. Her guts are spilling out from a slash that runs across her belly. Dirty blond hair hides most of her face.

Daryl lowers the bow and carefully walks over.

Flies are already buzzing, landing on the sticky blood.

Guilt replaced by nicotine, replaced by fear.

With a shaking hand, he reaches up, grabs her hair and tilts her head up. She was young. Older than him, though, maybe as old as Beth. The skin is turning gray, except for the wounds on her forehead. Three scratches really. They form a neat W.

The woman opens her eyes. Bloodless lips peel back as she starts to snarl.

He grabs his knife and plunges it into her skull, yanking it out and stumbling back. The head falls onto her chest again.

‘What the fuck,’ Daryl whispers. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Someone did this.

Someone close to their walls.

Someone close to _him_.

Fear crashes through him. He takes a couple of stumbling steps backwards until he’s in a small clearing. He reaches to the back of his jeans, clumsy fingers sliding over the belt until they find what they’re looking for.

He looks up at the blue sky.

Then back at the flare gun that’s now in his bloodied hand.

If he sends it up, everyone will know where he is.

Everyone at Alexandria.

Everyone in these woods.

He shouldn’t do it. He _shouldn’t_.

But he’s scared.

 

So he raises the gun and the flare explodes in the sky above him.

 

 

 


	58. Growing pain

 

* * *

 

 

As soon as the flare explodes in the sky, he regrets ever pulling the trigger.

Red bleeds into blue high above him. He half expects it to drip down from the clouds, trickle down the leaves, down his face, drenching him to the bone, but it just fades like it was never even there.

The gun in his hands. That horrible orange color, the weird smell that should remind him of gunpowder but doesn’t. He wants to throw it into the bushes, wants to get rid of any evidence of what he has done. It’s no use. Like the trigger pulled before a race; there’s no holding back the horses now.

He looks back at the woman tied to the tree. She had been alive when that had happened. He’s pretty sure she was torn to pieces by walkers. The guts are hanging out. He can name some of them thanks to Hershel and Beth. The blood doesn’t frighten him. Neither do the guts or the empty eyes. He doesn’t care that she’s naked. Hardly minds that she’d been alive because she’s dead now and it doesn’t matter anymore. She reminds him of Beth and Jessie and every blonde woman he has ever met but she’s not them so that doesn’t matter either.

With slow steps he walks over to her.

‘I’ve seen worse,’ he tells the body.

He knows there are bad people out there. He has walked through Terminus, past the bodies hanging from meat hooks. The chests spread open, ribs removed, blood still dripping onto the floor in that maddening rhythm. The lists with names and their weight. The saws, the machetes, the knives.

He remembers Woodbury with its simple people and dark secrets. The tales of heads in fish tanks, of the daughter a father had tried to keep, of the torture where no one could hear Glenn scream but Maggie. The tank, the wall coming down, the people murdered by their own leader.

He has been with bad people, too. With Joe who had made him a deal he couldn’t refuse because he hadn’t been the one paying the price. With Beth who had braved more than she should have until her blade had saved his life.

He has seen skulls split open beneath his boots.

He has seen his friends die.

‘I’ve _done_ worse.’

Randall begging for forgiveness in the darkness of the barn.

Gareth’s eyes growing wide when the machete transfers from hand to hand.

He reaches out and grabs the dirty blonde hair again. Fingers twisting in the strands, his free hand resting on the bark of the tree. ‘ _I ain’t scared of nothing_ ,’ he hisses.

But he is.

With a sound of disgust, he pushes himself away from the tree. There’s bile rising in his throat. It burns in his stomach.

He fears what this means. The W etched into a forehead. Nobody just _does_ that. Not unless they want other to see and know. It’s a warning or a taunt or both. This is not just one person, because there are three people and they had survived for over two years until they met their doom here. Even with a gun, one person couldn’t have done all this. The severed limbs, the woman tied to the tree. And why send a message of fear when you’re just one person. Why not just slip away like the ghost any survivor can be in this new world?

This is a group. He can feel it in his bones. And they’re vicious and they’re near.

And they will come for Alexandria when they discover it.

That is what he fears.

He fears the walls coming down.

He fears the bloodshed inside his own home, the running, the starving, the panic of never being enough to support his family. That family getting smaller. They’ve been lucky for a long time now. It will run out.

Dixon’s don’t get lucky.

Daryl looks at the blue sky and feels how sweat drips into his eyes.

Dixon’s don’t get scared, either.

They get smart.

‘Move your ass, boy,’ Daryl says to himself and he’s glad that his voice is getting deeper every day. He almost sounds like the memory he has of Merle. A couple more packages of his cigarettes and he’ll be able to have that smoky sound Will used to have.

‘Come on,’ he wobbles on the balls of his feet for a second. ‘Get goin’, little king.’ He throws his bow onto his back and runs towards one of the trees at the edge of the clearing. With a grunt, he runs up against the bark to grab hold of the lowest branch, pulling himself up. He keeps climbing higher until he’s hidden by the leaves.

Balancing on the branch is tricky but he manages to grab the set of binoculars out of his backpack. He searches the woods. Everything is quiet and still.

He grabs his gun and waits for whoever is coming to get him.

 

 

Car doors slam shut in the distance.

Daryl lowers the binoculars and puts the gun away. He leans against the bark and closes his eyes, swinging his feet gently. It’s easier to focus on the sounds like this. Four people are walking through the woods. One fast, one slow, two right in the middle.

The fastest one makes the most sound, though the one at the back is dragging his feet so that’s just as bad.

‘It was here, right?’

‘Around here, yes. Spread out?’

Daryl tilts his head to the side and looks at the clearing.

Glenn, Aaron, Sasha and Nicholas form a small circle. Their backs are towards each other, guns in their hands as they scan the woods surrounding them.

Sasha shakes her head at Aaron’s soft question, ‘no. Give him a second. He probably heard the car, so either he’s on his way or he’s around here somewhere. Quiet.’

‘Or somebody else got to him first.’

Before Sasha can answer, Daryl whistles the all-clear. He climbs down easily, lowering himself from the last branch and falling to his feet. He winces a bit when pain shoot up his ankles. The drop was higher than he’d expected. When he looks up, he sees that Glenn is striding over. He’s covered in blood. It’s on his face and shoulder, drying on the pale skin. The shirt is drenched with sweat.

His hand is steady when he reaches for Daryl’s shoulder, nails digging into the leather vest. ‘ _Are you okay_?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl breathes as he looks up at his friend, ‘what the fuck happened to you?’

‘We were out there – it –‘ Glenn shakes his head, ‘walkers. I got hit by a ricochet, it’s nothing. What’s wrong? I saw the flare go up and – we ran into Aaron, but… What-‘

Daryl spots the blood on Glenn’s shoulder, how the stain on his shirt is darker there. He probably got clipped by it. His gaze wanders to Nicholas, who’s more muddy than bloody, but still had wounds on his face. A bruise forming on his forehead, a scratch on his cheek, one side of his jaw swelling up. Daryl glances back at Glenn, ‘something fucked up is going on out here.’

‘What do you mean?’

He leads them to the bodies. The limbs with the missing pieces and the woman. Sasha inspects her forehead, frowning a bit and showing it to Glenn, who nods with a sigh. He folds his hand over his eyes for a second. Aaron and Nicholas just stand there, staring at the gruesome scene.

The scout finally snaps out of it first. He looks at the teenager, ‘this just happened?’

Daryl nods. ‘About an hour ago, I’d say. You were pretty quick gettin’ here. Had just happened when I came across it.’

‘Yeah, we were just coming back,’ Sasha tells him. ‘We were still in the car when we saw the flare go up in Alexandria. Maggie told us to go, we ran into Glenn and Nicholas on the road.’

‘We need to tell Rick,’ Glenn sighs as his hand slides down his face, smearing some of the blood. ‘There was…. We’ve seen this before. The W in a forehead of a walker, we’ve seen it before near Alexandria. You think it’s got anything to do with the guy you’ve been following around?’

‘What guy?’ Daryl asks.

Aaron shrugs, ‘Sasha and I spotted a guy in a red poncho two days ago, we’ve been trying to follow him so we can observe him, but we keep losing him. He’s good, but he’s alone. This wasn’t done by one person.’

‘So there’s a guy out there we don’t know and there’s whoever did this,’ the Korean states, shoulders slumping a little.

‘There are a lot of people out there we don’t know,’ Aaron says softly. ‘It’s not just us.’

‘Feels like it, sometimes. Us,’ Glenn looks at the dead woman. ‘And all of them.’ He works his jaw and puts a hand over the wound on his shoulder, grimacing a little. ‘Let’s get out of here. We need to get back to Alexandria.’

‘What about the guy?’

Everyone looks at him.

‘The guy with the red poncho,’ Daryl presses.

‘What about him?’ Sasha asks as she cocks her head to the side. ‘We lost his trail.’

‘Bet I could find it again.’

‘Dare,’ Glenn says, ‘we need to get back home. There’s – we need to go back, now, before anything else happens, okay? Maggie needs us there.’

It takes him a second to realize what his friend said. He takes a quick step towards him, ‘anything _else_? What? What happened?’

The Korean hesitates for a second. His gaze flicks to Aaron and Sasha. ‘It’s Rick,’ he says eventually. ‘He – he got into a fight with Pete. It got ugly. Apparently Pete had been putting his hands on Jessie, hitting her. When Rick confronted him, they fought.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Rick had a gun. He took aim but… Michonne knocked him out before things could escalate. They’re holding a meeting tonight to decide what to do with the both of them.’

Daryl stares at him.

Aaron shakes his head and looks away.

Sasha grips her rifle a little tighter.

‘What can they do?’ Daryl asks. ‘To Rick?’

‘They can kick him out.’

‘Pssh,’ the teenager scoffs, ‘they’d die without us.’

‘We’d be fine,’ Nicholas snaps at him. ‘We were fine before you all came! Better, even.’

‘Yeah?’ Daryl challenges, ‘you gonna take care of the people who did all this then? Ya couldn’t even do a damn run without fuckin’ everything up, ya dumb asshole. If it weren’t for Glenn, you’d have been dead already! Don’t think we don’t know what happened with Aiden. You didn’t even check whether your best friend were alive. He might have made it if you’d done your damn job, ever told Deanna that, or were ya just too busy tryin’ to get Glenn kicked out?’

Nicholas glares at Glenn for a moment before turning back to the teenager. ‘ _I’m_ fucking everything up? Yeah, well, at least I didn’t shoot off a damn flare because I wet my pants at the sight of a roamer.’

‘Enough, that’s enough,’ Aaron cuts in. ‘Glenn is right, we should go back to Alexandria. _All of us_ ,’ he says when Daryl opens his mouth angrily.

‘We need to find that guy,’ Daryl says stubbornly.

‘Why?’ Glenn asks.

‘Because he’s out there and so is whoever did this.’

Glenn tilts his chin a little higher. ‘Aaron, take Nicholas and Sasha back to the car. We’ll be right there.’ They listen to their disappearing footsteps. The woods around them are still except for the birds among the leaves. The Korean puts his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders. ‘Talk to me.’

Daryl looks away.

‘You’ve never shot a flare before.’

‘Never had one.’

Glenn works his jaw. ‘You never radioed for help before.’

‘Did.’

The hands twitch in the pockets of his jeans, he grits his teeth for second. ‘Okay. You never radioed for help because you were scared before. And don’t tell me you were never scared before.’

Daryl narrows his eyes. He remembers running through the woods a couple of miles from the prison, heart pounding in his chest, walkers closing in around him. Or that time he’d wandered into the remains of Woodbury only to find the heads in the fish tanks. Or that abandoned shed out north, walls coated with bloody handwriting, horrible tales about what had happened to whoever had written it, a walker tied to a bed in the corner, confirmation that it hadn’t just been tales.

‘What happened, Dare?’

‘Two people chopped to pieces and one strung up and gutted like a pig, that ain’t enough reasons for me to freak out?’

‘So you just freaked out?’

‘Yeah.’

Glenn nods. ‘Okay. Let’s go back to the car.’

Daryl looks at him sharply.

‘Hey,’ Glenn spreads his arms and shrugs, ‘if you don’t want to tell me what’s really going on, then I don’t know what to do, Dare.’

The teenager grabs the band of his crossbow. He holds on tightly, fingers curling around the rough fabric, nails scratching over the base of his throat, catching on his two necklaces. After a short silence, he sighs and looks up at Glenn again. ‘Sometimes you know something fucked up is going on, right? And… And it’s not really your problem because it ain’t happenin’ to you… The fucked up thing, I mean. It ain’t happenin’ to you, but you just – you just _know_ about it. Does that mean you should help? Even if no-one asked you to?’

Glenn looks stumped for a second. ‘I – I think you should always try to help people who need it,’ he ventures, a little hesitantly. Then he frowns. ‘Daryl. What do you know?’

‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head. ‘ _Nothing_ ,’ he stresses when Glenn eyes him. ‘But I _could_ know something, if I wanted to.’

‘You’re not making any sense. What _could_ you know, Dare?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘Just – if you can help someone, should you?’

Glenn nods. ‘Yes.’

‘But what if you’re not sure you can help? What if you could make everything worse?’

‘Then you tried,’ he says decisively. ‘And that’s good.’

‘Rick asked me to help someone and I said no.’

Glenn cocks her head to the side. ‘Help who?’

‘I can’t tell you.’ Daryl scratches at his cheek. ‘It don’t matter, anyway. It’s not on me,’ he says as he looks out of the window. ‘It’s Rick’s problem, he’ll take care of it.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘You think this place is making us weak? Carl was worried about that. I said it weren’t in us anymore, but… I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.’

Glenn sighs and pushes some of his dark hair out of his face. ‘So you knew about Jessie and you didn’t want to help her. I’m not an idiot, Dare. I can put two and two together.’

Daryl winces. ‘Sorry. Yeah, guess… Rick wanted me to talk to Sam and Ron. He thought I – you know – that I’d understand, but… it ain’t the same.’

‘No, it’s not,’ his friend agrees immediately. ‘Rick shouldn’t have asked that of you. There are a lot of things we shouldn’t have asked of you. I know you talked to Rick and Carl about this place making us weak. I talked about that with Rick, too. I thought it was a good thing. That if we would be a little softer, we would be more… normal, I guess. That we could go back to how we were before. Who we were.

‘But the truth is -  The people at the quarry? Who we were then? - they wouldn’t have survived. We changed and that’s why we are still here. I know I’ve been pushing you to change, too, these last couple of weeks. Pushing you to make friends, to hang out with Aaron, to get people to teach you stuff, and all of that is _good_ but it’s not _enough_.

‘I’ve tried to make you… softer. I thought it would make you fit in more, help you make friends, feel more comfortable here. But it just made you vulnerable and I’m sorry.’ Glenn reaches out and puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘I know this is messed up, but you’re not a kid anymore, Dare. And you can relax when we’re inside the walls, play games with your friends, work on your bike, have people teach you stuff, whatever… but you can’t forget that this is out there, every second, _always_. This world. And it’s out to get you.’

Daryl nods.

‘Every time you do something that’s… that you shouldn’t have to do, I’m…’ Glenn shakes his head. ‘It’s not right, the things you have done. What you had to do for your dad? What you did at Woodbury and the prison. Randall,’ he swallows with some difficulty. ‘Gareth. None of that was right. But it had to be done. Maybe not by you, but by _someone_. I’ve been trying to protect you from that and I know I haven’t done a great job when that is your track record, but… I’ve tried.’

‘I know,’ Daryl says. ‘But now you got to stop tryin’, right?’

‘You’re not a kid anymore.’

‘No, I ain’t,’ he looks down at his shoes and then back up at his friend, squinting at him through his fringe. ‘Feels like I let ya down.’

‘Never that,’ Glenn says softly. ‘We both tried. I never wanted this for you. I want you to play games and never fire your gun again, never touch a knife, never see another walker, but… that’s not real. We’ve got to be strong. We can still help people, we _have_ to help people, _because_ we’re strong. But those people in Alexandria? They will have to change. They will have to get strong or they will die. And you have to _stay_ strong.  You’re not that scared little boy hiding behind Will’s legs anymore.’ He strokes the boy’s cheek. ‘I love you, so much.’

‘Same,’ Daryl says. He bites his lip, fidgets with the strap of his bow. ‘I mean – I love you, too.’

‘Can I count on you?’

‘Yeah. No more kid stuff. For real, now.’

 

 

At the car, Aaron is arguing with Sasha and Nicholas.

Glenn has his arm slung around Daryl’s shoulders, leaning a little on him for support. Daryl’s arm has snaked around the man’s waist, holding him up.

‘What’s going on?’

Aaron looks at Glenn, ‘Daryl was right. That guy is still out there. We need to try and bring him in.’

‘You said you had lost his trail.’

‘Yeah, because we’re not trackers.’

Aaron, Sasha and Nicholas look at Daryl.

Daryl lets his arm drop. He straightens a little as he nods. ‘I can do it.’

‘Dare,’ Sasha starts but he cuts her off.

‘No, I said I can do it. You, Glenn and Nicholas take the car back to Alexandria, help Maggie sort everything out there. Tell Rick about this mess here.’ He looks up at Glenn, ‘you need to get that wound stitched up before it gets infected.’

‘Are you sure?’

Daryl bites on his lip and nods. ‘Yeah. You can count on me.’

Glenn gives him a small smile. ‘Okay.’

‘ _Glenn_ ,’ Sasha jumps in, looking outraged, ‘he just fired off that flare! He’s _not_ okay.’

‘He says he can do it,’ Glenn says with finality. ‘So he’ll do it. Aaron, are you in?’

‘I’ll go with him, show him the place we last saw the guy,’ Aaron says. He holds out his hand for Sasha’s rifle. ‘We’ll be okay.’

There’s a moment of silence. Sasha scowls at the hand while Nicholas just stares at his own shoes.

Glenn holds his hand out and gets the keys from Aaron. When he brushes past Sasha, he sighs, ‘just give him the rifle, Sasha.’ Before he slides into the seat, he leans on the door, looking at Daryl.

The boy gives him a small smile.

 

 

It’s not that hard to pick up the trail once Aaron leads him to the last place they saw the man with the red poncho. It’s in an open field with tall grass, there might as well have been neon footprints on the ground. He takes a couple of moments to scan the surrounding area before shouldering his bow and setting off.

The man next to him is dying to ask him a question. A million questions, probably.

He doesn’t.

Daryl leads him through the woods, through a stream, a field, until they hit the edge of another small, abandoned town. The teenager crouches down where the footprints transfer from the soft earth to hard concrete. He rubs at his lower lip and squints up at the scout. ‘Can’t track if there ain’t no trail. He went in. Son of a bitch could have gone anywhere. We can do a circle, see if he went back into the woods, but…’

‘That would be a waste of time,’ Aaron nods.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl straightens again, shrugging the bow higher onto his shoulder. ‘We could check the town though. Do a quick sweep.’

‘Might as well.’

The teenager wobbles on his feet. ‘I were with my dad, ya know, when it all went down. Found the group some place, decided to stay with ‘em. One day, he went on a run to Atlanta with Glenn and some others. I weren’t scared of him leavin’ me. Was pissed that I couldn’t come and help.’ Daryl snorts and aims a kick at a flower growing near his feet. ‘Just before he left he told me to go swimming.’

‘Why?’ Aaron asks softly.

‘’s what kids do, right? He told me to go play, have some fun. Carl was there, a girl called Sophia. I hung out with them a little bit, with Sophia, mostly. She used to loan me her markers so I could draw.’

‘You like to draw?’

Daryl wipes his nose on his forearm. ‘Yeah. Was my favorite thing to do, ya know, after huntin’.’ He looks away. ‘But then my old man didn’t come back from Atlanta, some fucked up shit had happened back there and he just didn’t come back. We hit the road, got to the farm. Glenn looked after me when he weren’t chasin’ Maggie,’ Daryl flashes Aaron a small grin. ‘Shane kinda… ya know, took me in, I guess. Looked after my sorry ass a lot.’

‘He was Rick’s friend, right?’

‘Yeah. I didn’t like Rick none,’ Daryl nods. ‘Thought it were on him that my dad got left behind, so we’d always get into these fights. I wouldn’t listen to him, just kept doin’ my own thing. Almost got myself killed.’

Aaron’s eyebrows shoot up.

‘Shot myself with my own bow,’ Daryl laughs. ‘Fell. Doesn’t matter anyway. It was Rick who taught me that we had to change. He took me out into the woods, taught me how to shoot. No more kid stuff, he said.’ The boy looks up at the scout. ‘I’ve killed people. There was a town near the prison. We went in at night and I killed five of them. Gunned them down. I tortured a guy when I was twelve. Killed another guy in a church. He surrendered, weren’t armed or nothing. I bashed his skull in with Rick’s machete.’

Aaron looks sick. ‘Why?’

‘Because he deserved it. I wanted it to be slow at first,’ Daryl says thoughtfully, staring out over the small town now. ‘But in the end I just wanted him dead. Rick were there. Hell, everyone was there, but Rick handed me the machete. Knew I needed to do it.’

The scout swallow with some difficulty.

‘He’d been the reason Shane was dead. And Shane… Shane were mine as much as I were his. I tried to be normal, ya know? In Alexandria. I tried. But I ain’t and I can’t pretend no more, okay? No more kid stuff.’

‘You go out hunting. You help in the community. That isn’t kid stuff, Daryl.’

‘No. Playing games is, going to damn parties, thinkin’ we can have spaghetti Tuesday on every Wednesday. Thinking that the walls will hold, that it will be enough, that we ain’t a second away from bein’ eaten. That’s what gets you. That’s kid stuff. Shootin’ up a flare just because the world’s all messed up. Ain’t nobody out there can help with that. It is what it is.’

‘Daryl…’

‘Shane made me a rule,’ Daryl laughs. ‘Knife, bow, holler.’

Aaron nods, ‘I’ve heard people say it to you.’

‘I need to have my knife, my bow, and whenever I got into trouble; I need to holler for help. It’s a stupid rule. Know why?’

Aaron closes his eyes. ‘Because they won’t get there in time.’

Daryl nods. ‘If I’m so far up shit creek to have to shout for help? Means I’m already dead. You got to help yourself, before you can help others.’

‘Like when you’re on an airplane.’

Daryl frowns, ‘ain’t never been.’

Aaron shoot shim a smile. ‘They used to give you these safety talks, how to put on a life jacket and everything. If the oxygen masks came down, you had to put your own on first, before you would help others with theirs. If you had kids with you, you still had to put yours on first.’

Daryl nods, ‘can’t help nobody when you’re dead.’

‘Right.’

‘We know how to do it. I forgot, a little, but… I remember now. We survived. And we can teach you and we’ll try to help but… it’s on you, in the end, whether you live.’

‘Alexandria is strong,’ Aaron argues. ‘The walls _will_ hold. The people, we look after each other.’

‘That ain’t enough. We had a _prison_ and it burned,’ Daryl grabs his bow. ‘The people who did all that just now? They’ll come and take the wall down. Or there’s a storm and other people or whatever the fuck else. The walls will come down and you’ll holler and we’ll try, but… You have to do it yourself. At least for long enough until we can get to you. That’s how you survive. How anyone survives now.’ The blue gaze sweeps over the town. ‘Come on. I’ll take point.’

 

 

The guy is nowhere to be found.

Instead, they find some kind of factory. Canned food, it says on the side of the building. _How the harvest gets home_.

There are gates and fences. Some walkers, too.

Home is one hell of a hike back, they need to give up and come back with a car tomorrow. It will be dark before they’re even half-way home. With his binoculars, Aaron spots a couple of trucks in the loading docks. Maybe they’ll get lucky and one of them still runs.

Maybe they’ll be all loaded up, too.

They take care of the couple of walker by stabbing them through the fences after Daryl lures them over with the sound of his knife tapping on the metal bar.

Together, they walk towards the trucks.

Three of them, parked next to each other.

They pass between them, walk up the platform. Aaron finds another license plate and Daryl wonders whether he really is starting from scratch since losing the first batch. The teenager bites his nail while looking at the trucks. He doesn’t really listen to Aaron, who says something about hating having to give up, but that the trip will have been worth it if they find a truck filled with canned food.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters as he squats down next to the truck. ‘Here we go.’

He unlocks it. The latch rolls up.

A dozen walkers snarl at them from inside the truck. The latch had been attached to some sort of mechanism. Daryl can hear the other trucks open, too.

Aaron grabs his shoulders and yanks him backwards.

In a flash, Daryl sees that some walkers are just chests and heads, suspended from meat hooks.

Now he knows why he’d only found legs and arms in the woods.

‘Go, go, go,’ he hisses at Aaron while jumping down the platform and running towards the end to the truck. The entire parking lot is filling up with walkers. He takes one down, jabbing his knife in the head, but there are too many.

‘Over here!’ Aaron leads him back to the trucks.

More walkers.

‘Come on!’ Daryl crawls under one of the trucks towards the other side. There’s a chain on the ground. He grabs it and wraps it around his hand. When he finally scrambles back to his feet, there are three walkers heading towards him. Aaron is still half under the truck.

He lets the chain lash out like a whip. It cuts right through the three heads.

Aaron gets to his feet but is jumped by a walker. He struggles to get his machete out of the sheath.

Daryl ducks past the man, pushing the walker up against the truck and killing it. The knife goes in and out in a flash. ‘Come on!’ He spots a car out in the parking lot. It might be locked, they might have to bust a window but it’ll give them a better shot. They’ll never make it to the fence. ‘This way!’

He’s faster than Aaron. It’s easier for him to duck past the walkers, side-stepping them and slinking away, because he’s a lot smaller than the man behind him. He tries to push as many out of the way as possible, clear the path, and reaches the car first. He fumbles with the door. Nervous fingers slipping over the metal until Aaron nearly bumps into his back.

The man reaches around, grabs the handle and yanks the door open.

‘In, in, in!’

Daryl jumps in, scrambles to get into the driver’s seat so Aaron can slip in, too.

They make it.

The door closes.

‘Glass will hold for a while, right?’ Aaron asks as they watch how the walkers gather around the car. Three rows deep. Desperate for their meat.

‘Maybe,’ Daryl pants. ‘Maybe we can make it so they can’t see us. In a couple of hours, something will come by, they’ll follow it out. There’s got to be something in here we can use to block the view.’ He looks at the backseat. ‘We can cut up the seats.’

Aaron finds a note.

He unfolds it with blood-stained hands.

 

TRAP

BAD PEOPLE COMING

DON’T STAY

 

Daryl tilts his head back and closes his eyes. All he hears is walkers snarling and hands thumping against the glass. He laughs softly.

‘What?’ Aaron asks.

‘No more kid stuff, right? What a shitty day. Just wanted to get out of that damn community, hunt a bit. Went into them houses near us. Wanted to find something worth findin’.’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’

Aaron shifts and sighs. ‘Well, we already went through that town anyway. Wasn’t anything there anymore.’

‘Yeah, I figured. Weren’t even lookin’ for batteries or food or whatever. Took some damn games with me that I thought Carl would like to play at Ron’s place, ya know? Tried to find a sketchbook and some pencils but didn’t. Was just wastin’ time, fuckin’ around. Kid stuff.’

Aaron smiles. ‘Did you have fun?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl admits. ‘Ain’t about havin’ fun no more though.’

‘You knew you could have fun this morning. We have enough water and food, we can charge batteries. If we’d needed food, you would have been out there all day, hunting. I know that.’ He turns towards the boy. ‘Listen, when I saw you with your group out there on the road, you went off on your own by the barn. I saw you. You were sitting there, under that tree. You were crying.’

Daryl glares at him.

‘You were crying,’ Aaron says with a soft laugh, ‘and I just… my heart broke for you. That little boy, sitting there all alone, tired and starving and _so_ scared. I wanted to just walk up to you, tell you that everything was going to be okay. But you got up suddenly. Dusted yourself off, dried your tears and went back to the group. The storm hit and you led your people to safety. That was it. I knew I had to bring you people back.

‘There will always be moments when it’s too much. Moments when you _can_ be weak or soft or... just a kid. And when those moments pass, you dust yourself off and you do what needs to be done. That is who you are. You’re not a killer. Not a thief in the night, not Rick’s attack dog. You’re Glenn’s right-hand boy,’ Aaron smiles.

Daryl doesn’t know what to say to that. He rummages through his pockets with shaking hands, pulls out his cigarettes and lights one. He looks at the walkers, at the W’s carved into their foreheads. The rotting skin, the black teeth, the blood and guts and horror of it all.

‘How the hell are we goin’ to get out of here?’ he asks because he has no idea.

Aaron looks at him. ‘Together.’

 

 

‘One. Two.’

On three, a walker’s head explodes into the window on Aaron’s side.

The door is yanked open from the outside.

Aaron is frozen for just a second, then he jumps out of the car, taking a walker down with a machete so Daryl can climb out, too.

There’s a guy. He wields some sort of stick. That’s all Daryl knows as he ducks under hands, past walkers. He slams his bow into a skull, lashes out with his knife, runs into a chest to clear a path. His knife sinks into skull after skull after skull until he stumbles past Aaron, who is holding onto the gate.

‘Come on,’ Daryl grabs the fence, pushes the gate closed.

Aaron manages to lock it.

Another walker stumbles towards them. Dangerously close to the stranger.

Daryl takes aim and takes it out with his bolt.

The man’s skin is just as dark as Sasha’s. Head shaved, brows drawn together as he wipes the blood off of the stick in his hands.

‘That was…’ Aaron starts, laughing a little, amazed that they’re still alive. ‘Oh! Thank you. Uh,’ he pants when the man just nods curtly, not quite meeting his eyes. ‘I’m Aaron. This is Daryl.’

‘Morgan.’

Daryl shakes his hair out of his eyes. ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Morgan seems surprised by the question. He smiles. ‘Because all life is precious, Daryl.’

‘Whoever set that trap, they’re coming,’ Aaron says, ‘but I have good news. We! We do.’ He gestures to the teenager who looks warily at the stranger. ‘We, uh, we have a community not too far from here. Walls, electricity. It’s safe. If you’d like to come join us, we-‘

‘I thank you,’ Morgan cuts in. ‘But I’m on my way somewhere. Fact is, I’m lost. So if you could tell me where we are…’ he pulls a map out of his pocket and hands it to Aaron.

Aaron hands it to Daryl. He laughs when he sees Morgan’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Trust me. He knows where we are if you give him a second. We cut through the woods getting here. I’m as lost as you are.’

Daryl unfolds the map. He knows where they are.

His gaze is drawn to two stars on map, however.

One right next to Atlanta.

One right where the prison is.

Two letters next to the stars. RG.

Daryl looks up at Morgan. ‘Where are you trying to go?’

‘I need to get to the second star. The one south.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s somebody waiting for me. It took me a long time to figure it out, but I did. I hope he’s still there.’

‘RG?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He ain’t there no more.’

Morgan shifts his weight and frowns. ‘How do you-‘

Daryl looks at the crossbow in his hands. ‘Thanks for this, by the way. I know Michonne kinda stole it from you, but… It’s great. You’re the Morgan who helped Rick survive his first night. I’ve heard the story a million times, man.’

‘You’re – you know Rick?’

Daryl grins, ‘yeah. I know Rick Grimes, all right.’

 

 

Turns out, Morgan doesn’t own a red poncho.

Daryl grits his teeth and hurls a rock into the bushes.

 

 

It’s dark when they arrive at Alexandria.

They walk into a meeting. A murder.

Deanna looks up, away from her husband who is bleeding out in her arms. ‘Rick,’ she cries. ‘Do it.’

Rick turns. Fires.

And Pete dies.

People scream.

Daryl leans against the wall, feeling more tired than he ought to.

Morgan takes a small step forward, past Aaron who looks horrified. His voice doesn’t shake when he speaks.

‘Rick?’

 

 

 


	59. Reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm only two hours late uploading. And because I'm obsessed, I saw the hitcounter jumping up around midnight.  
> Sorry if you waited and kept refreshing. XD I'm tired too.
> 
> Thanks for being so nice every time!

 

* * *

 

 

The stick is maybe the most baffling, Daryl supposes. It’s a damn miracle that the man came all this way while trying to get to the prison and that they had run into each other, of course, but the guy has made it all this way with _a stick_ for a weapon. There is no holster on his belt, no sheath for a knife. They could be hidden in the large pockets of his jacket, or even in his backpack but the man doesn’t strike Daryl as impractical.

Daryl chews on the piece of rabbit he’d fished out of his stew. He’s sitting in Rick’s kitchen, at the little island in the middle, near the sink. The food is still steaming hot. His stomach cramps a little, the shock of food a bit too much after having gone a day without, but the heat is welcome. He swings his feet, heavy boots tapping against the legs of his chair.

‘It’s called a Bo.’

Daryl looks up at Morgan, who is sitting across from him at the kitchen island. The man is no longer wearing his long jacket, nor his gloves. His clothes are remarkably clean for him having been outside and on the move for so long. The brown eyes seem kind enough.

‘What is?’ Daryl asks, swallowing his bite and rooting around for more.

‘My staff. It’s called a Bo.’

‘Right.’ The teenager bows his head so his hair falls into his face, shielding most of his expression. After a couple of seconds, he peeks at the man. ‘That all you carry?’

Morgan smiles at him. ‘That’s all I need. There’s a knife in my pack but I haven’t used it for anything other than opening cans in a long while.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do I open cans with a knife?’

Daryl glares at his stew. His feet come to rest beneath him as he hunches over his food. ‘Never mind,’ he mumbles because of course that’s not what he had meant. The guy knows that.

Morgan looks around the kitchen. He puts his spoon down. ‘Last time I saw Rick, he had his son with him,’ he looks back at Daryl. ‘Did he make it? His boy?’

‘Carl, yeah. He’s here. Rick’s got a little girl, too. Don’t know whether he told you way back when.’

The man stills.

‘She’s here, too,’ Daryl assures him. ‘Upstairs.’

‘How old is she?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘She was born while we were at the prison. Right around the time you two met up again. Is it true Carl shot ya?’

A soft laugh escapes the man. He looks surprised by the sudden question. ‘It is. That might be why I don’t like guns much.’

The corner of Daryl’s mouth curls upwards when he realizes that the other man is only joking. His feet start to swing again. The tapping noise resumes.

After a couple of silent minutes, they can hear the front door open and close. Boots on hardwood, the footsteps slow and measured and coming closer until Rick appears in the doorway. Still covered in blood and bandages. He wears his brown jacket, the white wool matted with walker blood.

He looks around the kitchen. Eyes not quite focusing.

‘That his pack?’ Bloodied fingers wave at the backpack that’s leaning against a leg of the table, near the Bo.

Daryl glances at Morgan before nodding at Rick. ‘Yeah.’

The cop takes the bag and starts to empty it on the countertop. A rabbit’s tail, a book, the map, items of clothing, a flask that’s empty after their long walk back. A gun. Rick checks the chamber, the magazine, and stuffs it between his belt and the small of his back.

He turns back to the map, spreads it out. He leaves bloody fingerprints on it. On Atlanta. Where the prison had been. Right over his own initials. His nail scratches at the place where Terminus once was.

Morgan is watching him.

Daryl eats his food.

Rick stares at demons on a map.

‘Listen,’ Morgan says to break the silence. ‘You were right. It wasn’t over.’

Rick looks at him. Then at Daryl. He nods a little. ‘We should talk more tomorrow,’  he says when he turns towards the man. His voice is rough. ‘Listen… I don’t take chances anymore.’

Morgan nods his understanding. ‘And you shouldn’t.’

‘We’re going to put you in a house, down the street,’ the cop tells him. ‘It’s got water, electricity, it’s just… it’s empty. And away from…’ Rick nods and clears his throat. ‘Just away from here. My family sleeps here. I’m sure you understand.’

‘I do.’

‘We’ll give you water, more food, blankets, all of that. Just… You’re staying there. For now. Until I know.’

‘Of course.’

The two men look at each other for a long moment.

‘I thank you,’ Morgan dips his chin and looks away first. He turns back to his food.

‘Tyreese will take you there when you’ve finished,’ Rick tells him. ‘Daryl. With me.’

The boy slides off of his chair immediately, taking care not to slosh the rest of his stew onto the floor as he takes the bowl with him. He follows the cop into the living room, checking his shoulder gently against Tyreese’s arm when the man passed him. It earns him a fond smile.

He plops down on the couch and drinks the rest of his stew from the bowl. Rick never cared about how he ate and eating soup with a spoon has always seemed like too much trouble to him.

The cop walks slow circles around the coffee table. Hands trailing over the mantelpiece, over the walls, shaking a little when they fall to his sides. He stops eventually, in front of the window. He’s looking at something outside.

‘Do you want to talk?’

Daryl wipes a few droplets off his chin, ‘about what?’

Rick braces himself against the window frame. ‘I killed Pete.’

‘You had your reasons, right?’

‘I did.’ The cop turns around now to look at the boy. ‘He’d killed Reg.’

There’s a small pang of hurt in Daryl’s gut. Not for the man. He hadn’t known him at all, had barely spoken to him except at the party and that hadn’t been a success at all, so he doesn’t really care that he’s dead. It hurts because of Deanna and Spencer. They’d lost their son and brother not too long ago, and now Reg. Daryl knows what it’s like to lose your family is rapid succession. He knows how much it hurts.

‘That the reason?’ Daryl asks before licking his spoon clean and placing the bowl onto the table.

Rick nods. Then he looks away. ‘I wanted to kill him before that. Because of what he did to Jessie, what he was putting his kids through, but… I wanted it. And he gave me a reason.’

‘Okay.’ Daryl sits on his hands so he won’t fidget so much. Rick doesn’t frighten him. Not even like this, when his eyes are cold and hazy, when he’s covered in the blood of people and walkers, when his hands are shaking. He knows he’s safe when he’s around the cop. But he’s not sure what Rick wants from him now. He’s not sure what to say.

‘You understand why I had to, right?’

Daryl nods.

‘I talked to Glenn just now.’ Rick lets his hands rest on his belt and looks at his shoes. ‘He said you were freaked out by those bodies, fired the flare. He said you were sorry after.’ The cop glances up at the kid. ‘He said you’re better now. That you’re good, again.’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl leans back on the couch and bites on the nail of his thumb. ‘Shane taught me that there’s a switch in your brain, right? You switch it if you have to do stuff that ain’t… that ain’t normal. Like when we went to Woodbury to get Glenn and Maggie, he told me about it then. I asked him how you do something like that, you know? Just, kill people. And that’s what he told me: flip the switch.’

Rick walks around the coffee table and sits down on it. His knees almost touch Daryl’s.

‘But I don’t think I’m like that,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘It doesn’t work too good for me. Sometime I switch it and it just won’t switch back, right? I don’t feel nothing. And other times it’s just…. I get scared. So I just got to be one thing, I think.’

Rick nods. ‘Everyone deals with it in a different way. Some people don’t want to feel it at all, others can’t feel it right then because it’ll just distract them. Other people have to feel it, always.’

‘I think that’s me. The last one. If I don’t _feel_ it, I just go crazy. Like after Shane, ya know? And if I don’t _do_ it, I go weak. So I got to do it _and_ I got to feel it. I think.’

‘I think so, too.’

Daryl tilts his head back so it rests on the cushion behind him. He stares up at the ceiling. The hair falls out of his small eyes. ‘Was some fucked up shit out there, man,’ he mutters. ‘Glenn and Aaron told you about the W’s?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick croaks. ‘On the body of that woman and on those walkers in that trap. We’ve set up more watch points.’

‘Good.’ The teenager lets his head lull to the side. He kicks his leg out, boot hitting Rick’s shin. ‘Ya look disgustin’, man.’

A smile appears on the man’s weathered face. He looks at his hands like he’s seeing them for the first time. ‘Yeah. I’ll go clean up.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Watch your back when you head out the door. Not everyone understands that it had to be done,’ he warns the boy. ‘It’ll be okay, but they need… they need time. And they need to change.’

‘I got it.’

‘Good. Keep an eye on Carl, too, okay?’

Daryl snorts. ‘He’s a big boy.’

‘So are you and I still asked him to do the same for you. We look after each other. That’s what we do.’

Daryl looks up at Rick and nods. ‘Okay. I’ll go find him now.’

 

 

He finds Carl outside, on top of the platform near the lake.

He’s sitting there with Enid.

Daryl smirks and leans against a tree, hiding in the shadows as he watches his brother swing his legs. From this angle, it looks like they’re holding hands but he can’t be sure.

‘Ya dog,’ the teenager laughs to himself.

Then his attention is drawn to someone walking over towards the platform from the other side of the lake. Even in this darkness, Daryl can see that it’s Ron.

The other boy stops dead in his tracks when he spots his girlfriend sitting next to Carl.

A second. Two. Three, and then Ron turns on his heels and walks away.

Daryl waits ten more minutes until he’s sure that the boy isn’t coming back. Then he leaves, too.

 

 

When he returns home hours later, he’s so tired that he just falls into his bed. It doesn’t even matter to him that someone is already in it.

Carl groans as he reaches out to snap the light on the nightstand on. A soft, warm glow illuminates the room. He shuffles around, turning onto his back and stretching. One eye snaps open to look at his friend. He kicks Daryl’s leg. ‘Where have you been, man? I’ve been looking all over for you.’

 ‘What are you talking about _; I’ve been lookin’_.’ Daryl turns his head so he’s not talking into his pillow. ‘What, down Enid’s throat with your tongue?’

Carl gapes at him.

Daryl laughs.

‘I didn’t – we didn’t – what the hell! Were you _spying_ on us?’

‘Pssh. Got better things to look at. Nah, nah, here I was, ya know? Thinkin’ you must have been missin' me something fierce after ya heard I was in danger and stuff, but ya were just tryin’ to get your dick wet. Some brother you are.’ He smirks at the boy and then reaches out to shove his shoulder. ‘Rick told me to keep an eye out. I saw ya up there with Enid so I figured ya were doing a’right. Went to see Tara instead.’

‘How is she?’

Daryl grunts as he undoes the laces on his boots, kicking them onto the floor. They land with heavy thuds. Then he throws the vest onto a chair nearby, shrugs out of his shirt and lets it fall onto the floor as well. He rolls onto his back. The necklaces he wears blink in the moonlight.

‘She’s tough. She’s gonna be fine. Was all talk when I saw her, so…’ he shrugs a little, one arm coming up to adjust the pillow, muscles bulging a little.

‘What about you? Are you okay?’

He looks at his brother, who is settling in beside him. The brown hair fanned out on the pillow, sleep crusting in the corner of his eyes.

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Some fucked up shit went down here, huh?’

Carl closes his eyes. ‘I wasn’t there. I was watching Judy, Beth told me what happened. Dad said he did what he had to do.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

Brown eyes open timidly. ‘You believe that?’

‘Yeah. I do,’ Daryl rubs at his chest with a frown. ‘What, you don’t?’

‘Of course I do. I just hope, you know, that Jessie, Ron and Sam will see it that way, too. If my dad had killed Will, would you… you know? Like… I don’t know.’

‘If your dad had killed my dad, I would have ended him,’ Daryl says. ‘Bolt between his eyes before he could blink. But my dad weren’t no killer. Rick hated him but that wasn’t a good enough reason to do it then, and it wasn’t the reason why Pete died now. They’re going to hate us,’ Daryl predicts. ‘Maybe not Jessie, but Ron? He’s going to hate us, all of us, because of what Rick did. Hell, I hated Rick when he’d left my dad on a roof in Atlanta.’

Carl fluffs his pillow up. ‘Yeah, maybe now, but after a while he’ll realize that things are better and…’

‘Rick killed his _dad_ ,’ Daryl cuts in. ‘It ain’t ever going to get better. Maybe he’ll forgive us and Rick, but… it ain’t going to be better for him. Don’t matter what the guy did, that was his dad.’

Carl stares at him in the darkness. ‘You still miss Will?’

‘Yeah. All the fuckin’ time,’ the Dixon murmurs as he brings his hand to his mouth to gnaw on the skin next to his nail. It hurts a little bit but that’s fine. He’ll stop once it starts to bleed. ‘Old man could have fixed my bike up good. He taught Merle how to take care of his bike.’

‘It’ll be so cool once you get it to run. You’ll let me ride too, right?’

‘Fuck no. That’s my bike.’

Carl kicks him again.

Daryl kicks him back but his sock-clad feet don’t do any damage at all. He laughs, ‘you can ride bitch. On the back,’ he explains when Carl frowns. ‘Talking about bein’ a bitch… You kiss Enid yet?’

Carl pulls a face and shoves his shoulder, ‘don’t call her that. And _no_.’

‘You’ll tell me if you do, right? ‘s what brothers do. Tell each other stuff.’

The other boy huffs and rolls his eyes, ‘yeah, I’ll tell you. Unless I suck at it and she runs screaming.’ He laughs when Daryl chuckles. ‘I’ve never kissed anyone.’

‘Yeah, me neither,’ Daryl admits. ‘Closest I got was watchin’ Merle stick his tongue down a girl’s throat every five seconds. Always thought it looked kinda gross, ya know? All wet and ugh,’ he shrugs. ‘But you know…’

‘Now you kind of want to do it too,’ Carl laughs.

‘Fuck, yeah,’ Daryl grins. ‘When I was out there with Beth, after the prison, you know? We were in this house. Some guy had used it as a base or something, had all this weird shit everywhere, so I was kind of nosing around in his bedroom, under the bed. Turns out, he had the same stash of dirty magazines as Merle had.’

‘Did you have a look?’

‘’course, were these three girls, right? Big boobs ‘nd everything. There was this guy too, leaning against a car or something, he weren’t wearing no-‘

‘Fuck the guy, man,’ Carl laughs, ‘tell me about the girls!’

Daryl frowns a little as he looks up at the ceiling.

‘Come on, spill!’

‘Didn’t see nothing. Beth kinda busted me,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘They looked real good though.’

Carl groans and folds his hands over his eyes. ‘She busted you?’

‘Yeah. Thought I were gonna die of embarrassment. That’s why we need this place, man. All the doors lock here,’ Daryl grins. Then he sobers up. ‘Hey. I saw you up on that platform with her, but I weren’t the only one. You make a move on that girl? Better watch your back. Ron,’ he says when Carl frowns. ‘He saw you. Didn’t look too happy with it.’

‘Well, she’s not wearing a ring, right?’ Carl grins at him, remembering their earlier conversation about the girl.

‘Don’t mean you won’t get cut for tryin’ to steal her. Merle just always won those fights, but you ain’t no Dixon.’

‘I’m a _Grimes_.’

Daryl scoffs, ‘you’re sayin’ it like that’s better or something. Pssh. You better learn how to fight dirty if you’re goin’ after someone else’s girl, man.’

‘Fighting dirty, huh? You’d know all about that. You’re fucking trash, Dixon.’

Daryl leers at him, ‘that’s right. You ain’t got nothing on me, mini-pig.’

‘Maybe not. But you’re on my side, right?’

‘I’m always on your side, ya dumb shit. I got your back. He tries anything, we’ll take care of it. Just.. you know. Take it easy around him for a while. He ain’t right in the head with his dad and all. Maybe not try to steal his girl so soon.’

Carl hums and looks at the ceiling. After a couple of minutes he frowns. ‘Should I give it, like, two weeks or something?’

Daryl laughs, ‘get the fuck out of my bed, ya horn dog. I’m going to sleep.’ He shimmies out of his jeans and crawls under the blankets.

His best friend throws his hat onto the chair, on top of the vest, kicks his boots onto the floor. ‘Nah, I’m staying here the night. Come on, it’ll be like old times,’ the boy rummages through Daryl’s bedside table until he finds one of their comics.

They read until Daryl falls asleep.

 

 

‘Yo? Anyone home?’ Daryl leans into the living room, holding on to the doorpost, but the room is empty. Voices drift back from the kitchen though, soft murmurs and the sound of shuffling feet. The teenager frowns as he crosses the room. ‘Yo, Aaron, ya deaf or someth- oh.’

Eric is backed up against the fridge, shirt undone, hair a mess and with a flush rising from his pale chest to his neck and ears. His hands are on Aaron’s hips, keeping them pressed firmly against his own. His boyfriend has his hands in the red hair while he hungrily kisses him.

When the sound of Daryl’s voice registers, Aaron rips himself away from the other man. He pants as he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘ _Daryl_!’ He sounds a little hysterical in his attempt to be casual. ‘ _Hey_!’

Eric closes his eyes and laughs.

Daryl takes a step back and blushes. He looks behind him for a way out, unsure of what to do. ‘Sorry, I – I mean, I called for ya, but – I just….’

‘It’s fine!’ Aaron says quickly. He glances at his boyfriend, blushes and then reaches out to tug at the shirt to get Eric to button it up but the other man just laughs as he shakes his head. ‘Eric!’ Aaron hisses. ‘Stop it. This isn’t funny.’

‘It is,’ Eric says. ‘Stop freaking out.’

‘I’m not freaking out!’

‘You kind of are.’

‘ _I’m not!_ It’s just- ’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says loudly as he gestures at the door to the garage. ‘I’m just gonna go work on my bike a bit more. Just wanted to let you know I was down there, okay? Later.’ He ducks back into the hallway but not before he can hear Aaron hissing ‘you didn’t unlock the garage door this morning? He never comes through here!’

‘I was going to unlock it just now, but I got a bit distracted on the way there,’ Eric bounces back. ‘Wonder whose fault that was, tiger.’

Daryl slams the door shut behind him.

The bike is almost done. He just needs to fill it up with gas and oil, but those aren’t in the garage. Right now he’s just polishing the thing, checking everything one more time before he’ll fire it up later today. He’s so excited to try it that he can barely wait. He has to, though, because Olivia isn’t up yet to give him the motor oil from the stock room. Daryl thought it was pretty stupid of Aaron to not have a bottle nearby despite having six headlights for the damn thing, but the man had given the bottle back when he thought he was never going to complete the bike.

He’s tightening a bolt when Eric joins him. The man is still smiling widely, but the flush has gone from his skin and his shirt is buttoned up again.

‘Hey Dare,’ he greets cheerfully. ‘Sorry about the door, I hadn’t had time to open it up for you yet. You’re here early.’

‘Yeah, sorry, just… I almost got it runnin’ ya know?’

‘Got excited, huh?’

Daryl grins shyly. ‘Guess. A little, yeah. Just waitin’ on Olivia to wake up.’

‘You’re out of luck there,’ Eric smiles as he leans against the workbench with his hip, crossing his arms in front of his chest. ‘Not everyone is used to getting up at the crack of dawn. She’ll be up in about two hours or so, I think.’

‘Yeah, I’ll wait,’ Daryl murmurs as he cleans the gas-tank with his rag.

‘You should be really proud. You worked really hard on it.’

‘Yeah, if it works. Gonna look like an ass when it don’t run.’

Eric shrugs, ‘sometimes things don’t work out the first time, that just means you have to try again. But I’m sure it’ll run, Dare. Everyone who knows something about a bike or engine double checked it for you. It’ll run.’

Daryl nods.

‘Hey, one more thing. Sorry about that, earlier.’

The teenager frowns, ‘you mean that you were makin’ out?’

‘Err….’ Eric laughs, ‘yeah.’

‘Your home,’ Daryl shrugs.

‘Yeah, but… still. We didn’t mean to, you know, freak you out or anything. Not that you did, I mean – Aaron did, a little, but only because he – well, some people don’t think it’s right, or they say they don’t mind but they still rather not see it, not that we were doing something wildly inappropriate but still! Some people raise hell when if you so much as hold your boyfriend’s hand, stupid people, I think, but if it made you uncomfortable then we’re sorry.’

Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘Okay.’

‘Did we?’

‘What?’

Eric raises his eyebrows, ‘did we make you uncomfortable?’

Daryl wipes his hands on his jeans. ‘No. Ain’t none of my business, right?’

‘Well, no,’ Eric agrees, ‘but, you know…’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘Good Lord, ain’t no problem as long as ya aint gettin’ it on in my face, okay? Once walked into Abe ‘nd Rosita and was fuckin’ scarred for life, so ya best not do that while ya know I’m in your house. Rest of it ain’t none of my business. I’ll just holler harder next time, okay?’

Eric beams at him, ‘sure!’ He hops onto the workbench and swings his legs. ‘I noticed that Carl and Enid are getting along great.’

The teenager grunts and checks the battery of his bike.

‘I thought you and Beth were good friends, too.’

‘Are.’

‘You never hang out with her.’

‘What are you talkin’ about? I hang out with her all the damn time,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘We live in the same house. I see her every night.’

‘Is that so?’

Daryl freezes for a moment. Then he glares at the man. ‘What the fuck are ya implyin’?’

Eric looks back innocently. ‘Nothing.’

The teenager realizes what he is implying, exactly, and splutters. ‘She’s, like, my sister! She’s _Maggie’s_ sister!’

Eric laughs, ‘what, does that make her your aunt?’

‘Yeah! No. I mean – she’s _family_. Good lord, why’s everyone so busy talkin’ about gettin’ funky?’

‘ _Getting funky_ ,’ Eric wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and snorts, ‘that is – I’ve never heard anyone say that in that context. That’s great, I’m going to use that now. Who else is talking to you about getting funky?’

‘Nobody,’ Daryl snaps as he blushes. ‘Stop, leave me alone.’

‘It’s okay to talk about things like that, important, even!’ Eric says. ‘Not really about who’s talking to you about getting funky, but talking about getting funky in general, you know? It shouldn’t really be this big secret because then you can’t talk about it or ask questions and that’s important. I know when I was a teenager, I had a million questions. My parents were pretty great about it. Aarons not so much. At all, I mean. And we know about all the ways to get funky, not just the gay ways, so if you have any questions, you can ask us.’

‘Yeah, I don’t have any questions.’

‘Okay, that’s great. Just – I know it can be weird to talk about that kind of stuff with your dad so if you ever want to talk to a friend, we’re around. It doesn’t have to be me, Aaron’s more prone to blushing but if you don’t mind that then he’s great to talk to.’

‘My dad is dead.’

Eric blinks. ‘What?’

‘You said that it’d be weird to talk about that with him. He’s dead.’

There’s horror on Eric’s face, quickly replaced by guilt and then a hint of shame. ‘Oh my God, I’m so – I’m sorry, Dare. I just – I know he is, I just meant….’

Daryl gets to his feet with a snarl. ‘Glenn ain’t my dad. Neither is Rick or Abe or whoever the fuck else you were thinking of. _Will was_. I’m a _Dixon_.’ He throws the wrench onto the floor and storms back out of the house, breaking out into a run as soon as his boots hit the concrete.

 

 

Daryl leans against the window and looks inside.

Morgan is practicing with his Bo inside. Slow, practiced movements and then sudden slashes, twirls, side-steps as he dances out of reach of an invisible enemy. One arm raised to keep his balance, footsteps soft until he jumps forward again, the end of his Bo nearly touching the wall before he rolls back on his feet.

The doors to this house are locked. Rick has the keys.

It’s a glorified prison.

‘Hey.’

Daryl had been so entranced by the man’s practice inside the house that he hadn’t even heard Rick come up behind him. He glances over his shoulder to see a cross look on the man’s face. ‘Hey,’ he nods before turning back to catch Morgan sweeping the Bo low over the floor to swipe enemies off their feet. ‘The fuck’s he doin’?’

Rick’s hand curls around the boy’s upper arm. He drags him away from the window. ‘I don’t want you hanging around Morgan.’

‘Why the hell not? Ya locked him up.’

‘That doesn’t mean he can’t get out,’ Rick snaps.

‘So? He was your friend, right?’ He shakes his arm. ‘Best let me go, now.’

Rick lets go of him. ‘He’s not my friend. He was and then he wasn’t. I don’t know what he is now. I don’t know him anymore.’

‘He either is or he ain’t.’

Rick works his jaw, ‘it’s not that simple. I don’t want you hanging around him, period.’

‘Free country,’ Daryl murmurs as he leans against the window frame again so he can see some more moves. Rick’s hand yanks him away, however. Fingers digging into his shoulder. He nearly stumbles. ‘Jesus Christ, what is with all y’all today?’ he snarls angrily. ‘Can’t you mind your own goddamn business for one second?’

‘You _are_ my business.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m nobody’s business!’ Daryl shouts.

‘Stop,’ Rick orders. His voice smooth and calm. ‘Walk the wall and calm down. Whatever has got you all riled up, it’s over now. Do you hear me?’ He steps closer to the teenager when he doesn’t get an answer. ‘ _Do you hear me_?’

 ‘Yeah,’ Daryl snaps back. ‘I hear you. Jesus Christ, fine.’

 

 

He does walk the wall. He checks for marks that indicate that someone could have climbed over them but doesn’t find any. There are no weaknesses, no plates that are coming loose, nothing that would put the community in any danger.

He stops when he’s almost at the graveyard. It’s just a small bit of land behind the greenhouses, but it’s growing bigger every week, it seems. It’s shielded from view by a couple of trees. Ron is standing behind one of those trees. He’s looking at something that’s happening at the graveyard.

‘The fuck are you doin’?’ Daryl asks.

Ron jumps and then glares at him. ‘Shut up. Leave me alone.’

Daryl recognizes Rick’s voice from behind the trees. Deanna’s. Morgan’s. ‘What are you spying on them for?’

‘Leave me alone!’

Daryl frowns when he spots the freshly dug grave through the trees. He can see a bit of Rick’s arm, the familiar silver watch blinking in the sunlight. He’s standing in front of a body, still wrapped up and on the ground. Suddenly the cop bends down, grabs hold of the legs of the body while some else lifts the head and shoulders.

‘What the hell, where are they taking him?’ the teenager asks Ron. ‘We got another graveyard around here?’

‘No,’ Ron says through gritted teeth. ‘That’s my dad. They don’t want him to be buried inside the walls. Deanna said the trees could have him.’

Daryl frowns. ‘So they’re going to bury him outside the walls?’

‘Down Branton road a few miles,’ Ron nods. He starts to walk towards the gates.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Down Branton road a few miles.’

Daryl snorts. ‘On your own?’

Ron turns on his heels and glares at the other boy. ‘I need to know where they bury my dad, okay? I don’t care that you hated him, or what anyone else thought they knew about us – I need to know where his grave is.’

‘I get that,’ Daryl nods. ‘But you don’t even have a knife on you, you really think they’re going to let you out of the gates because you ask real nice? And then what? You can’t follow a damn car, man. Do you even know where Branton road is?’

‘It’s West.’

‘Yeah. So is a quarter of the world.’ He wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘Want me to take you?’

‘What?’

‘If you go out there, you’ll die because you don’t know what you’re doing. If you stick with me and do everything I say, you’ll be fine and we’ll find out where they buried your dad. Hell, I’ll lend you my knife so you can carve a headstone in a tree, okay?’

Ron narrows his eyes suspiciously. ‘You’re Carl’s brother. His dad killed mine. Why would you do this for me?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Because my dad died out there somewhere and I had to burn him. I didn’t have time to bury him so there’s no grave, no headstone, nothing. He’s just gone. My mom burned, too, but she still had a grave. My brother took me there a couple of times. It helped, sometimes. And yeah, nah, I didn’t hate your dad. Weren’t none of my business. It’s yours. You love him and wanna lay flowers on his grave? Then you go right ahead. You hate him and wanna piss on it instead? I don’t give a shit, man.’ Daryl walks towards the wall. He glances over his shoulder. ‘Think about your mom, now. You go out there alone, you’ll die. She ain’t doing so hot, so don’t make me tell her you went and got yourself bit, okay? Come on. We can scale the wall near our house, Enid does it all the damn time.’

It takes a couple of seconds, but then footsteps follow the teenager.

 

 

 


	60. Play nice

 

* * *

 

 

The walk feels strange.

The woods are quiet. They’re always quiet around Alexandria. At first Daryl thought that it was a trick of his mind, that just because he was out there less it seemed like there were fewer of them, too. Now he knows it wasn't a trick. There are fewer walkers here. He’s not sure why. Maybe because of the evacuation.

Sunlight filters through the trees. The temperature isn’t too high yet. A soft breeze brushes past his cheek while he ducks under a branch. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ron doing the same.

They walk together, side by side, but only because Daryl is too afraid to let the other boy out of his sight. Not even because he could get himself bit, that would be on him and his damn problem, but because people do stupid things when they’re angry. He knows that like no other. Whenever he’s angry, he lashes out as hard as he possibly can at whoever is closest.

If Ron does that now, Daryl would be closest. It doesn’t matter that the rage is directed at Rick or that Ron doesn’t have a weapon. He is closest but he won’t be taken by surprise this way.

‘How much further?’ Ron asks.

‘A little ways.’

The boy shoots him an annoyed look. One hand comes up to push some of his blond hair under his beanie. He’s wearing several layers of clothing. A T-shirt and a shirt, a denim jacket over that. There’s sliver of pale skin at his throat where one of the shirts is unbuttoned. The edge of his collarbone is visible.

Daryl is just wearing his black button up today. The sleeves cut off. He left the vest behind because it will get hot around noon. He vaguely wonders how Ron thinks he’ll be able to pull off three layers but doesn’t care enough to worry about it.

‘How did your dad die?’

‘Got bit,’ Daryl says as he leads the boy on. It’s the truth, really. It’s also not the whole story, of course, but Ron doesn’t need to know all about him or his dad.

‘And you had to…’

‘Weren’t nobody else around,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘If Shane had been there, or Rick, Glenn, they would have done it for me, but it was just me out there so I did it. He were already gone.’

‘And you burned him afterwards? You killed him and you burned him?’

Daryl glares at the boy. ‘I told you; he was already dead. I didn’t kill him but I ended him, yeah. That’s what you do for people you love. When it’s over, you make damn sure they’re not comin’ back, ever. And yeah, I burned him. Didn’t want him to just rot or get eaten by some dumb animal.’

‘Why didn’t you bury him?’

‘No time. People were coming to kill us. I had to get back to our home and help our people out.’

Ron nods but Daryl doubts he understands.

They walk. Leaves crunching beneath Daryl’s boots and under Ron’s sneakers. There’s a walker up ahead. It doesn’t surprise the Dixon boy that Ron stops walking. There’s fear in the way he tenses, how his shoulders curl inwards, his foot slides over a patch of moss. Daryl just raises his bow and takes it out.

The bolt is buried neatly in the left eye, where he always tries to aim. The bolts are strong enough to penetrate a skull but he hates risking them. And it’s good target practice, anyway.

‘Did your dad teach you how to hunt?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just with the bow?’ Ron asks. ‘I mean, you carry a gun but…’

‘That ain’t for huntin’,’ Daryl mutters as he grabs a low hanging branch and swings from it for a second until the other boy passes him. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off of him. ‘Rick taught me how to shoot, way back when this all went down. Around the time we met Maggie and Beth and… the rest of her family.’ He laughs a little and lets go of the branch. ‘He was the raincheck. I wanted Shane to teach me but he didn’t have time.’

‘Why didn’t you want Rick to do it?’

‘’cause I hated Rick.’

Ron stops walking. ‘Why?’

Daryl sighs and shakes his head. ‘I thought he’d done something real bad. Weren’t on him though, he was just there when it happened. I didn’t want to believe that for a long while, just, you know – needed someone to blame. He’s easy to hate.’

‘And one day you just stopped?’ Ron asks incredulously. ‘What, you saw the light and everything was fine?’

The Dixon boy scoffs. ‘Of course not. Ain’t a Dixon for nothing, we hate till the end of our days,’ he grins, ducking beneath another branch and hopping over a fallen tree before trudging through a ditch. ‘Sometimes when he pisses me off? I throw it back in his face just to watch him flinch. He knows what he did.’

‘But you’re…. you’re still with him.’

‘Yeah, ‘cause he’s mine now,’ Daryl laughs as he runs up a small hill to get to a road. ‘What he did to me? He had to. That doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole in my eyes for doin’ it. You can still hate something about someone while lovin’ them, ya know.’

‘What did he do to you?’

‘He left my dad up on a roof to die in Atlanta. Him, Glenn, bunch of other people, too. But I already liked Glenn before that so it was easier to just hate Rick. It looked like he had been calling the shots, too, so… It was easy.’

Ron stops walking. He’s standing in the middle of the road. ‘And you still hate him now?’

‘For that? Yeah. Doesn’t mean I don’t love him for everything else. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him, none of us would be. And you don’t have to love him or even like him,’ Daryl says as he points his machete at the boy. ‘You just got to listen to him. He killed your dad. Hate him for that, but he had his reasons. There’s bad people comin’ our way. Best get ready for it.’

‘We wouldn’t be in danger if it wasn’t for your people! You came and everything just went to shit!’

Daryl laughs and puts his machete back in the sheath. ‘Yeah? Well, tough, princess. We’re here now and there are bad people coming to kill you. Pick a fuckin’ side, but let me tell you this,’ he steps up to the other boy. He has to look up a little bit, he’s always been smaller than the other boys, but he’s stronger and faster so it doesn’t matter. ‘If you wake up tomorrow and discover your balls and try to do anything? You try messin’ with Rick or Carl, anyone who is mine? I’ll fuckin’ end ya.’

‘Yeah?’ Ron challenges.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods. ‘But hey, you decide to play nice? I’ll play nice. Hell, I’ll even put some damn effort in savin’ your ass, ‘cause that’s what we do. You just decide whether you want to be a part of that, okay? Think about it. Not too hard, though, wouldn’t want ya to hurt yourself.’ He whistles as he walks away.

 

 

There are three walkers and Ron panics.

He takes off running, veering off to the left while Daryl takes the first walker down with his bolt. The Dixon boy curses under his breath as he ducks into the woods to follow the other boy. He hisses his name but Ron doesn’t stop.

The boy stumbles into more walkers.

‘Get back!’ Daryl hisses, ‘get behind me, ya asshole!’

But Ron doesn’t listen to him. He just runs blindly. His footsteps and whimpers lead more walkers over.

Daryl runs after him, taking out one walker who’d stumbled over a trunk. He veers a little to the left, hoping to intercept Ron when he makes another turn. They run side by side now, tearing through the bushes while walkers chase them.

‘Oh shit, _stop_!’

The cliff appears out of nowhere. Daryl slides to a stop but Ron just keeps on going.

‘ _Ron_!’

The boy falters, looks at him and…

Something smashes into him. A body. They roll onto the rocks next to the edge of the cliff. A walker stumbles past them and crashes into the abyss. The other walkers have enough time to adjust their course and descend on the boy and the body.

Daryl swings his bow up and takes the first one down.

A gunshot, another walker falls.

Daryl gives a sigh of relief; it’s Rick who sits up next to Ron and fires his python. He swings the bow onto his back and walks over, grabbing the walker closest to Rick. ‘I got it,’ he says before he plunges the knife into the skull. He pulls it back out, pushes the body against the last walker so it falls. With a sigh, he lifts his boot up high and brings it down on the skull. It cracks.

Morgan appears next to him. He looks at the bodies, then at Daryl.

The teenager shakes his hair out of his eyes and holds out his hand to Rick, hauling the man to his feet. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters because Ron isn’t saying anything.

Rick’s grip tightens as he pulls the boy into his chest, curling his arm around the bony shoulders for just a second. Then he walks towards the edge of the cliff.

There’s a quarry down there. Long winding roads leading down into a mining pit of some sort. The roads are filled with walkers. Not ten or twenty or even fifty. Hundreds. They’re everywhere. Everywhere Daryl looks from the moment he steps up next to Rick and looks down. Their growls and snarls are deafening. More are drawn towards this place. He can see them falling into the pit on the other side.

There are trucks blocking the exit.

 ‘What are you doing out here, Ron?’ Rick asks.

‘I wanted to know where my dad was buried,’ the teenager says as he looks down at the walkers. There’s sweat running down his neck. The few blond strands that have escaped his beanie are soaked.

‘And you let him?’ Rick looks down at Daryl.

‘He’s got a right to know,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘This is why. Fuckin’ hell, this is why there are so few of them out here.’

‘Yeah,’ the cop shifts his weight. ‘This is how the community is still there. They’ve had walkers at their walls but a lot of them, maybe most of them, they wound up here.’

‘Lucky sons of bitches,’ the Dixon boy nods.

‘Their luck is going to run out,’ Morgan says as he studies the place through his binoculars. ‘Some are getting through. It won’t hold forever.’

‘No, it won’t.’ Rick grits his teeth. He glances over his shoulder when he hears someone walking away from them. ‘Ron,’ he hisses, darting after the boy.

‘I’m going back,’ the blond says dismissively. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You shouldn’t be out here!’

‘I don’t care what you think.’

Daryl watches how Rick grabs the other boy, forcing him to stop walking. He holds on to the strap of his bow, expression guarded.

‘It’s not what I think,’ the cop says with that familiar tilt of his head. ‘It’s what I _know_. You can’t protect yourself. I’ll show you how, but right now you have no idea what you’re doing. You would have died if it weren’t for Daryl. And if you come out here alone, you’re gonna die. And it won’t be quick and it won’t ever be over ‘cause you’ll be one of them. That’s what’s gonna happen.’ Rick leans in closer. ‘You’re coming back with us now. Don’t make it hard.’

They look at each other for a long moment.

Ron looks away first.

Rick tilts his chin higher. ‘Daryl,’ he snaps his fingers and turns on his heels.

‘All clear,’ Daryl murmurs. He takes his place at Rick’s right hand and leads the cop back to the car. They pass the body on the ground. Daryl glances at Rick.

Rick is watching him in return. They both hesitate for a second.

‘We have time,’ the boy says softly.

Rick clears his throat, rubs at the stubble on his cheek. He works his jaw and then nods jerkily. ‘Yeah,’ his posture relaxes a bit when he reaches for one of the shovels. ‘You’re right. We have time.’

Daryl smiles softly as he grabs the other shovel.

‘At an angle, put your weight in it, not just your back,’ Rick murmurs as he stomps his boot down on the edge of shovel to drive it deep into the earth.

‘I know. Carl taught me back at the farm when I was helpin’ him out with his chores. I got it.’

Rick nods. ‘You could have died for this.’

‘Pssh,’ the Dixon boy grins, ‘you sayin’ that because of that spot of trouble at the cliff side? I could have handled it. He just panicked a bit, but I had his back.’

‘That’s exactly why you could have died,’ Rick looks at him, ‘because he won’t have yours, next time. Maybe not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t know _how_.’

Daryl leans on the shovel and glances at Ron, who is standing a couple of feet away from them. The boy is using a rock to mark the tree. He’s scraping the bark off to create a smooth surface. ‘But we’ll teach ‘em, right?’

‘It might not be enough. It might not be soon enough.’

‘We have time,’ Daryl says again. He straightens his back, meets Rick’s gaze head on. ‘We have time.’

 

 

The walkers will break through.

They will follow the roads and the roads will lead them to Alexandria.

 

 

Practically everyone is gathered in Deanna’s living room. Rick is standing in front of the mantel piece with Tobin, trying to get a grip on the situation. It’s difficult because the people from Alexandria are scared. Of him. Of the pit of walkers right outside their gates. Of everything else. There’s fear in their eyes, as well as doubt. Skepticism, even, of the threat they’re under.

Daryl watches from the windowsill. He’d started out sitting with Glenn and Maggie on the couch but more and more people poured into the room just before the meeting started. There hadn’t been enough room around the coffee table; people started to spill into the kitchen. It meant that they were standing right behind the couch.

So Daryl moved to the window sill, partly hidden by Abraham, who is lounging in a chair, heavy boots resting on the coffee table. When the boy had slipped past him, the man had patted his leg in reassurance.

He doesn’t like it when people can sneak up on him. Every one of his family knows that. Nobody raises an eyebrow anymore when he opts to find a better spot.

Right now, Heath is telling how he first found out about the pit. He’s been in Alexandria since the beginning but he goes out for long runs. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks, apparently. He just returned last night.

Daryl listens to the story and can’t believe that they knew about that place all along. By ignoring the problem, its only gotten worse.

‘So, all the while the walkers have been drawn by the sound, and they’re making more sound and they’re drawing more in,’ Michonne sums up with a little shake of her head.

‘And here we are,’ Rick nods.

Of course, he has a plan. It sounds risky, but there are already walkers slipping through the exits. The trucks that keep the walkers in could go off the edge any day now and open up the flood. Maybe after one more hard rain. That exit sends them east. All of them.

Right at Alexandria.

It’s going to happen.

They will have to act soon.

Carol voices what the Alexandrians are thinking. That it is terrifying. Then she shows a bit of her old self by adding that there’s no other way.

Daryl bites on his thumb to hide his grin. Sometimes he wonders whether Carol was an actor in a former life. Or a conman. She must have been because the people around her nod and stand a little closer to her.

A guy named Carter nearly throws a wrench in the whole thing. He used to work on the wall with Reg, he could draw up some plans to reinforce the weak spots.

Abraham is already shaking his head at Rick, who glances at him. The two of them used to work on the construction crew together.

‘We can try and make it safe,’ Carter insists.

‘Even if we could, the sound of those walkers is drawing more and more every day,’ Rick explains. ‘Building up the exits won’t change that.’

Deanna finally speaks up. She’s staring out of the window and doesn’t turn around to address her people. ‘We’re going to do what Rick says. The plan he’s laid out.’

‘I told you all,’ Rick continuous after a few beats of silence. ‘We’re gonna have Daryl leading them away.’

Just an hour ago, there had been a screaming match over this point in the kitchen of their own home. With Glenn pitted against Rick, both of their fists balled until Judith had started crying because of them. Then it had continued in angry hisses and fingers jabbing into chests until Daryl had stepped in.

He can do it.

No more kid stuff.

And Glenn had left in an angry huff at his own words being used against him while Maggie had sat the boy down at the table to talk through everything again, assuring him that he didn’t have to do it, they could find someone else….

‘The bike is loud,’ Rick says. ‘It’s fast, so he’ll lead the herd on.’

‘He’s never been on that bike before,’ Aaron objects. ‘We don’t even know if it runs yet. You can’t have his test ride be leading a herd of walkers!’

Rick looks at Daryl.

The teenager lets his head thud against the wood behind him. ‘It’ll run,’ he says. ‘And it won’t be my test ride. We got time.’

‘ _Rick_ ,’ Aaron objects but Glenn looks up and over his shoulder.

‘He can do it,’ the Korean cuts in. ‘If he wasn’t sure, he wouldn’t have offered.’

‘And I’ll be with him,’ Sasha pipes up from the couch. ‘I’ll take a car, ride next to him. It can’t just be him. I’ll keep ‘em coming. Daryl keeps them from getting sloppy.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ Abraham says. ‘It’s a long way to white-knuckle it solo.’

There will be two teams. One on each side of the forest helping manage this thing. There are going to be more people on watch. Spencer, Rosita and Holly, so they can’t help when it all goes down.

Michonne can, though. She’s the first to volunteer when Rick asks. Glenn. Beth. Gabriel is turned down quickly when he offers.

Again, it’s Carter who objects. It turns out that he’s not just objecting to the plan, but to Rick himself. ‘So what, we’re just supposed to take your word for it?’ he asks. ‘We’re all supposed to just fall in line behind you, after…’

After Rick losing it and waving his gun at people.

After Rick killing Pete.

Deanna shuts the rant down with a sharp; ‘ _enough_!’

Silence.

Heath volunteers. Tobin. A woman Daryl doesn’t know. Nicholas, despite Glenn’s glare.

‘We’ll make this work.’ Rick nods. ‘We’ll keep this place safe, keep our families safe. We will.’

‘The plan,’ Carter says. ‘Go through it again.’

‘Man,’ Daryl groans, ‘he just said it!’

‘Every part again. The _exact_ plan.’

Rick takes a deep, steadying breath. And tells it again.

Every part, again.

The exact plan.

 

 

‘Dare!’

Daryl stops running, stumbling a bit due to his momentum, and turns around, shielding his eyes from the sun so he can see Glenn standing on the porch of Deanna’s house. They’re going through the plan second by second, move by move, again and again and again. He’s been excused after he started to jab his knife into Deanna’s window sill out of boredom.

It’s just Carter, Heath, Michonne, Glenn and Maggie, Rick, Morgan and Deanna who are going over it now. They try to pick it apart, to find their own mistakes and correct them before they’re doing this.

‘Yeah?’ Daryl shouts back.

‘Don’t – don’t ride it until we’re there, okay?’

‘Ty is gonna help me!’

‘Just wait, okay?’

Daryl’s shoulders slump a little. He’d been on his way to Olivia’s place to get the gas and motor oil so he could get the bike running. Ty had promised to help him out if he needed it. The man had been on a bike before and he’s strong enough to support him should he mess up pushing the thing out of the garage.

‘Fine. You gonna be long?’

‘No. We’ll be there in an hour.’

‘An _hour_? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me, that thing is good to go! I’ve been waitin’ all day!’

‘Then you won’t mind waiting just a bit longer. You wait and we’ll be there.’ Glenn pushes himself away from the railing and then changes his mind, turning back to the boy. ‘And I need to talk to you tonight.’

‘Good lord, I said; I can do it!’ Daryl moans. ‘You’ll see when I get it running.’

‘It’s not about that. It’s about something else. Something important.’

Daryl takes a few steps towards the porch. ‘What then?’

‘I’ll tell you tonight if you wait with firing up the bike.’

 

 

Daryl pushes the bike towards the road. Head bowed as his muscles strain, sweat dripping down his neck, but he manages to push it up the slight curve on his own. Tyreese is walking behind him, one hand on the back of the bike to stop it from tipping over should the boy lose his grip.

He doesn’t.

His family cheers when he rolls it out of the garage. They’re sitting in the grass in front of Aaron’s house.

‘You got it,’ Tyreese says with a nod. ’Put it on the standard.’

Daryl tilts the bike a bit so he can easily find the standard and then lowers the machine onto it.

‘Start it up.’

He chews on his lip before reaching over and twisting the key. Then he shifts it into neutral before pushing the kill switch. When he wants to reach for the start button, Tyreese makes a noise behind him.

‘Remember your lessons. What do you need to do, what kind of engine is it?’

‘Shit,’ Daryl jerks his hand back. ‘The clutch.’

‘That’s right,’ Tyreese murmurs.

On the grass, Carl bursts out laughing. ‘Forget something? _Come o_ n, Dare!’

‘Ignore him,’ the man advises. ‘Just focus on your bike. You got it.’

Daryl pulls the clutch and presses the button. The bike rumbles to life beside him. He looks at Tyreese, who beams back at him. ‘It works!’

‘Yeah!’ The man laughs. ‘That’s your hard work, mini-man! Wanna get on?’ At Daryl’s enthusiastic nod, Tyreese moves closer so he can grab the handlebars if something goes wrong. ‘Okay, so you’re tiny, right?’ he grins at Daryl’s immediate frown. ‘It means you’ve got to balance on the tips of your toes, okay? Slide into the seat.’

Daryl throws his leg over and grips the handlebars tightly.

‘Now push yourself upwards, off the standard.’

It takes him three tries, but eventually he can feel the tipping point of the machine. He balances carefully and kicks the standard back up. The bike feels powerful beneath him, rumbling smoothly.

‘Okay, you’re in neutral now, so what do you do?’

‘First!’ Daryl says as he shifts gears.

‘Careful, Dare!’ Glenn shouts from the sideline.

‘Easy!’ Rick chimes in.

Both men look a bit worried.

Tyreese winks at him, ‘you got it, don’t worry about it, just do it.’

Daryl nods and slowly lets go of the clutch. The bike starts to roll. Slowly, then faster.

‘Eyes up!’ Tyreese yells when Daryl stares too long at his handlebars to figure out what to do and he wobbles dangerously. He sticks his foot out and stops. After a deep breath, he starts it back up again. Another street length. Stop. Start again.

He’s picking up speed now. The turns are a little difficult, he knows that he should lean into them but is scared to do so. It takes him two awkward turns until he does and then it goes easy.

Shift to second gear.

A smooth corner, speeding up – third gear until he approaches another corner and shifts back. He practices it for a while circling through the town. People come out onto their porches to watch him zip by.

When he glides to a stop, puts the bike onto the standard and high-fives Tyreese, it feels like his face is splitting from how hard he’s grinning.

Carl scrambles to his feet and bounds over. ‘That’s so cool, Dare! You did it!’ he ruffles his brother’s hair. ‘Can I ride on the back now?’

Daryl bites his lip. He shakes his head.

‘What?’ Carl sinks back onto his feet and frowns. ‘Why not? You said I could!’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl pushes him away, ‘once I got a little more practice with it, okay? It ain’t as easy as it looks.’ He glances down and smooths his hands over the gas tank, ‘but it looks cool, right?’

‘Fucking cool.’

‘Carl,’ Rick chides as he comes up next to his son. ‘Congratulations, Dare.’

‘Well done, Dare,’ Glenn beams.

Daryl beams back at him. ‘Thanks, man. Can I take it around one more time?’

Glenn nods. He watches how the boy starts the machine again, carefully rolling away before picking up speed and cruising through the streets. The turns go a lot smoother now, he’s going faster, too.

The Korean glances at Rick. ‘You ever felt like this?’ he asks.

‘Not yet,’ Rick grins back at him. ‘But I’ve never watched my son ride off on a self-made motorbike thrice his size in the middle of the apocalypse.’

Glenn frowns and looks at Dare, who is zipping through the streets now. ‘You’re a lucky man then. This is terrifying.’

 

 

Two days later and Daryl pushes the bike onto the road smoothly. He kicks the standard down and slides onto the seat, swinging his right leg while he puts his gloves on.

Beth comes breezing out of the house, blond hair curling over her shoulders. There’s a Cheshire grin on her face. She heads over towards the boy and looks at him, a little suspicious. ‘I know a secret,’ she says. ‘And I’m not allowed to tell anyone.’

Daryl raises an eyebrow, ‘then you best shut up about it, huh?’

‘Maybe. Do you know a secret you’re not allowed to tell anyone?’

The boy shrugs. ‘Know a lot of things,’ he murmurs as he ties his bandana around his neck. He leans down to check whether his bag is secured below his seat.

‘Dare,’ Beth says, the grin fading from her face. ‘Come on.’

‘You’re not supposed to be goin’ around tellin’!’

‘So you know what I know!’

Daryl rolls his eyes and looks around. The street is empty. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know what you know.’

Beth squeals and darts forward to hug him tightly. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’

‘I guess.’

‘I told you this would happen! Back at the cabin, _I_ _told_ _you_ this would happen!’

‘Yeah well, anyone knew this was gonna happen. Rabbits.’

Beth snorts and punches his shoulder. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘About what?’ Daryl frowns. He twists in his seat and whistles sharply.

The girl rolls her eyes. ‘About the fact that you’re going to be a big brother!’

The door of the house bangs open and Carl comes running down the steps, ‘Jesus,’ he groans, ‘Calm down, Dare, I was just grabbing some more water.’ The Grimes boy is carrying the crossbow on his back. It looks strange on him. He leans down to stuff the water bottles into the bag under Daryl’s seat.

Daryl steadies the bike and his brother climbs onto the back easily, sliding in place.

Feet on the pegs, hand on the gas tank, the other on Daryl’s shoulder.

‘Good to go,’ Carl nods.

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Beth says.

Daryl laughs at her and pulls the bandana up to cover his mouth and nose. ‘It’s gonna be awesome, Beth. Just give me some time to think of a new nickname. Hell-raiser, maybe.’

‘No!’ Beth laughs, ‘something cute!’

Carl frowns, ‘what’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Beth says just as Daryl turns slightly and says, ‘Maggie’s pregnant.’

Beth looks outraged. ‘You weren’t supposed to tell!’

‘Later, Beth!’ Daryl laughs as he throws the throttle open and lets the bike tear down the street. He feels Carl’s hold on him tighten. An arm snakes around his waist while he braces himself with the other on the gas tank.

The rumbling of the bike serves as enough warning for Eugene to throw the gates open.

The wide open road before them.

Carl whoops when Daryl shifts to higher and higher gears, picking up speed.

The bike roars.

They cut corners, leaning in until their knees almost touch the concrete, already used to the heavy machine.

They’re on their way to help Rick with setting up the barricade for when they will lead the herd out of the quarry. Yesterday, they had moved cars. Today, they’ll rig up the wall.

Soon, the walkers will be released.

But now, Daryl just throws open the gas a bit more.

Carl yells and screams, but he can barely be heard over the roaring of the bike.

The world flashes by.

Daryl laughs until he can barely breathe.

 

 

 


	61. Dance (everyone is watching)

 

* * *

 

 

‘Whoa! Let me carry it!’ Daryl darts forward to grab the heavy container with water from Maggie. He lifts it onto his shoulder with a grunt, walking beside her towards where the people are working on the wall.

The woman looks at him with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. ‘I can carry it, Dare.’

‘Nah, I got it,’ the boy grins. ‘Glenn told me ya gotta be careful. He said it was important. We’re supposed to help you out more.’

‘Yeah,’ Maggie laughs, ‘when I’m nine months pregnant and my ankles are so swollen that you have to help me get to the bathroom.’

‘I ain’t doin’ that! Glenn can drag you to the bathroom. Good Lord.’

‘Look at you, twelve years old again and worried that a girl is going to give you cooties.’

‘I’m always worried about that,’ Daryl jokes, swiping at the woman playfully. ‘Seriously though,’ he says when the smiles fades. ‘Glenn said you have to take it easy.’

‘Months from now,’ Maggie nods, reaching out to run a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not going to break,’ she lowers her voice, ‘and the baby is going to be fine. It’s supposed to be a secret. It won’t be if you keep stealing my chores.’

‘When are you going to tell ‘em anyway?’

‘After this,’ Maggie says while her gaze sweeps over the rows of cars that line the road. The road that leads down to the quarry filled with walkers. It won’t be long until D-day. The beams have been placed, today they’re going to mount the metal plates. One more day for rehearsals and then they’re ready.

‘Why not tonight?’ They’re having a get-together at Rick’s place tonight. Everyone is stressed out over the situation at Alexandria. As a part of Rick’s group, they always have to watch their backs in case one of those cowards suddenly grows a pair or loses his mind. Tonight they’ll kick back one more time before it all goes down. Just their group, like the old times.

‘Nah,’ Maggie brushes her hair behind her ear. ‘We need to stay focused for this. And if everyone is going to worry as much as you do, we’ll be in trouble.’ She flashes him a grin.

He rolls his eyes but still laughs. ‘You know there’s always going to be something, right?’ he asks as he puts the water container down in the grass. ‘If it ain’t this, it’s gonna be those people out there or worries about food, runs…. There’s always going to be something that ain’t right out there.’

‘I know,’ Maggie nods. ‘But we’re going to be okay. We just need everything to calm down first.’

‘Okay.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he sees how Abraham and Glenn try to lift one of the metal plates. ‘I’ll be right back,’ the boy says as he darts away again, running to help his friends. He slams into the plate, pushing it into place. It’s a good thing that Abraham had told him to keep wearing his riding gloves because the metal plates have gotten hot due to the sun beating down on them.

‘Hold it!’ Abraham shouts as one of the guys from his crew starts to drill bolts into the metal.

Daryl bites on his lower lip and keeps pushing with all his might. Glenn grunts next to him, feet slipping on the grass, but they manage to hold the plate up long enough for the guy to get the bolts in.

‘Okay! Thanks, ya pussies!’ Abraham laughs when the two friends stumble away from the hot plate.

The boy crashes into the grass, panting a bit.

The sky is blue above him. Endless.

All around him, his own group and the people from Alexandria are working hard to get the defenses rigged up. He can hear Michonne shouting orders on his right while Tobin tries to get another metal sheet off one of the trucks on the other side. Tara is sitting in the shade, exhausted after a morning of hard work. She’s not back to her old self yet after her injury, but she’s getting there.

Daryl listens to how Rick talks to Carol nearby.

_She’s in charge, but you’re in charge now._

The boy sits up with a sigh and pushes his sweaty hair out of his face. He’s been working all morning. After a few minutes to catch his breath, he stumbles back to Maggie who rewards him with a cup of water.

Carol laughs at him. ‘You look like a drowned rat.’

‘Fuckin’ disgustin’,’ Daryl mutters, plucking at his shirt. ‘Drowned in my own damn sweat.’

‘Take it off and let it dry,’ the silver-haired woman advises him. ‘If you ride back like that tonight, you’ll be sick tomorrow.’

‘Fine,’ Daryl shrugs out of his shirt and throws it over the handlebars of his bike. He wipes his forehead dry with the palm of his hands, the leather of his fingerless gloves smooth and cool against the heated skin. He taps his fingernails against the rim of his cup as he looks around the building site again. ‘I’m gonna give Rick a hand. He looks about ready to keel over.’

‘Don’t work too hard yourself, Pookie,’ Carol warns. ‘You’ve been out in this heat all day.’

‘Georgia blood,’ Daryl grins. ‘I can take it.’ He salutes the two women before walking over to his friend. At first he doesn’t understand why so many people are looking at him. He’s been out here all day, they should be used to having him on the construction site by now. There had been some disgruntled voices, people checking in with Carol if it wouldn’t be better for the boy to stay back at Alexandria with the rest of the children, but she had smoothed things over.

And after he had taken a walker down from on top of the RV, the shot lining up perfectly, most people had stopped complaining.

But now they’re looking at him again. Some out of the corner of their eyes while others do a blatant double-take.

He almost missteps when he realizes why they are all looking at him.

The scars. Those angry marks on pale skin, snaking from the waistband of his jeans up to his stomach and chest, one licking his collarbone while others curl around his ribs towards his back. Others start from the base of his spine, cutting up his back.

He looks down at his naked chest. The two necklaces against his sternum, that trail of hair leading down from his belly button, the muscles he’s rather proud of. That’s what _he_ sees. He hardly even sees the scars anymore.

He frowns and rubs with his gloved hand over his left breast. Palm over his nipple while fingertips brush over puckered flesh that covers old wounds. It’s been a long time since anyone has taken notice of them. The group that has been with him since Atlanta probably don’t see them anymore either and the ones who joined them at or after the prison have gotten used to them, too. Rosita’s gaze had lingered the first time Daryl had stripped to wash up in a stream, but she hadn’t said anything. The others had taken his family’s lead and never acted like it was something extraordinary.

Suddenly he remembers that other quarry and Morales and his wife. The time he went swimming. The time he’d exposed his back for the first time and without even thinking about it. The moment he had realized that he had left his old small town behind, the old friends who had already known about the marks. Morales’ wife, who’d looked horrified.

And Glenn, who had splashed him with cold water to shock him out of his own shame and fear.

He looks around the constructions site.

Only his family is still moving about, working. Michonne is helping Abraham, her muscles flexing as she lifts one of the heavy plates. Tara, who is telling Glenn that he’s putting a beam up at the wrong angle and getting up to help him out. Rick, who is still digging a hole for the next beam.

The people from Alexandria have stopped.

Jessie is standing close to Rick. She’s looking at him with wide eyes, arms wrapped around her own stomach as if she’s trying to comfort herself.

They all have scars. Daryl knows that.

The neat little dent in Rick’s shoulder.

The mess of scar tissue on Carl’s chest.

The mark on Michonne’s leg.

The stripe on Beth’s wrist.

He rolls his shoulders back. Lifts his chin a little higher in defiance, let’s a grin tug at his lips to reveal small, sharp teeth. Blue eyes flash as he passes the woman. ‘Yo, Rick. Need a hand there?’

The cop looks up at him and wipes the sweat from his brow. Dark curls are plastered to his forehead. ‘Dare,’ he grins as he sits down in the grass, falls rather, and hands the shovel to the teenager. ‘Thanks.’

‘Old timer,’ Daryl teases as he grabs the shovel and starts to dig. The stares are still pricking on his back, his neck, on his arms. He bristles a bit, the confidence faltering. It’s not real. It comes from memories.

From the way he once saw Merle grin at a girl before he took her home. From the way his dad used to walk, tall and proud, with swaying hips that made girls look and giggle. The confidence Merle radiated when he was with his crew. The way his dad didn’t give a damn whether someone was backing him up or not.

The confidence, it’s not his. Not really.

When he sees a man lean towards a woman, whispering something with his eyes still on his back, Daryl snaps,  ‘something worth seein’?’

Rick eyes him but doesn’t get up to intervene.

Daryl looks at the shovel in his hands. His knuckles have gone white on the wood. He takes a deep breath and turns to the cop, his motions a little jerky due to the sudden tension in his frame. ‘Sorry,’ he says even though he hadn’t snapped at him. It feels like he let him down all the same. ‘How deep do you want it?’

‘Couple inches more.’

So he digs until Rick tells him to stop.

‘Are you making him do all the work?’ Michonne comes walking over and stops next to Rick, looking down at him. One hand on her hip, an eyebrow arched.

‘Well, he’s got to learn,’ Rick nods.

‘To shovel?’

‘It’s really not as easy as it looks, you know,’ the cop says as he gazes up at her, waving a vague hand at the teenager. ‘It’s all about… the density of the earth. The angle of your shovel. It’s hard, I’m telling you.’ He looks like he’s fighting a smile. ‘He has to practice.’

‘You’re telling me it’s science?’

‘Art,’ Rick corrects and then laughs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

‘Child labor as art,’ Michonne muses. ‘Welcome to Alexandria. Well, I’m sorry to say that I need to borrow Dare for a while.’ She shifts her weight and her tone becomes a little more serious. ‘I want to have a look around. All this noise is drawing more of them over here. Glenn took care of some on the other side but –‘

‘I told you to let them handle it.’ Rick looks at her sharply.

Daryl leans on his shovel. He knows that Rick means the Alexandrians. This morning, the cop had told them that his family is not allowed to help them out today. They have to learn how to deal with walkers themselves or they won’t survive. Daryl doubts that a quick tutorial of _get the brain_ is going to do the trick.

‘And they will,’ Michonne replies calmly. ‘I’m just going to have a look around. And I prefer to do it with a fine young man on my arm. Look at you,’ she laughs at Daryl, who pushes his sweaty hair out of his eyes. ‘You’ll do nicely.’

‘Stop,’ the teenager mutters. He can feel his ears burn.

‘Go get your bow,’ she says with a nod towards one of the trucks. The weapon is leaning against the tire.

Half an hour later, he’s walking beside her through the forest. The bow hanging from his right shoulder. He hasn’t had to use it yet. The first one they’d come across had caused him to raise the weapon, peering down the sight, but Michonne had pushed his arm back down before striding over and killing it herself.

Now, he just walks and she kills walkers. He doesn’t mind much. He never had to worry about her getting into trouble or missing her target. Her katana might be even more reliable than Rick’s python.

The blade flashes even when blood drips from the tip.

He likes watching her wield it. There’s an elegance in the way she twists the handle, sweeps the blade through the air. It explodes into sheer power when she pushes it through a skull. Dark eyes flashing, chest heaving slightly after every kill.

Blood has splattered onto her shirt. He pretends that’s the reason why he notices that another button of her shirt has come undone, causing it to gape a bit more. When she bends over to clean her blade on the clothes of a walker, he can see the swell of her breasts.

He quickly looks away. A fierce blush creeps up his neck to his ears and cheeks. He aims a mean kick at a flower. ‘What the hell did you take me out here for anyway? You don’t need me watchin’ your back.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Michonne agrees as she straightens again. The katana slides back into the sheath on her back. ‘I thought you could use a break.’

He looks at her through his fringe. ‘From what?’

‘You know,’ she leans against a tree with her shoulder, ‘when I first saw you with Will? I could hardly believe you were his. I mean, you have his eyes but that’s about it. But when I saw you walking towards Rick just now? That was Will. I know it bothers you. When people stare?’ she asks with a look at the scars on his chest. ‘You hate it.’

‘Don’t care.’

‘You do,’ she laughs. ‘But Will wouldn’t have.’

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Daryl agrees. ‘He had the same ones,’ he scratches at the scar on his collarbone. ‘And he never gave a shit about who saw. I don’t, neither.’

‘You shouldn’t, but you do. And that’s okay,’ she says as she passes him, heading back to the cars and their family. ‘Don’t throw yourself in the deep-end before you can swim, Dare. That’s all I’m saying. You have nothing to prove.’

He watches how she walks away. He wobbles on his feet. ‘I forgot,’ he calls out after a few heartbeats. ‘I forgot about them. Y’all ain’t ever bothered by them, so I just… I forgot other people weren’t used to it. I can handle the deep-end,’ he says as he catches up to her. ‘Time they all learned how to swim. If some redneck kid is psyching them out? Pssh. Maybe Rick were right. Maybe there ain’t enough time to set them straight.’

Michonne reaches out, puts a light hand on his upper arm to stop him from moving. She just looks at him.

‘It ain’t my problem no more,’ Daryl says, meeting her eye. ‘And it never were my damn fault, okay?’

He sounds too defensive to be sure of that himself.

‘I know that,’ Michonne nods.

‘I just had to learn.’

The woman flinches, fingers contracting on his sun-kissed skin.

‘Every kid makes mistakes,’ Daryl tells her. ‘I’ve paid for mine. It’s done now. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t care.’

The hand moves to cup his cheek. Then it glides through his hair to the back of his head, drawing him into a tight hug. He resists at first, tensing up like he wants to push her away.

‘I _don’t_ care,’ he repeats forcefully.

‘I know you don’t,’ she says into his hair. ‘But I do.’

 

 

There are five walkers and the Alexandrians don’t know what to do. They drop their guns when Rick tells them it will draw more in but they don’t pick up their shovels.

Daryl watches. He’s not allowed to help. The crossbow is heavy in his arms, getting heavier with every pathetic shove one of the men gives to a walker’s chest.

He’s grateful when Morgan breaks free from their group and takes the first one down.

He swings his bow up, kills another, before darting to Carter’s rescue. The large hunting knife flashes and the builder whimpers as he watches how the walker closest to him dies. Blood sprays onto the metal plate.

‘You said you don’t take chances anymore,’ Morgan says to Rick.

Carter looks at Daryl like he’s crazy.

‘You’re fuckin’ welcome,’ the boy grouses as he yanks his knife back out. ‘Assholes.’

 

 

Rick laughs and swings the door to the pantry open, reaching out to swipe at Daryl’s head half-heartedly.

Carter is standing in the hallway. He’s pointing a gun at Eugene, who is on the floor. The fake scientist looks terrified.

The cop rolls back onto his heels. Cocks his head a little to the side. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asks as he places his hand on Daryl’s stomach and pushes the boy behind him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking this place back from you,’ Carter replies.

More people walk in. Olivia, Spencer, the girl who’d volunteered, and Tobin.

‘That’s what you were talking about in here?’ Rick asks. He doesn’t sound too impressed. They’d been on their way to pick up some supplies for the party tonight.

‘That’s what _he_ was talking about,’ Tobin says, making it clear that he doesn’t want to be a part of it.

Rick nods. ‘See, I would have set up some lookouts,’ his voice is deceptively calm. ‘That would have been the smart thing. You know, if I happened to…’ he grabs Carter’s hand, pushing his arm against the wall so he can take the gun from him. A twist, a kick, a grunt and Carter is on the floor with his own gun pointed to the back of his head. Rick towers over him. ‘You really think you’re gonna take this community from us? From Glenn? From Michonne? From Daryl? From _me_? Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?’

‘It was just me,’ Carter whimpers.

‘What?’ Rick leans in closer.

‘It was just me,’ the man repeats with a shudder. ‘Just… Just kill me.’

Daryl shifts his weight and steps past Morgan, who’d moved forward to shield him from the gunshot that never came. He glances at the man kneeling in the hallway, wipes his nose on the back of his hand and then walks past him, too. ‘Rick,’ he mutters as he moves towards the chalkboard behind the cop.

‘Oh, I’m good.’ He uncocks the gun. Leans away from Carter and passes the gun to the boy.

Daryl hums and puts it in his pocket, holding on to the strap of his bow as his gaze glides over the names on the board.

Behind him, Rick says something to Carter about working together but Daryl doesn’t really care. He frowns and leans into the armory. ‘Yo, Olivia. You updated those numbers yet?’

‘Yes,’ her voice is a little shaky but she meets his eye.

Daryl frowns. ‘Those are the same numbers for the rabbits as yesterday. You mean all my snares were empty?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says promptly. ‘You’re supposed to bring the meat here.’

The boy gapes at her. ‘I’ve been workin’ my ass off all fuckin’ day and none of you lazy bastards could be bothered to check my damn snares? The fuck is wrong with you people?’

‘The snares are outside the walls, Daryl,’ Olivia starts.

‘Of course they’re outside the goddamn walls, you stupid bitch! That’s why they got meat in them! Are you all even too damn scared to go out -‘

 Another voice distracts him mid-rant. A soft voice, light and cheerful. He can’t quite make out the words and it dies away once it gets close to the door. Beth slips past Morgan and into the hallway. There’s a rifle slung over one shoulder. A string with rabbits on the other.

‘Hey,’ she beams at Rick and then Daryl. ‘Oh, hey Dare,’ she jostles the line. ‘I figured you wouldn’t have time to check your snares today. Hope you don’t mind.’ She breezes past them and thrusts the rifle into Olivia’s hands. The string with rabbits into Spencer’s. ‘Here,’ she smiles, ‘you know how to skin them, right?’

‘I don’t,’ Spencer says, a little dumbfounded. ‘Do you?’

‘Yeah,’ Beth tucks a blond strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Dare taught all of us how. Come on, I’ll teach you right now. I can’t believe you managed to go this long without learning that.’

Daryl sniffs and turns on his heels, ‘be sure to teach him how to tie his shoes too, Beth. He might not know.’

The girl frowns as she walks past him. ‘Ain’t no reason to be rude, Dare.’

Spencer has the guts to sneer at him as he follows the girl.

 

 

Eric is sitting at the kitchen table. He’s studying some maps of the area, pencil tracing over roads and marking crossroads. The fingers of his left hand drum a steady beat, fingernails tapping on the wood of the table.

The now-familiar roar of the motorbike causes him to look up from his work. The garage door rattles. Another, softer, growl and the bike is parked inside. Two young voices make him smile slightly as he leans back in his chair.

Carl is the first to appear in the hallway. He looks around, a little tentative. He’s never been inside before.

Daryl crashes into him seconds later, his long hair a mess of half-formed curls. The black shirt isn’t buttoned up, revealing his tanned chest and jewelry. He pushes Carl out of the way and stomps into the living room. ‘Anyone home?’ he calls out, ‘oh damn – there ya are. Hey, man.’

Eric smiles, ‘hi, Daryl.’ He rises. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ the boy murmurs as he slinks into the kitchen. He grabs an apple out of the bowl there.

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Carl moans, covering his eyes with his hand.

‘What? He don’t mind none,’ Daryl says as he swings himself onto the kitchen island, boots thudding against the cabinets beneath him. He takes a big bite.

‘I don’t mind,’ Eric confirms. ‘Do you want one, Carl? There’s plenty.’

‘No, thank you. Carol told us not to eat anything because dinner is almost ready,’ he says pointedly.

‘Rat,’ Daryl smirks. ‘And I’m hungry _now_. Parked the bike in your garage for a bit again, Eric. Abe is going over the car Tara’s gonna use in ours, so…’ he shrugs. ‘Anyway, there’s gonna be a get-together at ours later. Wanna come?’

Eric lifts his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry?’

Carl walks into the room now, hands trailing over the furniture while he crosses the kitchen to lean against the counter, standing next to his brother. ‘My dad’s hosting this – it’s not really a party, just something we used to do at… at the prison. You should come. Aaron, too, of course.’

Eric glances at the Dixon boy. ‘I… err… Are you sure you want us there?’

Daryl shrugs and screws up his nose. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘Last time we talked you…. Well.’

Daryl looks confused for a moment. He munches on the apple. ‘Oh,’ he swallow, ‘yeah, I ain’t mad no more, so….’

Carl lifts an eyebrow and tilts his head back so he can look at his brother. ‘You got mad?’

‘A little,’ he shrugs. ‘Weren’t nothing.’ He rolls his eyes when Carl just keeps looking at him. ‘He called Glenn my dad, kinda. Sorta. Don’t matter now.’

‘Oh,’ Carl laughs as he looks at Eric, who is watching the two boys curiously. ‘Yeah, don’t do that. His right hook is even meaner than his face.’ That earns him a light kick to the knee. ‘Anyway, you’re welcome if you want to come. Carol is cooking – you don’t have to bring anything. It’s at our place, around seven, I think. So, yeah. The other people from Alexandria aren’t really invited, so if you’d just keep it, you know, between us, that’d be great.’

‘The fuck do we care if they know?’ Daryl asks.

‘It makes things weird,’ Carl says confidently. ‘It’d be like inviting all your classmates to your birthday party, except that one weird kid.’

‘Who the hell invites classmates to their birthday parties?’

‘Everyone used to,’ Carl says with a frown. ‘You never went to one?’

‘No,’ Daryl swallows a bite. ‘Does that make me the weird kid?’

‘Probably. Did you throw birthday parties? It was kind of a trade thing, I invite you to mine, you better invite me to yours. That kind of stuff.’

An amused eyebrow shoots up. ‘Ya met my dad. We look like birthday party people to you? I always had to remind him that my damn birthday was comin’ up. He’d get me an awesome gift though, ‘s why I’d always remind him.’ He holds out the rest of the apple to Carl, who takes it.

‘Like what? What kind of presents did you get?’

‘He took me to the movies once.’

Carl frowns as he inspects the apple and takes a bite. ‘What?’

‘For my birthday, he once got us two tickets to see a movie downtown. Got me a milkshake, too.’ Daryl brings up his hand to suck his fingers clean from where a drop of juice had dripped onto them. ‘That’s a pretty awesome gift, right?’

Carl looks at Daryl before glancing at Eric. ‘Yeah,’ he says, sounding enthusiastic despite the look in his eyes. ‘That’s awesome. Sorry, just didn’t hear you right.’

Eric clears his throat. ‘I’ll have to ask Aaron whether he wants to stop by, but you can count me in. I’d love to be there.’

‘Cool,’ Daryl grins as he slides off the counter. ‘See you in a bit, then.’

‘See you,’ Carl calls out as they both make their way out of the house. Their banter can be heard until they step onto their own porch, four houses down.

 

 

The night is filled with laughter. There’s food on the table, drinks in the fridge, and everyone is having a great time. Some of them are gathered around the coffee table, throwing down cards and howling with laughter when Tara loses to Eugene for the twentieth time.

Abraham is telling tall tales about his army days while Rosita scoffs and Tyreese hides his smile in a coffee cup. His sister is leaning on his broad shoulders, leering at the ginger who pretends not to get flustered by the attention.

Beth is sitting on the kitchen table, legs swinging freely while she sings one of her songs.

Everyone freezes for a moment when there’s a knock on the door, but it’s only Eric and Aaron. They brought more food because it used to be rude to come to a party empty handed. After a couple of greetings, they hover at the edge of the kitchen awkwardly, not sure what to do or who to sit with.

Maggie is teaching Carl how to dance. It’s an awkward shuffle and the boy doesn’t know where to put his hands, a fierce blush coloring his cheeks while he glares daggers at Daryl, who is lounging on the kitchen counter and laughing his ass off.

 ‘What are you laughing at?’ Beth asks as she steps up next to Daryl. ‘Come on, show me your skills. Or are you all talk?’

Daryl falls silent instantly. He glances down at his chest, ‘kinda busy here.’ He points at Judith who is playing with his necklaces. Little fingers curling around the silver 22.

‘Come here, Ass kicker,’ Beth says as she scoops the little girl up and walks over to Eric. ‘Can you watch her for a second?’

‘I – I’ve never, I don’t know what-‘

‘I got her,’ Aaron laughs as he takes Judith from the young woman. His movements are a little rusty, but Judith is so used to switching arms that she doesn’t throw a fuss when he has to shift her around a little bit before she can get comfortable.

‘Thank you, Aaron,’ Beth beams, then she turns back to Daryl. ‘Come on, on your feet. Meastro, wanna take over?’

Rick laughs and puts their stereo on, sliding a CD in.

Daryl groans. ‘He’s the worst to ask!’

Beth just grins at him and holds out her hand, wriggling her fingers a bit. ‘Come on, Dixon. I thought you weren’t scared of nothing?’

‘Aint,’ the boy grins back. He slides off the counter and takes her hand, pulling her closer. He pulls too hard and she nearly stumbles into him, laughing, but he catches her and mumbles an apology. ‘Never danced before, so…’

Beth teaches him.

It’s more fun than he’d anticipated. Mostly he’d wanted to piss Carl off by being better at it, but there’s no clear way to tell. They both stumbles over their own two feet, though neither steps on those of their dance partner. Carl can’t keep track of the beat to save his life while Daryl can’t do the moves if he isn’t looking at his own feet.

Beth twirls him and teaches him how to do the same for her. They’re laughing, teasing each other and ganging up on Carl whenever possible.

He’s not really in trouble until the rest of the family gets involved.

Beth bows out of the next dance and is replaced by Rosita.

Daryl’s hand shakes a bit when he puts it on her waist. While Beth had been wearing a regular shirt, Rosita has tied hers up, exposing her belly. He has to place his hand on her bare skin, feeling the warmth bleed into his fingertips. She’s close enough that he can smell the body wash she uses.

It’s harder to remember the moves now. He stumbles a bit, flustered, but she doesn’t give him a hard time. Instead, she leads the dance, tugging him into the right direction, playfully twirling him before she’ll let him do the same. It’s easier when they laugh together. He doesn’t feel like such a fool when she’s having a good time.

Still, he’s grateful when Abraham walks over and booms; ‘enough with the high school bullshit, let me show you how to dance with a girl!’ before taking Rosita in his arms. He slots their hips together, rolling their lower bodies teasingly as his hands move up his sides, curling around his hips before dipping low to grip her ass.

She grins and loops an arm around his broad shoulders. Her chest pressed against his, bodies moving fluidly to the beat.

‘PG,’ Rick shouts from where he’s now sitting with Beth. ‘Keep it PG, kids!’ His laugh fades for only a second when Michonne grabs Tyreese’ hand to drag him onto the impromptu dancefloor. Maggie parts from Carl to dance with her husband.

Daryl watches for a while, eyes glued to Rosita and Abraham before he sneaks out of the house to sit on their porch. His hands are much steadier than before, but he still has trouble lighting his cigarette.

‘ _Oh my God_!’

Daryl groans when Carl appears behind him.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ Carl hisses with a big grin on his face. He falls onto the step next to his friend, knocking their shoulders together. ‘You danced with Rosita and Beth!’

‘So? You danced with Maggie.’

Carl smirks, ‘that’s not the same and you know it! _God_.’

‘What? Jealous?’

‘ _Yes_!’

Daryl snorts and feels how a blush colors the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. His ears burn, too. He sucks on his cigarette, taking a drag before grinning. ‘Well, Beth’s, you know-‘

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Carl waves it away, ‘your sister, I know, mine, too. But Rosita.’ He wags his eyebrows.

‘Stop,’ Daryl laughs. He smokes his cigarette while Carl rambles on about how hot that had looked, earning him a clip across the back of his head. He tells Daryl about prom, how he’d heard stories about people renting out places and getting hotel rooms for the private after parties. Daryl tells him that that used to be all talk and bullshit, according to Merle, anyway.

He tells Carl about parties at the trailer park and how he now regrets that he hadn’t been very interested in the half-naked girls when he was only ten.

They’re laughing when Ron walks by with Enid.

The girl smiles at them both.

Ron drapes a possessive arm around her shoulders which causes the smile to melt away. He tilts his chin a little higher, ‘hey, Daryl.’

‘Yeah, hey,’ the Dixon mutters around his cigarette.

‘Hello, Ron,’ Carl says pointedly.

Ron ignores him. ‘I heard you got the bike up and running. Maybe you can give me a ride sometime?’

Daryl blows the smoke up in the air between them. ‘Yeah, in your fuckin’ dreams.’

The blond boy frowns, ‘I thought we were friends?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl throws the butt on the ground. He kicks Carl’s thigh. ‘Come on, brother. Let’s get back inside. Night, Enid.’

When the door closes behind them, Carl frowns at him. ‘What was that about? You don’t even want to talk to him?’

‘He ignored ya,’ Daryl screws up his nose. ‘I ain’t  got nothing to say to him.’

 

 

Later, Carl will shrug out of his shirt to get tattooed.

Black permanent marker on pale skin. Wild flowers blooming on his spine. Vines circling to curl around his shoulders, thorns marring his shoulder blades. A Water Lotus unfolding on his hip, Bull Thistles on his side, Hell Vine, sunflowers, Snakeweed cover the empty patches until his entire back is covered with ink.

Judith toddles over and Daryl draws a tiny heart on her chubby hand.

Her brother gets up to inspect the artwork on his back in the hallway mirror. Awkwardly trying to twist around until Rick grabs another, smaller mirror, holding it up with a small grin on his face.

‘Wicked,’ Carl breathes with a smile that matches the word.

 

 

Much later, Daryl will remember this as the last time he’d seen him with two eyes.

 

 

 


	62. Thieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is such a long chapter. Omg.   
> smh.

 

* * *

 

 

It was supposed to be a dry run.

Just a rehearsal. They’re not even ready yet. The wall might be up and the cars in place, but there’s still work to be done. There’s a place down the road, filled with walkers. They were going to take them out later today because they can distract the herd right off the road but now they’re out of time.

One of the trucks slides off the road while they watch.

Rick turns to the group. ‘ _We’re doing it now_!’

There’s chaos. Only some of it is organized chaos, their family pushing each other out of the way to get to their assigned places while the people from Alexandria protest. Carter is screaming at Rick that they’re not ready while Abraham and Sasha jump into their car. They’re going to be waiting down at Red.

The first road is too narrow for both a car and the bike. Rick has named it the gauntlet.

Daryl will lead the herd through it. Alone.

‘Rick, I’ll hit the tractor place,’ Glenn says as he grabs his bag from a truck. They still need to clear that in order for the plan to have a decent chance. Heath and Nicholas are going with him.

‘Dare, get ready,’ Rick shouts while the groups start to head out. The car drives off behind them, Michonne has her katana out but she’s backing up slowly, waiting for the cop to join her group.

Daryl watches how the first walkers squeeze through the gap. The voices start to melt away. He only hears the snarls, the feet on uneven ground, the noise of engines starting. For just a second, he glances over his shoulder at Glenn, who is running as fast as he can towards the gauntlet. He needs to beat the herd.

‘Tobin, you hit it on my signal,’ Rick commands. ‘Dare,’ he runs over towards the teenager. ‘Fire it up, get ready, come on.’

The boy nods and throws his crossbow onto his back, not taking the time to put it in the holder. He wants it closer than that. With practiced ease, he slides onto the seat, tilting the bike off the standard. The key twists, he grabs his clutch and fires it up. The bike comes to life beneath him, rumbling smoothly, almost eager.

He pulls his black bandana over his nose and mouth before nodding at Rick.

The cop puts a hand on his shoulder, feeling around until he finds the walkie-talkie clipped to his leather jacket like he wants to make sure it’s still there. ‘It’s going to be fine, just meet Abraham and Sasha at Red. Not too fast. Slow and steady, like we practiced. Hey,’ he puts his hand on the boy’s cheek, forcing the nervous gaze upwards. ‘You got this.’

Daryl nods.

Rick nods, too. Then he backs away, ‘get ready to hit the flares,’ he warns in a loud voice, raising his hand. ‘Tobin! _Now_!’

The hand comes down and the truck moves away, clearing the path.

Flares go up.

He watches how his family takes off running. Michonne leads them down the gauntlet, Morgan hot on her heels. He can’t even see Glenn and his group anymore, they’ve already disappeared around a corner. The car is gone too. He looks to the side and sees how the people from Alexandria run for their lives, vanishing into the woods.

Flares go up further down the road.

He looks over his shoulder. Hundreds of walkers now freely stream out of the quarry. They notice him, turn towards him, start to make their way over.

He revs the engine.

Once.

Twice.

Then he opens the gas and lets his clutch come up, allowing the bike to slowly start rolling. The sound will lead the walkers on. The first couple of feet, he keeps revving the engine a little, jumping ahead and then almost stopping again, but then he settles on a slow pace, just like Rick had asked him to do.

Slow, but not always as steady. It’s hard to go slow on a motorbike, he’s found out. There’s a fine line between going too fast and falling over because he goes too slowly. He wobbles a bit, grits his teeth and steadies the bike by shifting his weight.

‘Come on,’ he mutters to himself, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Little kings don’t fall and get eaten.’

The walkers are following him.

He rides through the gauntlet. Rick’s voice comes from the walkie-talkie.

‘You’re doing good, Dare,’ he says. ‘Real good. Everyone else, just keep your heads – just keep up.’

It has only been a couple of minutes, but Daryl is drenched in sweat. He’s driven down this road dozens of times now, with either Tyreese or Rick watching his progress and commenting on his speed and technique, but it’s different when there are hundreds of walkers trying to eat him. His heart is stammering in his chest. His breath comes in short gasps. There's sweat pricking in his eyes.

‘We’re at red,’ Sasha says through the walkie-talkie. ‘Bottom of the hill.’

He reaches out to touch the device on his jacket, pushing the button while focusing on keeping his bike steady. ‘All right,’ he grunts. ‘Here comes the parade.’

He makes the turn and clears the gauntlet. Smooth asphalt beneath his tires causes him to smirk a little. It makes it a lot easier to go slow and steady. He glances at the mirror on the handlebars. The walkers just form a massive blob of faces and bodies behind him.

‘Objects may be closer than they appear,’ he mutters to himself. He’s read the message on the passenger’s mirror of his dad’s truck a million times while staring out of the window. ‘They better not be, fuck me.’

He’s relieved when he spots the red balloons and then Sasha’s car. It rolls out of a side street and pulls up in front of him. He swerves to the side and comes up next to them, on Abraham’s side. The ginger rolls down his window.

‘You hanging in there, champ?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl shouts back over the revving of his engine. ‘I’m good.’

‘You look it, too,’ the man leers at him, trying to distract him from the herd behind them. ‘Sex on wheels, man!’

Daryl flips him off.

 

 

The flares go up at Marshall and Redding.

Rick, Morgan and Michonne.

The turn will be tricky. They need the walkers to take it quickly.

They need them to make it, no matter how.

Daryl needs to use his feet to steady the bike when they go through the corner. It’s so tight that many walkers still slam into the pates but they follow the flares and refocus on the car and the bike. The boy revs his engine again and again, luring them all over.

It’s not long after the corner that Abraham suddenly jumps out of the car.

‘The fuck are ya doin’,’ Daryl shouts, startled.

‘Just stretching my legs a bit!’ the man laughs before he bounds into the woods, leading a couple of walkers back who had started to wander off. He appears moments later, blood splatters all over him, grinning like a fool.

‘Ya damn asshole,’ Daryl shouts, slamming one of his hands down on his gas tank. ‘I should run your stupid ass over!’

‘At ease,’ Abraham laughs as he throws himself back into the car.

 

 

They’re almost at Green. That’s the finish line for the rest of the group. They’ll fall back to Alexandria while he leads the walkers 20 more miles out with Abraham and Sasha.

It’s the longest trip he’s ever made. His shoulders ache a little but that’s only because he’s been gripping his handlebars so tightly. Now he relaxes back into his seat, cruising down the road. With one hand on the gas, he tucks the bandana down with the other, swerving a little closer to the car.

Just as he wants to ask Abraham how much further Green is, there’s a sound somewhere to their right. It sounds like a horn of some kind. He twists in his seat, trying to see something but all he sees are the trees and the walkers.

‘Shit,’ he straightens the bike when he swerves dangerously and keeps his eye on the road before him. One hand comes up to grab the walkie-talkie. ‘Rick,’ he shouts. ‘What’s going on back there?’

‘Half of them broke off,’ Rick radios back. He sounds out of breath. ‘They’re going towards Alexandria.’

Abraham picks his radio up, ‘towards you?’

‘We ran ahead. There’s a horn or something, loud, coming from the east. It’s not stopping.’

Daryl frowns. ‘I’m gonna gas it up, head back!’ He can easily beat the herd to Alexandria.

‘We have it,’ Rick assures him. ‘You keep going.’

‘They’re going to need our help,’ he argues.

‘Got to keep the herd moving!’

‘Not if shit’s going down, we don’t!’

‘The rest of that herd turns around, the bad back there gets worse. You stay with Abe and Sasha. You stay there!’ There’s a short silence. ‘Dare?’

Daryl bites his lip for a moment and nods, ‘yeah, I heard ya.’

 

 

After ten minutes, he can’t take it anymore. Thoughts are running wild in his head. He thinks about Glenn, Rick and Michonne, who are running from the herd. Of Maggie, Beth and Carl who are waiting for it. He tries to think of a reason why a horn would be going off in Alexandria but can’t come up with anything other than sabotage.

Either someone of theirs is doing this to them.

Or someone else is.

Either way, someone is setting them up.

He swerves towards the car. ‘Hey, we gone five miles out yet?’

Abraham nods, ‘give or take some yardage. You got a reason for asking, stud?’

‘Next intersection,’ he shouts, ‘I’m gonna spin around and go back.’

‘The plan is to go fifteen more,’ Sasha protests.

‘Yeah, I’m gonna change that. Five’s gonna have to work!’

Abraham slams his hand on the side of the car, ‘the magic number is twenty, Dare! That’s the mission. That’s making sure they’re off munching on infirm raccoons the rest of their undead lives instead of any of us.’

Sasha glances at him. ‘You want to go, we can’t stop you. But without you, they could stop us.’

Daryl bites on his lip again, hating the fact that he can’t gnaw on his thumb right now. There’s a sign on the side of the road. It’s an advertisement for Alexandria. The start of sustainability. The next turn on the right. ‘Nah,’ he says, ’I got faith in ya!’

‘ _Dare_!’

‘ _Don’t do it, kid_!’

But he opens the gas and speeds off without them.

 

 

‘Daryl?’

The walkie-talkie crackles when Rick’s voice comes through.

He scrambles to get to the device, ‘yeah, I’m here!’ He’s zipping down one of the backroads, trying to get home as quickly as he can.

‘Won’t be long now,’ Rick says. ‘They’re almost here. I’ll get them going your way again.’

‘How about that, Dare?’ Sasha cuts in, sounding pissed. ‘He’s gonna be coming our way.’

He curses softly but doesn’t answer on the radio.

‘There’s gunfire coming from back home. We gotta sit with it and hope they can handle it. I think they can,’ Rick tells them. ‘They have to. We keep going forward for them. We can’t turn back ‘cause we’re afraid.’

‘We ain’t afraid,’ Abraham tells him but Daryl winces. He is.

‘This is for them,’ Rick continues. ‘Going back now, before it’s done, that’d be for us. The herd has to be almost here.’

There’s a long silence.

And then gunfire. It comes from Rick’s side.

‘Rick!’ Daryl screams into his radio before he steers the bike to the side of the road. He tries calling the cop a couple more times but there’s nothing but static. With a soft moan, he leans onto his handlebars, head bowed. There are three choices now. Head to Alexandria like he’d been doing, go back to Abraham and Sasha like he’s supposed to do, or go help Rick like he feels he should.

He takes a deep breath and looks around him, trying to estimate which of them is closest.

Another deep breath.

‘We all have jobs to do,’ he grunts before he squeezes one of his brakes while pulling the gas open, causing the bike to spin around sharply. He drives faster than he has ever done before. The bike trembles, _he_ trembles, but his hold on the gas doesn’t waver.

He manages to get back just in time to make the turn and glide back into his position next to the rusty car.

‘Mother dick,’ Abraham laughs, letting his head fall back against the seat. ‘You asshole.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl looks over his shoulder. Half of the herd is still following them. ‘Don’t tell Rick I almost fucked up, okay? Or Glenn.’

‘You’re grounded for life,’ Abraham snorts. ‘And I’m gonna make sure we find you a girlfriend to suck your dick when we get back home. Jesus Christ, am I glad to see you.’

 

 

It’s agonizing, not knowing what the hell is going on at Alexandria. They’ve gone out of range of the walkie-talkies a while back. There’s nothing but static now. His mind keeps going back to Rick, who had ran back to the RV on his own, to Glenn and Michonne, who were going to lead the group back to Alexandria.

To Alexandria, which is probably under attack.

His shoulders sag with relief when Sasha’s voice comes through the radio.

‘All right,’ she says.

‘That’s twenty?’ Daryl asks eagerly.

‘It will be, 642 is a mile ahead. We gotta put distance between us and them before the turnoff.’

Abraham comes through. ‘So floor it.’

Daryl reaches for the button on his radio, ‘all right, try to keep up.’

Sasha sighs. ‘Dare, have you looked at this car?’ She chuckles. ‘Believe me, we want to get back there, too.’

He doesn’t open the gas all the way because he knows that he’ll shake them if he does. The bike is so much faster than that rusty old thing. So he keeps checking whether they’re behind him, only speeding up a little before hitting the corner, because the car can take that one quicker.

He leads them back home by the quickest route, cutting through a small town.

The gunfire comes out of nowhere.

He ducks into his seat on instinct, trying to make himself as small as possible.

One of the windows of the car shatters behind him.

He does the only thing that makes sense to him; throw open his gas to get the hell out of there. When he tries to go through a corner too fast, he feels himself losing control of the heavy machine. It slips out from under him. He braces himself for impact like how Tyreese had taught him, rolling with the motion and protecting his head.

There’s no time to check for injuries. His hand hurts where it had scraped over concrete, his shoulder and side burns but he can get up and that’s all that matters. The bike is still running. He slides over and pulls it up, grunting with effort. It’s hard but he has to get it done.

There are cars coming.

Sasha and Abraham are gone.

He curses and slides back into his seat. ‘Come on, come on,’ he whispers to himself, revving the engine to check it and then taking off again. Two cars are following him. He glances over his shoulder, sees that a man is leaning out of the window to fire at him.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he growls as he ducks.

He veers off the road, onto a parking lot with some dumpsters, figuring that he should use the bike’s mobility. He hopes to find a tight squeeze, one where the cars can’t follow him into, but he finds a bunch of walkers instead. There’s no point in stopping so he just speeds up.

Hands grab hold of his arms but the hold is too weak. The leather jacket doesn’t offer anything but smooth curves; there’s nothing for them to hold onto. So he cuts through and manages to get to the other side.

There’s a path that leads into the woods.

He takes it.

When he looks over his shoulder again, he sees that he’s managed to lose one of the cars.

The other one is hot on his heels, however.

 

 

Hide and seek.

It’s easier for the bike to take the small backroads. He’s more mobile, faster in the corners than the bulky car even though he has to fight like hell to keep the bike upright on the uneven paths. He’s never ridden on this kind of terrain before.

He manages to get away after a little while.

He watches how the car passes on one of the bigger roads, still searching for him, and waits a couple of minutes before passing the road and going into the other direction.

Deep in the forest, he stops. Or crashes, rather. He doesn’t have enough energy to keep the heavy bike up. His knees buckles under the weight and he falls onto the soft earth.

There’s something strange about these parts of the woods. He rolls onto his back and stares at the trees. They’re all blackened by fire. The earth is covered with soot.

It happened a while ago, maybe even at the start of all of this, but nature still hasn’t recovered. Maybe it never will.

A growl on his left startles him. There’s a burned body, now a walker. It’s still wearing a helmet, warped by fire. It growls pathetically and doesn’t have any arms to reach out to him anymore. The chest wiggles but it can’t move any further.

Daryl sighs and stares up at the sky above him. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

It takes him a couple of minutes to get his breath. Then he sits up, grabbing his walkie-talkie.

‘Sasha, Abraham, are you there?’

There’s no answer. He presses the device to his forehead, breathing out shakily before noticing that his hand is sticky. It’s covered in blood. His blood. He throws the radio down and removes his glove, hissing when it tugs at the wound on the back of his hand.

Then he carefully eases out of his leather jacket. It hurts. Now that the adrenaline is fading, he can feel wounds blooming on his body. His hip hurts something awful but his elbow burns. The jacket has protected him relatively well, which is one of the reasons Rick wouldn’t let him go out wearing just his vest and a shirt.

He’s grateful for that now.

Still, there’s a wound on his elbow, oozing blood.

With a curse, he throws his jacket onto the ground and stomps over to his bike. His fingers shake when he grabs his bag. There’s a water bottle there. He uses some of it to wash the blood off his hand, but drinks most of it. He sits down on the side of his gas tank.

He nudges the radio with the tip of his boot, waiting for it to come to life again.

A branch snaps somewhere up ahead.

He gets to his feet and grabs his bow. His hand hurts a bit when he arms it. Cautiously, he moves forwards, towards the sound. There’s dread tingling at the base of his skull but he tries to ignore it.

Another branch snaps. Leaves rustle.

Daryl swings around a tree.

There are two women staring at him with wide eyes and raised hands. One of them has short blonde hair, the other longer, brown hair. They’re both covered in soot and filth. The oldest, the one with the darker hair, steps forward. ‘You got us!’ she says, glaring at him. ‘We earned what we took!’

Daryl falters a bit, surprised. He lowers the bow slightly, ‘what the hell?’

The woman stares right back at him. She drops her hands, ‘what? You’re not-‘

There’s movement behind him.

He’s too slow with turning around.

Just fast enough to see a steel pipe coming his way and then he doesn’t see anything anymore.

 

 

When he opens his eyes again, he’s on the ground near a fire. Through his lashes, he can see a man sitting opposite him, carving something in a piece of wood. Shadows dance on his face. It’s hard to see what he really looks like, except for the fact that he has blond hair.

‘D,’ one of the women moves closer to the man, curling an arm around his. ‘He’s a _kid_. He’s not one of them. Even he wouldn’t send out kids on a code red.’

The man nods jerkily.

‘What are we going to do with him?’

‘We’ll figure it out tomorrow. We need to get Patty and get the hell out of here. This is the last day we’re gonna live like this.’

Daryl sighs and stares at the fire until everything goes dark again.

 

 

‘Wake up!’

Daryl jerks awake. His hands are bound. He grunts and looks up at the man who is kneeling before him. He has blue eyes, blond hair and a voice too loud for Daryl’s aching head.

‘Hey! Get up!’ He grabs a gun and points it at Daryl’s forehead. ‘We’re movin’. Here’s the deal: you don’t say shit and I don’t kill you.’

‘The fuck you’re gonna do with me then?’

The man flips the safety off, ‘say something else,’ he challenges. ‘Go ahead!’

Daryl glares at him.

The man reaches out and tugs the boy to his feet by pulling at his bound hands. He shoves him towards the two women, who are waiting at a burned out vehicle.

The one with brown hair steps forward when Daryl stumbles, steadying him with a gentle hand to his shoulder. ‘Easy, D. It’s just a boy.’ Then she throws a heavy bag over her shoulder and starts to lead them into the woods. She walks with a confident stride, never slipping or stumbling. After half an hour, she hands a bottle of water to the other woman.

They bicker about it until the blonde gives in and drinks.

She passes it back to the brunette.

To Daryl’s surprise, she holds it out to him.

‘Have it,’ she says.

He takes it and empties it with two big gulps. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters when the man takes the empty bottle from him. ‘Figured out what you’re gonna do with me yet?’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘You can just let me go, man,’ Daryl urges. ‘I ain’t gonna do nothing.’

‘I said; shut the fuck up! Shut up before I put a bullet in your brain and make you.’

‘D,’ the brunette hisses. ‘We’re not killing a kid. Stop it. What’s your name?’

‘Daryl. What’s yours?’

‘Sherry. This is Tina and Dwight is trying to scare you.’

‘I ain’t scared of nothing,’ Daryl says softly.

 

 

These people are the reason why the woods are blackened. They tell the story of how they drove in here with a tanker truck, how they ran from the tree line until they got to the pavement, how they lit up a matchbook and dropped it on the trail.

How everything burned.

Walkers. The woods. The animals.

_Boom_!

They just watched it go up.

Daryl wrinkles his nose but doesn’t say anything.

 

 

Patrick’s fuel company. That’s where they were heading.

Sherry drops the bag she’s been carrying when they realize that the friends they were trying to get to have turned. Walkers roam over the parking lot.

Daryl takes a small step back. They’re not paying any attention to him.

He could run.

And then Tina suddenly collapses. Daryl doesn’t hesitate. He grabs the bag which holds his crossbow and runs for it.

Bullets hit the trees surrounding him but he’s gone before Dwight can get a good shot off.

He runs until he can’t anymore and then falls into a ditch. He manages to get rid of the rope around his wrists, tossing it aside before groping around in the bag for his radio. ‘Sasha, Abraham, are you there?’ he tries desperately. ‘ _Please_.’

But they’re not there.

He sighs and tries to calm down.

It doesn’t work. A walker comes stumbling over. He reaches for his knife but it’s gone. Then he tries to take the crossbow out of the bag. It catches on the zipper. He curses and struggles to get it out, panic swirling in his gut, making him sick.

At the last second, he manages to get it out. He falls to his side, trying to create some distance between him and the rotting corpse, and fires the bolt.

The walker goes down.

He gets to his knees and then pushes himself up.

‘Get moving, Darlina,’ he urges. When he looks at the bag again, he freezes. There’s a red and white kit in there. _Insulin_ is printed on top of it in bold letters. _Must be kept cool_.

That’s medicine, he knows.

And Tina just collapsed.

 

 

Dwight is looking at him with wide eyes. He doesn’t have anything beside the gun he’s just handed back to the boy who is aiming a crossbow at his left eye.

‘What about the thing you were carving at the fire?’

The man frowns and digs the small statue out of his pocket, ‘it’s something my grandfather taught me to do so-‘

‘Don’t care, it’ll do,’ Daryl snaps as he takes it. He throws the bag towards Tina. ‘Take it. It’s all there. See for yourself.’ He turns on his heels. ‘Good luck, you’re gonna need it.’ Just when he wants to walk away, a car comes crashing through the bushes. He hides behind a tree and watches how it pulls to a stop. Three men hop out.

‘Let’s end this,’ one of them calls out. He sounds bored.

‘It’s ours,’ Sherry responds, voice shaking a little. ‘We earned what we took!’

‘You’re gonna return what you took,’ the man answers. ‘You’re gonna pay for the gas it took to come out here, and for all the time these men took out. It’s over. You know the rules.’

‘Your rules are batshit!’

‘We’re not going back, Wade,’ Dwight shouts, ‘we’re done kneeling!’

‘Don’t change the subject, asshole.’

At a whistle, the car moves forward again. Daryl can see other men and women coming through the trees, heading straight towards Dwight, who is urging his girls to head in the wrong way. Before he can think about it, Daryl darts between the trees, ‘hey!’ he hisses to the man, ‘this way! _This_ way, come on!’

He leads the group through the trees. Tina has to lean on Sherry for support. They’re never going to outrun them.

Dwight finds them some shelter and Daryl passes the man his gun. ‘Take it,’ he says because he’s feeling horribly outnumbered and the man might be able to help.

There’s a walker caught between a sheet of metal and a tree. Just one arm free and its face.

It’s enough, Daryl supposes.

When one of the men chasing them comes close, Daryl rustles some leaves to make him change direction. It steers him right into the walker’s arm. The man is yanked close and bit.

To the boy’s surprise, the man doesn’t scream much. He staggers towards a rock and leans on it. ‘Wade,’ his voice echoes between the trees. ‘Wade, I’m bit.’

Wade comes running. Without a word, he grabs his belt, puts it around the man’s arm. ‘Get your watch after,’ he says before taking out his machete and chopping the arm off.

‘Holy shit,’ Daryl breathes. He’s seen it happen before, seen people being torn to bits, but it was never quite so efficient or cold. The man screams, of course, and cries, but Wade just tosses the arm into the bushes when he’s done. Not before taking the watch off the wrist, though.

He says something about going back.

That he only wants ass that’s willing.

‘Walk it off,’ he laughs to his friend as he drags him to his feet.

They leave.

Dwight slowly turns to look at the boy, who is breathing hard and looking scared. ‘We knock you out, tie you up, threaten to kill you,’ he says. ‘Why did you come back?’

Daryl swallows. He rubs at his cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ he mutters, ‘she needed those meds, right? That’s why she’s all,’ he waves his hands vaguely at Tina.

‘Yes,’ Sherry says with a small smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘How many walkers have you killed?’ he asks Dwight. ‘Just answer the question, man.’

‘A lot,’ the man shrugs. ‘A couple dozen at least.’

‘How many people have you killed?’

‘None.’

‘Why?’

Dwight snorts, ‘why I haven’t killed anyone? Because if I did, there’d be no going back. There’s no going back to how things were.’

Daryl shifts his weight, ‘I’m from a place where people are still like they were. More or less, better or worse. That’s why I helped ya. Because that’s what we do.’ He brushes the hair out of his eyes and glances at Sherry and Tina. ‘You should come back with me. It’s a good place.’

Dwight looks at Sherry.

And Sherry smiles.

 

 

Tina veers to the right. To a small building, burned to the ground.

She cries and sinks to her knees beside two bodies. People she used to know.

It happens too fast for anyone to do anything. The dead aren’t dead, they lunge, bite, tear, rip until Tina is a bleeding mess on the ground.

Daryl closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting the breeze play over his face. Everything is all fucked up today, he thinks.

In the end, he helps with digging the graves.

It takes a long time.

 

 

Daryl walks a little quicker, eager to get out of here. He glances back over his shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you steal it before? Along with the rest of my stuff?’

Dwight gives him a pained look. ‘Three people don’t fit on a bike.’

‘Right,’ the boy mutters as he runs his hands over his beloved machine. ‘I can walk it from here, ‘till we meet up with my friends.’

‘How many friends did you say there were?’

‘I didn’t,’ Daryl grunts as he yanks the bike upward. ‘There’s two of them.’

‘Where are they?’

‘We’re gonna find out.’

‘How do you know they even got away?’ Dwight asks, ‘that they didn’t get taken?’

Daryl pushes the bike towards the road, ‘I don’t,’ he answers easily. He doesn’t want to think about that possibility. Abraham and Sasha are out there and if they’re smart, they just hid somewhere until he finds them. Or they left some kind of message to let him know that they’ve gone back to Alexandria. Either option would be fine, as long as they’re alive.

A gun cocks behind him.

‘Oh, damn it,’ he breathes before letting go of the bike, twirling around and grabbing his bow. He’s not fast enough. Dwight is already aiming the gun at his chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ the man says. ‘Give her the crossbow.’

‘You gonna go back? ‘ the boy asks. ‘Think you’ll be safe? Ain’t nowhere safe no more, man. Nobody can promise you that.’

‘Shut up! Look,’ Dwight steps closer to him, ‘I don’t want to hurt a damn kid, okay?’ He lifts the gun higher so it points at Daryl’s head. ‘But I will if I have to. Give her the crossbow.’

‘You’ll kneel?’

The gun fires. The bullet slams into a tree behind the boy.

Daryl flinches. He hands the bow to Sherry. The woman throws it over her shoulder and then takes the gun while Dwight grabs the bike. He climbs on easily, revs the engine and shifts it into gear.

‘You’re a sweet kid,’ Sherry says as she glides onto the back, one arm curling around Dwight’s waist. ‘We’re sorry.’

‘You’re gonna be,’ Daryl promises. They chose to go off on their own instead of relying on other people. Anyone who does that these days, doesn’t survive. Soon, they will be torn to pieces, he thinks bitterly. And then they will be sorry they turned their backs on him and his community.

Or he’ll find them later and stomp their asses for stealing his stuff. They’ll be sorry, then, too.

With an exhausted sigh, he drops to his knees.

Dixon’s don’t kneel, he knows. He laughs bitterly. ‘Shitty ass day, dad. Just for a little while, I promise. I’ll get up,’ he leans down on his forearms. ‘I promise I’ll get up.’

 

 

He blinks and then laughs, pushing some branches aside.

‘You got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,’ he mutters as he looks up at the tank truck. ‘If you run, I’m going to cry.’

It runs.

He doesn’t cry. Instead, he leaves it behind. It’s a manual truck and he’s never even driven a car before. He’s not going to bounce down the road with gallons of fuel just begging to ignite. So he follows the tracks of his bike back to the little town and searches for traces of Sasha and Abraham.

They’ve made it ridiculously easy to find them.

Daryl whistles sharply as he steps up to the building with his own name on it, the X marking the spot. He folds his arms when Sasha and Abraham peer out of the window warily. ‘Yo, get your asses down here! Need your help drivin’ something!’

When they come out, Sasha hugs him tightly, fussing a little over the wounds on his arm and hip.

The boy scowls but doesn’t object. He looks at Abraham, ‘the hell are ya wearin’?’

‘Bit of national pride,’ the man beams at him. He’s wearing dress blue’s. ‘Nothing a dirty redneck like you would understand.’

Daryl huffs and pushes him, hands lingering a bit as he leans into the man’s side. ‘Stop,’ he laughs.

 

 

An hour later, he’s handing over his gun to yet another asshole. He looks up at the sky for a second and wonders if the sun is ever going to set and end this shit storm of a day. They’d just gotten the tanker truck and were on their way back to Alexandria when a group of seven men on motorcycles blocked the road and ordered them to get out.

The one in front seems to be the leader. He makes them give up their guns.

_Your property belongs to Negan_.

Daryl wonders whether the man is speaking of himself in third person. The man has dark hair, the beginnings of a scruffy beard. He’s terribly cocky when he takes Abraham’s gun, too.

‘Who are you people?’ Sasha asks as she folds her arms in front of her chest.

‘I get the curiosity,’ the man says as he walks back to his bike, ‘but we have questions ourselves. And we’ll be the ones asking them while we drive you back to wherever it is you call home. Take a gander at where you hang your hats. First though: your shit. What have you got for us?’

‘Yeah, you just took it,’ Daryl grouses as he moves a little closer to the truck, uneasy by the many guns trained on them. He tries not to look at all the other guys, worried about setting them off.

‘Come on,’ the man says with a wry smile, ‘I mean – can we not? Okay? There’s more. There is always more.’ He sighs. ‘T, take our little man to the back of the truck. Start inside the back bumper, work your way to the front.’

One of the men gets up from his bike.

‘I’ll do it,’ another man cuts in, swinging his leg over and coming forward.

‘Greenie!’ their leader laughs, sitting down on his vehicle. ‘Eager! We like that. Fine, you do it.’

The man flips him off with a smile. It fades when he looks at Daryl.

Daryl looks at him and feels sick.

A rough hand on his shoulder pushes him towards the back of the truck. The fingers linger for a second, squeezing hard.

Daryl stumbles as he keeps trying to look at the man over his shoulder.

‘Eyes front,’ the man barks out, ‘what the hell, pip squeak.’

‘Don’t – what – it’s-‘

‘Shut up!’ The man clips him over the back of the head.

Daryl walks to the back of the truck in a haze. His thoughts are running too fast to comprehend them. There’s fear spiking in his veins, but also something else. Nervous energy that makes his knees go weak.

‘Man, don’t you rem-‘

‘I said; shut up!’ The man gives him another hard shove and Daryl falls to the asphalt, scraping his hands painfully. Fingers around his upper arm now, dragging him up again and jostling him before he’s thrown to the back of the truck.

When they’re out of sight, the man’s posture changes. The shoulders relax slightly. He looks around the back of the truck, ‘ya got anything here?’

Daryl stares at him.

‘Snap out of it, kid,’ the man says, ‘ _ya got anything_?’

‘RPG,’ Daryl says dazedly. ‘In the box.’

‘Holy shit! The man hops into the back and throws the box open, taking the weapon out. Then he slides back out of the car, slinging it over his shoulder. He puts his hands on Daryl’s upper arms, shaking him a little. ‘That guy is gonna kill ‘em dead, okay? What are they to you?’

Daryl blinks. It’s hard to breathe suddenly. He reaches out, puts his hand on the man’s cheek. Fingertips brushing over his cheekbone.

The man bats his hand away impatiently. ‘Tell me what they are!’

‘ _Blood_ ,’ Daryl breathes.

The man grins. ‘They fuckin’ better be.’ He swings the weapon into his hands.

Before Daryl can even say anything, the man side-steps away from the truck.

And fires the RPG.

 

 

The explosion is insane. Everything goes up in flames. The men and their bikes.

Sasha and Abraham are thrown to the ground. The man groans but the woman sits up quickly, pressing one of her hands to her ear. She coughs and then moves to the side of the truck, eyes wide as she stares at the stranger.

The man looks at the RPG and laughs. ‘ _Holy shit_! Now that’s some fireworks, right there! Good lord!’ He throws the weapon onto the ground and turns back to Daryl. There’s a big grin on his weathered face. ‘Hey, monster.’

Daryl takes a staggering step towards him but his legs give out. He sinks to his knees and looks up at the man. His hands are shaking. He’s choking on his own gasping breaths.

The man walks over to him, all swinging hips and wicked grins. He looks down at him, tutting a little. ‘Didn’t dad teach you nothing?’ he asks as he cocks his head to the side. ‘Dixon’s don’t kneel, little brother.’

 

 


	63. Dixon blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my... you all really were waiting for Merle, huh?   
> ^^ Cool. Hope he's worth the wait.
> 
> There's a new Dixon in town so...:  
> Additional warnings; racial slurs, racism, sexism, cursing, general Dixon-ness.

 

* * *

 

 

‘Holy fuckin’ shit, bro,’ Merle laughs as he leans down to grab Daryl’s wrists. He yanks the boy to his feet. Rough hands force Daryl’s gaze up. Blue eyes meet for a second. Then the man grins and scoops the boy up in a fierce hug. ‘Give me some lovin’, now.’

Daryl automatically loops his arms around his brother’s neck, his legs around that narrow waist. He feels how one arm slides under his thighs, holding him up, while the other one covers his back. With a small whimper, he buries his face in his brother’s neck.

‘Jesus, you’re heavy,’ Merle rumbles but his hold only tightens and he doesn’t drop the boy back to his feet. ‘But I got ya. I got ya.’ One of his hands moves to the dark hair, stroking it gently.

‘Merle,’ Daryl breathes, grabbing hold of the man’s shirt at the back, fingers twisting into the fabric desperately. There are tears burning in his eyes.

‘That’s right. Fuck me, am I glad to see you.’ His voice wavers. ‘I’d damn near given up on ever findin’ you.’

The tears spill over. They drip onto his filthy cheeks.

‘I’m here,’ Merle shushes when he hears the quiet sobs and feels how the shoulders tremble. He presses a hard kiss to the boy’s temple. And then abruptly drops him.

Daryl yelps and nearly stumbles when his feet hit the asphalt again. He grabs hold of his brother’s shirt, glaring up at him. ‘You asshole!’ He pushes him, not that hard but hard enough to force Merle to take a step back. ‘ _Where have ya been_?’

‘Where have _I_ been?’ Merle lifts an eyebrow, always unimpressed by Daryl’s temper. ‘I dragged my ass all the way back to Georgia, to that goddamn trailer park we used to call home, only to discover that you weren’t there no more. So what did old Merle do? He searched for you like a damn dog, okay? I was fuckin’ Lassie all up in that place, but do you even know how big Georgia is?

‘Thought dad would have hauled ass to the city when it all went to shit but that was all burned down by the time I got there. Then I made my way back and holy fuckin’ shit, guess what I found. Dad’s fuckin’ bow.’

Daryl stares at his brother. The memories hit him like freight train. How they had been getting ready to head towards the CDC without Will, how he’d left the man’s weapon up in a tree in case he’d come back to the quarry. He hadn’t.

‘That were you, right?’ Merle asks with a small frown. ‘You left that thing up in the tree. Ya marked it, like he’d taught you.’

‘Yeah.’

Merle works his jaw, glances away for a second. ‘He dead?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay.’

The two brothers look at each other.

Merle looks older than Daryl remembers but he still hasn’t changed much. He looks more like Will than ever, with his imposing physique, sharp blue eyes and weathered face. There’s stubble on his jaw, his hair cut short. It’s lighter than Daryl’s, already turning gray at his sideburns. He’s wearing clean clothes; light cargo pants, a white wife-beater and black shirt. Heavy black boots scrape over the concrete when he shifts his weight.

Merle reaches out and brushes Daryl’s hair out of his face. ‘Almost didn’t recognize ya, Darlina.’

‘Same,’ Daryl snorts as he shoves his brother, hands lingering on the flat stomach.

Someone clears their throat on their left. ‘Hate to interrupt,’ Abraham cuts in, ‘but what the hell?’

‘Dare, who is this?’ Sasha joins him, one hand still pressed to her ear.

‘’s my brother,’ Daryl laughs, still amazed himself, ‘Merle.’ He vaguely wonders whether Sasha can spot the resemblance with his dad. Abraham had never met Will, he didn’t even know Daryl had an older brother probably, but she had known.

She looks a bit suspicious. Dark eyes narrowed when she glances at the smoking remains of the biker group, ‘you blew up your friends?’

‘Weren’t my friends,’ Merle scoffs. ‘Just a bunch of assholes I’d run into. I needed a place, they had a place, weren’t nothing more to it. And when this pipsqueak jumped out of that truck?’ the man loops his arm around Daryl’s shoulders to drag him close, ‘couldn’t believe my fuckin’ eyes. I could have just saved him, but – ya know – he always were the sweet one. He ain’t runnin’ around with people who ain’t his kin.’

Daryl leans into his brother, curling his hands around his forearm and holding on tightly.

Sasha glances at him and then meets Merle’s eyes again, ‘so you just blew them up?’

‘Shouldn’t ya be thankin’ me instead of soundin’ so goddamn righteous? Yeah, I blew them to bits, and hell; whoever you are, you ain’t going to make up for it cause that was my bike, too. More sorry to lose that than any of those assholes.’

‘Was it your bike? From home?’ Daryl asks as he tilts his head back to look up at his bother.

‘Yeah.’

‘We left it behind. I wanted to take it with us, to keep it safe, but dad said it didn’t matter ‘cause you weren’t comin’ back.’

‘He always were a dumb sack of shit,’ Merle winks, ‘’course I were comin’ back. And not for the damn bike neither,’ he presses a kiss to his brother’s hair. ‘Fuck, I’ve missed ya.’

‘Well, this is all fine and dandy,’ Abraham says, ‘but we need to get moving. They need us back home. Who’s going to ask the damn questions?’

‘Nobody!’ Daryl says. ‘We don’t have to ask them.’

‘That’s the rules,’ Abraham objects. ‘Rick’s rules, so-‘

The boy shivers. There’s fear pooling in his stomach now, slowly chilling the sheer joy conjured by his brother’s appearance. The remains of Merle’s former group is still smoking behind them and the man is laughing so easily that it’s clear he never gave a damn about them. He’s not sure what that means, whether it’s just a side-effect of the New World and him not really knowing them, or the remains of the Old World and Merle not giving a shot about anyone who didn’t have traces of his own DNA.

He’s not sure it matters, either way.

But he killed six men and laughed and there’s always the chance of not answering the questions with the right answers.

‘The fuck is he talkin’ about?’ the oldest Dixon asks the youngest. ‘Questions?’

‘Just a simple character test,’ Abraham answers. ‘If we like the answers, you get to come, if not – well, then we’ll just have part wa-‘

‘He’s my _brother_ ,’ Daryl snarls, ‘you ain’t askin’ him jack shit, ya hear me? He’s comin’ with us. I don’t give a damn –‘

‘Who-o- _oohw_!’ Merle hoots, grabbing hold of the boy’s shoulder to hold him back, ‘nobody has beaten that damn temper out of you yet? Easy, monster.’ He steps past the boy and saunters over to Abraham. ‘Ain’t nothing to get your panties all bundled up about, right? Ginger didn’t mean nothing. Because, you see, this is how it’s gonna be; I just saved your ass and your girlfriend’s here, so y’all going to change that tone of yours now. That’s my baby brother and I just found him. Hell to pay for anyone who thinks about separating us. Hmm-hmm-hmm.’

Abraham meets the man’s eye. His gaze flickers over Merle’s posture, the dog tags around his neck. ‘You army?’

‘Dishonorably discharged for slogging an officer. Want me to show you how I did it?’

The two men seize each other up. ‘At ease,’ the ginger grins after a couple of tense seconds. ‘You’re telling me there’s another Dixon walking God’s green earth? Best news I’ve heard since this all went to shit. Your little brother? He’s got brass balls the size of Georgia.’

Merle grins and turns back to his brother. ‘Well, how about that.’

 

 

There’s something surreal about the fact that he’s sitting on Merle’s knees, leaning back against the passenger door and with his feet in Sasha’s lap. It’s a tight squeeze but they manage because the Dixon’s don’t mind sharing the same space.

What surprises him most, is how easy it is. There’s no awkwardness when Merle drags him into his lap and tells him to sit still or he’ll stomp him, no reason for Daryl not to relax into that strong frame. There’s familiarity in the nicknames, the insults, the way they trade smirks.

Even though they haven’t seen each other in years, the feeling hasn’t changed.

Maybe Will had been right. Maybe blood really is thicker.

He can’t remember it being this easy with anyone else, other than his dad.

One of Merle’s arms is slung over his thighs. He fidgets with the sheath of the hunting knife. ‘The old man,’ he says suddenly, ‘he died at that place near Atlanta?’

‘No,’ Daryl looks out at the road.

‘What happened?’

‘He got bit. Somewhere South.’

Sasha looks at him from the corner of her eye. There are lines of worry marring her face. Hesitant fingers find his calves, rubbing soothing circles into his jeans and skin. She knows what happened to Will and how it ended.

Merle remains uncharacteristically quiet. The hand moves from the sheath to Daryl’s hip, curling around it. He’s staring out of the window, sharp eyes scanning the woods that flash by. It’s getting dark outside, the sun is setting behind them. ‘He did right by ya?’ he asks eventually. ‘When it all went to shit, he took ya to the quarantine zone, right? He kept ya safe?’

Daryl bites his lip. ‘Yeah,’ he mutters, ‘he kept me safe.’

Sharp blue eyes flash at him. ‘There’s something ya ain’t tellin’ me. You always were a shitty liar.’

‘He tried. That counts.’

‘Ain’t enough, sometimes.’

Daryl looks at his brother. ‘No, it ain’t. But it still counts.’

Merle looks unconvinced but lets it slide. ‘So this place we’re headed. That home?’

‘Alexandria, yeah.’

‘It’s a gated community,’ Sasha says with a small smile. ‘We have walls, electricity, running water. Guns, ammunition.’

‘Or we _had_ all that, anyway,’ Abraham says gruffly.

Merle lifts a questioning eyebrow and Daryl tells him a story that starts with _there were hundreds of walkers in a pit somewhere_ and ends with _you shot them to pieces and now we’re going home_. Abraham and Sasha wince when he tells about the people he’d tried to help in the forest, how his bike had gotten stolen and he’d eventually made his way back to them. His brother doesn’t react save for the incredulous look on his face.

‘So this – this Rick guy,’ Merle says. ‘He the leader?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl sighs. ‘We met at the beginning, at that place where you found dad’s bow. At first it was his partner who led the group. He’s a cop,’ Daryl says with a laugh when Merle frowns at the word _partner_. ‘Yeah, dad didn’t like that neither, but he’s a good guy. They helped us get to the CDC but that turned out to be a bust, so we went south. There are a lot of us, you know. Some have been with me since the start, Glenn, Rick’s kid Carl, Carol. We found others along the way, like Abe and Sasha.’

‘ _We_ found _you_ ,’ Sasha sasses.

‘We took you in!’

‘ _We_ took _you_ in!’ the woman argues. ‘We met after you and Will had left, at the prison, so technically we took you in.’

‘That’s such bullshit, we were there first!’

‘But you didn’t stay.’

‘Pssh,’ Daryl scoffs as he folds his arms and scowls at her. ‘You’re so full of crap, Sasha.’ Then he looks at his brother, who is smiling at him. ‘What?’

‘Shit, man. There’s so much I don’t know about you, it’s fuckin’ crazy. Hell, last time I saw you, you were figuring out how to tie your damn shoes and now look at you.’

‘Weren’t _that_ long ago!’

Merle grins at him. ‘Are you even my brother anymore? Feels I don’t know you at all.’

Something freezes in Daryl’s chest. His breath catches in his throat. ‘Don’t say that.’

Merle laughs. ‘What? It’s true! We barely even recognized each other. If it weren’t for that dumb vest you’re wearing, I wouldn’t have looked twice.’

Daryl grits his teeth. He struggles to sit upright, pushing himself away from the car window and trying to slide into Sasha’s lap instead of his brother’s.

‘Hey, hey,’ Merle grabs his upper arm and yanks him back into his own lap. ‘I’m just busting your balls a bit, Jesus. A blind man can tell we’re related. Hope you like this face, ‘cause you’re fuckin’ growing into it, kid. Now I ain’t got no squinty slits for eyes but at least they’re the same damn color, right? Of course I know you. Might not know where you’ve been and shit, but I know you. Brass balls, sure, but your sweetness almost got ya killed back there, savin’ a bunch of strangers. Pssh. You’re mom, through and through, always were.

‘And we’re going to catch up, okay? We’re gonna sit down and talk about how the hell you ended up all the way out here, about what happened to dad – _he got bit_ , yeah, no shit, kid – and whatever the fuck else we can think of, okay? But for now, let’s just…’ He pushes Daryl’s hair out of his face, stroking his cheek. ‘I’m so fuckin’ happy to see you, you have no idea.’

Daryl smiles at him, ‘yeah, I do.’

‘I pronounce you brother and brother,’ Abraham cuts in, ‘sorry to wrap up the touchy feely part of this road trip, but it’s time to buckle up. We’re almost there.’

They take the last turn and go down the road leading up to the gates. It’s gotten dark now. The herd isn’t banging on the outer walls and for a brief moment, Daryl thinks that Rick might have managed to lead them away after all. It only takes him a second to realize that that’s not the case. Abraham has rolled his window down and they can hear the snarls and groans coming from inside of Alexandria.

They’ve gotten in.

‘The tower,’ Sasha breathes.

Daryl leans forward to look at it but it’s gone. It must have taken one side of the wall with it, allowing the walkers to stream into their community. Fear makes him sweat. His hands shake as one reaches back to grab hold of Merle’s shoulder, squeezing hard.

There’s gunfire.

He can hear someone screaming.

‘That’s Enid!’ Sasha points at the side of the gate, where the platform is where they keep watch. ‘Is that –‘

‘Maggie!’ Daryl lets go of his brother and twists around in his lap, grabbing the door handle.

‘Hold up,’ Merle says because Abraham hasn’t parked yet. Instead, he keeps on driving. It looks like he won’t stop for a moment, but even he isn’t that rash. There are gallons of gasoline in the truck. But he parks as close to the gate as possible.

‘Come on,’ the ginger barks as he jumps out and grabs his automatic rifle from the back. Then he climbs on the hood of the truck, over the windshield to the top. Sasha follows him quickly.

When Daryl hops out, too, he can hear what Maggie is screaming.

‘ _Glenn_!’

Abraham and Sasha load their weapons, flip off the safeties and empty their clips into the fray at the gate.

Daryl clambers up beside them, ‘ _Maggie_! Enid!’

The woman only looks up at him when the clips have been emptied. There’s a terrified look on her face and she chokes out a sob when she sees him. ‘Dare….’

‘Climb over here!’ The platform she and Enid are standing on looks unstable. Enid had been lowering a make-shift rope but this seems to be a safer option. There’s a gap between the platform and the truck, though.

‘Out of the way, brother,’ Merle grunts as he pulls himself up the truck and gets to his feet. ‘Yo, little girl. You’re gonna have to jump. I’ll catch ya, come on!’

Enid blinks at him. Then she glances at Daryl.

‘He will,’ Daryl promises, ‘just jump!’

She throws her backpack at him first. He catches it with a grunt before throwing it onto the ground. She seems to hesitate for a second before jumping down into Merle’s arms.

He does catch her. The impact causes him to stumble a bit but not enough to make him lose his balance. With a grin, he puts her down, turning to Maggie. ‘You’re gonna be heavy as shit, gotta land on your own two feet or you’ll knock us both down. Come on, get your feet onto the truck and I’ll keep ya on it.’

Maggie lowers herself from the platform. She swings from a beam and makes the jump, feet sliding on the smooth surface of the truck. Hands grope the air desperately until Merle grabs one of her wrists and yanks her into his frame. One arm sliding around her waist to keep her steady.

‘Why, hello, gorgeous,’ he grins at her.

She gives him a look before pushing him away, hands reaching for Daryl, drawing him into a tight hug. ‘Thank God,’ she breathes, ‘are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ he laughs, hugging her back.

The gate rattles open. Glenn staggers towards the truck, looking haggard and very scared. His wife quickly climbs down, flying into his arms. The man buries his face into her neck, swaying on the spot for a second.

Alexandria is overrun. Hundreds of walkers are roaming the streets. There’s a flurry of activity near the north wall, but Daryl can’t quite make out what’s going on in the darkness. His mind is racing. They need to get the walkers out of there but the truck won’t be any good in leading them away.

It will take too long. The walkers are too spread out.

‘Fuck, you’re callin’ this home?’ Merle says, sounding a bit breathless at the sight of death before them.

‘Yeah, we need to – shit – we need to do something.’

‘Like fuckin’ what?’

Daryl’s gaze lands on the small lake in the middle of the community. He looks at his feet, at the smooth metal that holds the gasoline. ‘Get the RPG,’ he says, pushing at his brother’s arm. ‘Enid, get inside the truck. _Abraham_!’

Abraham and Sasha have climbed down to move into Alexandria on foot. They’re going to run out of bullets before they even make a dent. The ginger glances at the boy, ‘what?’

‘Get in the truck, get us to the water and back it up so we can dump this stuff in it! We’ll light it up,’ he screams. ‘The fire will draw them in!’

‘Dare!’ Glenn shouts, making a move to climb up on the truck, too. ‘ _Dare_!’

‘I’m fine! Get in the truck! Maggie, Sasha, get inside! We’ll ride on top, there ain’t no room!’

There’s no time to argue.

Merle climbs back onto the truck with the RPG slung over his shoulder. ‘How the hell’s that going to work, anyway? You know how much gas it takes to make a damn lake flammable?’

‘Not that much. They don’t mix.’

‘What?’ Merle frowns.

‘Gas and water, they don’t mix and water is heavier!’ Daryl snaps back.

‘ _Water is heavier_?’ Merle echoes skeptically.

‘Yeah, Mack taught me that if you mix – just fuckin’ do it, man!’ Daryl snaps back as he watches how the rest piles into the truck.

‘This place is _gone_ , D,’ Merle shouts, gesturing at the hundreds of walkers roaming the streets. ‘This is fuckin’ suicide!’

‘Carl is still there!’ Daryl shouts back. ‘Rick! Beth and Judith! Ty! Rosita, Eric and Aaron and – _everyone_ is still inside! We have to help them. We have to _try_ , that’s what we do!’

‘What? They’re worth gettin’ yourself _killed_ for?’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl swallows with some difficulty as he looks at his brother’s stunned face. ‘You can stay here but I need to-‘

‘You crazy?’ Merle snaps. ‘I just found your sorry ass. Fine. _Fine_. Good Lord.’ He smacks his hand on the roof of the cabin.

Abraham understands it for the signal that they’re ready. He drives slowly at first, maneuvering the truck through the gates but he speeds up to get through the patches of walkers everywhere. Daryl grabs hold of the small metal railings on the truck, watching how walkers are being smashed by the vehicle.

Now that they’re closer, he can see that there are people backed up against the outer wall. He still can’t make out who, exactly, save for Michonne. Her katana is the most recognizable weapon, it defines the way she moves and he could pick her out of any crowd without a second thought. He relaxes slightly.

If she’s still there, fighting, it means that Rick, Carl and Judith are there, too. Beth and Ty, Tara, Carol –anyone of theirs. She wouldn’t have left them. And if they had been taken out, he doubts she would still be out there. Without a family to fight for, she would have gotten herself to safety a long time ago.

Daryl glances at the approaching lake. They still have to hurry. Their family is surrounded by hundreds of walkers. They’ve lasted this long, now it’s time for him, Abe and Sasha to pick up the slack.

Abraham backs the truck up to the edge of the water.

Daryl follows Merle down. His hands shake a little as he tries to open the gas tank. There are walkers coming their way now. They have to hurry.

‘You gotta turn it the other – let me do it,’ Merle grunts as he pushes his little brother out of the way roughly. His hands are steadier as he works the machinery, unfolding some sort of hose and then cranking the valve open. Gasoline starts to pour into the lake. He moves the hose a little from side to side to make it spread quicker.

In the moonlight, they can see how the gas spreads over the water. It creates a strange sheen, just like how Mack had demonstrated in a glass at their kitchen table. Of course, that lesson had been about why it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and dilute the gas their cars and the bike with water to make the stash last longer. Daryl had suggested that after Mack had asked where he was going to find more gas when he was out on the road without any supplies.

The smell of the gasoline reminds Daryl of his dad and their beat up truck. Of the times he’d been lounging in the backseat, sprawled out, boot tapping along to a country song on the radio while their dad gassed up. The times Merle rolled down the window to let the fumes in, inhaling deeply before reaching for his little brother and stomping his shoulder because his boot had been tapping against the back of Merle’s seat.

He’s always loved the smell.

The way that Merle is smiling at him tells him that his brother loves it, too.

The world around them is utter chaos. There are walkers everywhere. He can faintly hear Abraham, Sasha and Glenn fight them off long enough for the Dixon brothers to dump the gasoline. He watches how the stain spreads over the water.

‘That’s enough,’ he shouts at his brother before starting to climb back onto the truck, yelling for Abraham to get going again.

They drive a little while, until Merle stomps his boot down on the cabin. The truck rolls to a slow stop. Walkers descend on it. Merle loads up the RPG, takes aim, and fires it again.

The whole lake goes up in fire.

Daryl flinches a bit, stumbling backwards until he hits his brother’s broad chest. Strong arms wrap around his shoulders. Together, they watch how the walkers slowly turn towards the flames and start to drag themselves towards it. They come from every direction. The town empties.

Daryl can feel how Merle draws a deep breath. He expects Will’s voice to rumble past his ear,  - _biggest damn fireworks I have ever seen_ – but he just exhales softly and draws his little brother into a tighter embrace. ‘Hell on earth, my God,’ he whispers.

 

 

Most walkers are consumed by the fire.

They clean the rest up with their knives.

Daryl fights next to his brother and tries to keep an eye on Enid, though she hardly needs it. It’s more for his sake, Carl would beat him up if he’d let something happen to her. But the girl can take care of herself, flashing her knife and ducking past walkers who come too close.

Everyone who’s made it this far, knows how to fight.

Merle is lethal. He has a hunting knife that looks a lot like Daryl’s but is a couple of inches bigger. He’s efficient, ruthless in the way he goes for the easiest way to penetrate the brain; through the eyes. It means he can keep going for longer.

When dawn finally breaks, they take the last one down.

There are bodies everywhere.

Some Alexandrians run off to get one of their trucks so they can use it to block the hole in the wall, preventing more walkers from coming inside their community.

Daryl puts his hands on his knees and pants. He’s soaked in sweat, from his hair to his shirt, to his jeans, even. His limbs tremble with exhaustion.

‘Dare...’

He looks up through his fringe and forces himself to move. He stumbles into Glenn’s chest, grabbing hold of the back of the man’s shirt and resting his forehead on the man’s collarbone. A hand buries itself into his hair as Glenn draws him in.

‘Thank God,’ the Korean whispers. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl breathes.

Another hand rubs soothing circles into his neck, smaller fingers, more gentle, and he knows that it’s Maggie when a kiss is pressed to the back of his head. She strokes his hair, tugging some strands behind his ear before she steps away. ‘There’s Michonne. I can see Rick, Aaron – ‘

Daryl pushes himself away from Glenn reluctantly. Michonne is, indeed, leading the rest of their family over to them. She seems unharmed. Covered in sweat and blood and guts, like they all are, but unharmed.

Beth breaks free from the group first to run towards her sister. They meet in the middle, sobbing freely when they’re reunited once more. Glenn walks over to join the family reunion.

It suddenly doesn’t matter anymore that he is bone-tired. He starts to walk, then jog then run. Carol is closets. She laughs softly as she hugs the boy, running her hands over his dirty cheeks, kissing his forehead before pushing him into Michonne’s arms, who hugs him tightly. Rosita is there to catch him next, Tara ruffles his hair and even Eugene can’t help but bring the boy into an affectionate embrace.

Daryl grins as he moves away from the touches and stumbles towards Rick, who is walking behind the group.

The cop pushes past him without a word.

An ice block forms in Daryl’s chest. It’s hard to breathe suddenly. He turns to Michonne with wide eyes, horror swirling in his veins. ‘Carl?’ he asks hoarsely. ‘Judy?’

‘Carl,’ Michonne confirms softly. ‘He got shot in the face from close range – Denise was doing everything she can when we left.’

Daryl feels sick. He watches how Rick stalks towards the infirmary. There’s blood dripping from his hatchet, the dark curls a mess of sweat and blood. He doesn’t acknowledge the rest of his family save for a small nod at Sasha and Abraham, like it’s only faintly registering that they made it back after all.

He runs to catch up with the cop.

They walk side by side and don’t say anything. Daryl doubts that Rick even realizes that he’s there. The blue eyes are misty and distant, the movements jerky and automatic. He’s proven wrong when they step onto the porch of the infirmary.

Daryl stops next to the door, leaning against the wall. He knows that he won’t be any help inside, that Rick needs to be there for Carl but that Denise will need space, so he stays outside.

Rick opens the door and halts. He looks at Daryl, reaches out with a trembling hand to cup the boy’s cheek, one of his thumbs brushing over the sharp cheekbone. He opens his mouth to say something but can’t find the words. He nods instead.

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl whispers. ‘Go.’

Rick drops the hand and disappears inside the house.

When the door closes, Daryl sinks down the side of the building, sitting down and pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. He’s so tired that everything hurts. He can see stars when he pushes a little harder.

‘Dare?’

He looks up at Michonne, who has Judith on her hip. ‘Can you – I can ask Ty, but-‘

‘Give her here,’ he mutters, holding out his hands. ‘You go help Rick with – I don’t – I don’t know. Just…’ He takes a deep breath and pushes his exhaustion down. ‘You stay with Rick and Carl, I’ll look after her for a bit.’

‘Thank you,’ the woman says when she kneels down to hand the little girl to him.

‘He’s gonna be okay, right? Carl? ‘Cause, ya know, he’s tough as nails, so he’s gonna be fine.’

‘I hope so,’ Michonne nods. She reaches out to brush his sweaty hair out of his eyes. ‘I think so.’

He knows that’s all the reassurance she can give him right now. He can’t even wrap his head around the notion that his brother has been shot in the face, can’t imagine Carl as anything but whole. With a soft smile, he accepts Judith, pulling her into his lap. The little girl seems happy to see him, babbling and reaching for his face, gently swatting at his cheek and chin.

‘Yeah, I know, Ass kicker,’ he mumbles, opening his mouth and closing it when he feels little fingers on his lower lip, capturing them effectively. The girl shrieks with laughter.

Michonne leaves them to it. Her footsteps fade but are replaced by someone else’s. He doesn’t have to look up to know that it is Glenn. The Korean groans as he sits down beside the boy. He draws his knees up, resting his forearms on them.

‘You’re bleeding,’ Glenn says.

Daryl nods. The wounds on his arm, elbow and hands from the accident with his bike burn. By now, he can’t really say whose blood is trickling down his arm, however, so it doesn’t matter anymore. ‘Ain’t nothing. Beth or Denise can fix me up later. I just – I just want to sit for a bit, okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Glenn picks at his fingernails. ‘Me, too.’

‘Everyone else okay?’

‘We lost Jessie and Sam. And Ron, too. He did it,’ Glenn mutters. ‘He did that to Carl. He wanted to get Rick but… I’m sorry. I know you were friends.’

‘We weren’t friends,’ Daryl answers. ‘I’m sorry about Jessie ‘nd Sam. They were good people.’

‘They were.’

 They sit together for a while. Daryl worries about Carl while he plays with his little sister, envious of how oblivious she is to the world around her. Then he realizes something and his head snaps up, almost scrambling to his feet to look for –

Merle is standing near the curb, smoking a cigarette. He’s listening to Abraham, who is standing next to him. The ginger is pointing at the wall, the houses, makes a circle with his finger and then points to their home, down the street. Merle shifts his weight, nods along and seems to be asking the occasional question.

In his eagerness to be reunited with his family, Daryl had almost forgotten about his blood. It feels strange to watch him. He remembers running up the path to their trailer, jumping inside to show Merle something he’d made at school only to find that his brother had gone. There hadn’t been a note, no letter, nothing to explain where he’d run off to.

Or when he’d be back.

And now he’s back and he’s exactly the same and so different from how Daryl remembers him. He watches how Merle grins at Abraham, taking another drag from his cigarette and letting the smoke drift between them.

Most of the group seem to take him in stride. They’re probably too exhausted to even notice that there’s a stranger among them.

Aaron, however, is watching Merle with narrowed eyes. He’s standing next to his boyfriend and with Sasha, leaning a bit closer to the woman to hear what she’s whispering to Eric. The topic of conversation is pretty clear from the way Eric keeps looking back and forth between Merle and the teenager.

Abraham throws his head back and laughs.

Merle grins and claps him on the shoulder before throwing his cigarette onto the ground and jumping up on the porch, right over the railing instead of using the steps.

The loud thump of his boots on the wood startles half of the group.

Merle doesn’t notice or care. He walks over to Daryl, putting his hands on his narrow hips and lifting an eyebrow at his little brother. ‘Who’s the midget?’ he asks.

Daryl looks down, then back up, ‘Judith. She’s Rick’s.’

‘The pig?’ the oldest Dixon asks with a little nod at the door Rick disappeared behind earlier.

‘Yeah.’

‘She must take after her momma then. She’s cute. For a second there I thought you’d gotten your dick wet early. I mean, you’re a Dixon but getting’ a girl pregnant at what? Thirteen? That’d be a new family record.’

Daryl can’t help but snort and shake his head. ‘Of course she ain’t mine, ya asshole.’

‘Snug as a bug in your arms, what was I supposed to think, huh?’ Merle grins at him. He shifts his weight back to his heels and gestures at the boy. ‘Now get up. Give that girl back to her momma or someone, say bye to China here. Come on. On your feet.’

‘What?’ Daryl frowns, ‘why?’

‘’cause I heard you got a house to stay at, a workin’ shower to get that blood off of ya. And you got a bed to sleep in. You look about ready to keel over, kid. Come on now.’

‘We’re not leavin’.’

Merle kneels down in front of him. ‘Yes, we are.’

‘No, we’re _not_!’

The older Dixon looks at him with narrowed eyes. He brings his hand up to his mouth and worries at one of his knuckles with his teeth. It’s such a familiar move that Daryl is shocked to see someone else do it. ‘What?’ Merle asks around the finger, a frown now marring his face.

Daryl looks down at Judith to hide his grin, ‘nothin’, man. Just…’ he kicks his leg out so his boot knocks against his brother’s. ‘Real glad you’re here. Denise is lookin’ after Carl. We’re gonna stay here until we know he’s okay. It’s important.’

Merle sighs and throws himself down next to his brother, leaning back against the house. ‘Fuckin’ fine. But if you bleed out, I ain’t endin’ ya good, ya hear me? Fuckin’ turn. That’ll teach ya stubborn ass.’ He rummages through his pockets and pulls out a rumpled package of cigarettes. He slides one between his lips before trying to find his lighter.

‘Here,’ Daryl digs into his left pocket and takes out the zippo lighter.

Merle hums as he takes it, flipping it open. ‘That used to be Dad’s.’

‘Yeah,’ the teenager says, taking it back. ‘Stole it from him after he’d… you know.’

‘Yeah, well, he weren’t gonna use it no more anyway,’ Merle murmurs, rubbing at his forehead where blood and sweat is drying. He rolls the cigarette around between his fingers before taking a drag and offering it to Daryl. ‘What’s the ginger’s name again?’

‘Abraham.’

‘Abraham,’ Merle nods. ‘He seems a’right. So we got Rick – the pig from the start, right? – and Abraham, Judith here, Carl who got himself shot in the face and… what’s the Nubian queen’s name again?’

‘The fuck?’ Daryl asks with a frown as he lets smoke swirl into his lungs before passing the cigarette back.

‘The black girl,’ Merle says with a jerky nod at Sasha, ‘what’s her name?’

‘Sasha, man.’

 ‘Right,’ Merle laughs, ‘she fuckin’ the ginger?’

‘Good Lord, I don’t know,’ Daryl mutters as he tilts his head back and closes his eyes. Judith is tugging at his shirt, trying to get his attention again. He lets her play with the buttons of his flannel, only intervening when she tries to bite them.

‘You’re Merle.’

Both Merle and Daryl freeze for a second.

Glenn is looking at them wearily, eyes almost closed as exhaustion threatens to rob him of consciousness. He grimaces when he shifts, kicking out his legs in front of him. ‘You’re Merle,’ Glenn repeats. ‘Merle Dixon.’

Merle lifts an eyebrow. ‘Yeah. Who the hell are you?’

‘That’s Glenn,’ Daryl says quickly. ‘He’s my…’ he works his jaw while trying to find the right words. They’re friends, of course, but not in the way he and Carl are friends. The moment Carl will try to send him to bed early, or lay the law down, or do anything like that, he will stomp the boy’s ass. He’s pretty sure friends don’t do that to each other. Glenn does, sometimes. And Daryl lets him, sometimes. ‘He’s just mine,’ Daryl shrugs, shaking his head a little so his bangs hide most of his expression.

‘ _Yours_?’ Merle says with a sneer. ‘He ain’t no dog ya can just keep, man,’ he muses before taking another drag from the cigarette. ‘Remember that dog ya stole from –‘

‘I didn’t steal that dog! It followed me home!’

Merle laughs, ‘I’m sure that sandwich had nothing to do with it. God, dad was _pissed_.’ He flicks some ash away, lowering his hand so it has no chance to drift back to Daryl and the little girl in his lap. ‘Think you should introduce me to your friends next time. This is awkward as fuck.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl glances at Glenn, who is still studying the older Dixon. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Well, you’re forgiven because we just slaughtered a million corpses, set a lake on fire, found out your buddy got shot in the face – oh and I bombed those guys out on the road, that was cool as shit – so it’s been a long day.’ Merle throws the cigarette away. ‘And I think the black girl is taking care of it. Everyone is lookin’ at me funny.’

‘Some of us knew Will,’ Glenn says. ‘ _I_ knew Will.’

Merle meets his eye. ‘Don’t mean you know me.’

‘No,’ Glenn nods, ‘we don’t know you.’

There’s a tense silence.

‘Damn, son,’ Merle barks out a laugh as he looks at Daryl. ‘I’m taking that dog-comment back. What’s up with all these guard dogs tryin’ to chew my ass up? Almost makes me think they ain’t happy to see old Merle around.’

‘We care a lot about Dare,’ Glenn cuts in. ‘We don’t want to see him getting hurt.’

‘Stop,’ Daryl says as he kicks at Glenn’s foot. ‘It ain’t like –‘

The door opens beside them. Michonne steps out with a small smile on her face, ‘he’s stable for now,’ she says when the rest of her family perks up at the sight of her. ‘He lost his eye and we’ll have to wait until he wakes up before we can see whether his brain is.... Rick carried him upstairs. He needs a lot of rest now.’

‘Hear that, Ass kicker?’ Daryl grins at the girl. ‘He’s gonna be fine.’

‘Dare,’ Denise appears beside Michonne. She looks tired and wary, just like all of them, but she smiles when she spots him. ‘I heard you got hurt. Come on in, I’ll have a look at it.’

Michonne picks Judith up, carrying her inside to see her brother and dad.

Daryl slowly climbs to his feet. His arm, elbows and hands are throbbing, but he thinks it might be because he’s so tired. Every muscle in his body aches. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees how Glenn gets up to.

‘Easy, I got him, China-man,’ Merle rumbles as he rises, too. He curls an arm around Daryl’s shoulders, guiding him towards the door. ‘Come on, little brother. Let’s get you patched up.’

Daryl glares up at him, ‘don’t make this something it ain’t.’

‘Like what, monster?’

‘A _competition_.’

Merle smirks down at him, tugging him a little closer. ‘It ain’t that, man. Jesus Christ, I just got you back. Let your big bro look after you for a bit, okay? That rice-muncher is yours? Fine. I’ll play nice. Hell, I’ll play nice with all of them.’

‘And then you’ll kick their heels,’ Daryl mutters darkly. He hasn’t forgotten that lesson.

‘The fuck are you talkin’ about? I ain’t kickin’ nobody’s heels,’ Merle snaps at him. ‘Why are you bustin’ my balls, man? Is it so weird I just want to look after you for a bit? I’ve only been doin’ it since you were fuckin’ born. And I said: I’ll play nice. The fuck else do you want me to say? I don’t know the guy, don’t expect me to braid his damn hair just because he’s _yours_.’

‘Stop,’ Daryl grunts, ‘I don’t want you to –‘

‘Fine,’ Merle hisses, letting go of him and stepping away abruptly. He glares at Glenn before shouldering past him, ‘you get his ass patched up. See if I give a damn.’ He jumps off the porch and stalks down the street, hands in his pockets, aiming a mean kick at a walker’s head which makes the rest of Daryl’s family flinch.

‘Come on,’ Glenn says gently, reaching to take the boy’s arm.

‘I don’t need your help,’ Daryl snaps. ‘I can walk into a house by myself, a’right? Good Lord.’ He stalks away into the opposite direction, almost slamming the door behind him but remembering that Carl is resting upstairs just in time to catch it.

 

 

When Denise digs a needle into his skin a couple of minutes later, he bites on his lip until it bleeds and curses the stubbornness that lingers in Dixon blood.

 

 


	64. All of it

 

* * *

 

 

Denise tells him to try to keep his wounds clean. She will remove the stiches in a couple of days and sends him on his way with a tired smile.

When he steps out on the porch again, only four people are waiting for him.

‘I didn’t get a chance to, earlier,’ Beth says with a smile as she hugs him tightly. Her head on his shoulder, arms around his waist as he loops them around her shoulders, enjoying the comfort she always brings. ‘Are you okay?’

He nods. ‘You?’

‘Yeah. I’m going to take over from Denise now. Take care of Carl for a while so she can get some rest.’

‘It’s a good thing she’s been teachin’ ya.’

She leans back with a frown on her face, ‘are you sure you’re okay?’

He bites his lip and looks away. ‘Got stiches, girl. Hurts like a bitch.’

‘She didn’t give you any painkillers or a local-‘

‘Carl might need it,’ Daryl mutters, rubbing at his nose to hide his expression. ‘He got shot in the face. I can handle a damn needle and thread. We don’t really have a lot of stuff, ya know? So… it’s fine. She says it’ll fade in a little while.’

‘It will,’ Beth confirms. ‘Try to get some sleep. That’ll help.’

‘Sure,’ he nods as he passes her. ‘Take good care of him, okay? Rick, too.’ He looks up to see Merle, Glenn and Maggie, who have been waiting for him as well. His brother is sitting on the railing, feet swinging lightly so his heavy boots knock against the spindles. He’s cleaning his fingernails with his hunting knife, something Lori had taught Daryl not to do.

Maggie is sitting next to him. They’re talking softly.

Glenn is leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest. A small smile is gracing his features.

All three of them look up when Daryl approaches, a little cautious.

Merle sniffs, rubs at his nose with the back of his hand and flashes him an easy grin. ‘All good, bro?’

Daryl nods.

‘Got stiches?’

He nods again.

Merle looks at him and sighs. ‘Hurts, huh?’

‘A little bit, yeah.’

It’s not just the stiches. It’d been weird to see the needle go into his own skin and it’d hurt, too, but it’s not just the stiches. He has time to breathe now. He has time to think about how many times he’d almost died yesterday. How many times he’d been on his knees, staring up at a gun, at his own crossbow, at people he’d saved only to be left behind. About the assholes who’d shot at him, how he’d fallen off his bike, how much that had hurt. The bullets whizzing by, the walkers hot on his tail, his brother appearing like a goddamn miracle with a RPG.

None of it should matter anymore, because it’s all in the past, but it all still hurts.

The fear has transformed into exhaustion.

‘Come here,’ Glenn says softly, holding out an arm.

Daryl walks over and curls up against his side, not really caring about who is watching. _No more kid stuff_ might be his new mantra, but he’s tired and hurting and Glenn is warm and familiar. The Korean strokes his hair, fingernails raking over his skull in a lazy pattern.

‘So you think they knew that the thing with that herd was goin’ down or nah?’ Merle asks.

Daryl frowns and wants to ask what his brother is talking about when Maggie answers.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘They weren’t watching us or they would have known that we have guns to protect ourselves with. And our group wasn’t even supposed to do it yesterday, it should have just been a dry run. They got lucky. Well…’ her gaze glides over the bodies littering the streets of Alexandria, ‘that would depend on how you look at it, of course.’

‘They got lucky if they got a bullet,’ Merle murmurs.

‘Yeah. I heard you blew up some men with an RPG. Where’d you learn to do that?’

Daryl realizes that they’re picking their conversation back up from before he’d joined them. He wonders how long they’ve been sitting there, talking. It used to take a while for any Dixon to calm down, even though Will and Merle liked to claim that Daryl’s tantrums were the legendary ones that took him hours and days to calm down from.

‘Army,’ Merle shrugs. ‘Guess _learn how to use it safely_ is the same damn thing as _blow those guys up and not your guys or your damn self_. Worked, anyway.’

‘Hey,’ Glenn says softly, brushing the boy’s hair out of his eyes and drawing his attention away from the oldest Dixon. ‘You know we can spare some aspirins, right? Denise will keep the good stuff for Carl, but I don’t want you to be in pain.’

‘I’m not,’ Daryl murmurs against the man’s collarbone, slumping a little bit. ‘Just tired.’

‘Okay. Do you think you can wait a little bit longer? I really want to get some food and water into you before you pass out on us.’

The teenager nods. He slowly pushes himself away from the Korean.

Maggie gives him a fond smile, reaching out to take his hand for a second, squeezing his fingers. ‘Are you sure, Dare?’

‘Yeah,‘ he suppresses a yawn. ‘Let’s get going.’

Merle stands, too. ‘Come on, monkey. Let’s go.’

Daryl looks at him and blinks. ‘What?’

‘You remember,’ Merle laughs as he turns his back on his little brother, ‘monkey-time, come on.’

Daryl hesitates for a second – no more kid stuff – before stepping closer to his brother. He jumps up, grabs Merle by the shoulders and hauls himself onto the man’s back, wrapping his legs around his waist. It’s easy to melt into the strong frame.

They’ve done this a million times before. Sometimes their car would break down and their dad would still send them to get beer and cigarettes and Merle would let him ride on his back when he got too tired to walk all the way back home. Or they’d be at the bar until closing time and Merle would appear next to the barstool, shaking him awake and letting him slide onto his back before carrying him to the truck. Sometimes they’d just be horsing around the house, Daryl directing his brother by pulling at his ears to get him to go to the kitchen and fix a snack for him.

Monkey-time.

Daryl snorts, ‘until I break your back, right?’

‘That’s right,’ his brother grins, throwing a look over his shoulder at him. ‘I’ve been carrying you around since ya were born. You don’t really fit in my arms anymore and my hips ain’t wide enough for your big ass, so you’re moving to the back until you break it.’

Daryl supposes it’s a good thing that Merle is strong as a horse, then. He tightens his hold on him. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters into the crook of his neck.

‘No big, little brother. China, wanna lead the way? He ain’t heavy but he ain’t no feather neither.’

Maggie gives the Dixon brothers a fond smile before taking her husband’s hand. ‘He’s Korean and his name is Glenn.’

Merle hitches Daryl higher before giving the woman a quick salute. ‘Yes, ma’am. Korean Glenn, kindly show us mini-man’s home before he starts droolin’ on me.’

Husband and wife share a look before shaking their heads.

‘This way,’ Glenn says with a nod.

It doesn’t take them long to reach their home. The rest of the family is already bustling about. Sasha is sleeping on the couch while Carol smokes a cigarette on the porch. Eugene appears to have made dinner with Tara’s help and Tyreese is talking to Abraham about the fortifications of the wall.

Merle carries his brother into his house, through the living room before gently putting him on a kitchen chair, following Maggie’s directions. He falls into the chair next to him, an arm looped around the backs so he can fidget with Daryl’s hair.

Glenn goes to help Eugene and Tara, grabbing two plates for the Dixon brothers.

Merle looks around the room. ‘They all live here?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl yawns, ‘we’ve got the house next door as well. Aaron and Eric are four doors down.’

‘Who was the hot blonde feelin’ ya up at the other place?’

‘That was my little sister,’ Maggie says pointedly as she takes the chair across from Merle. ‘Beth.’

‘She weren’t feelin’ me up,’ Daryl says with a frown.

Merle grins at Maggie and raises his hands in surrender. ‘She’s hot is all I’m sayin’. Didn’t mean nothing. ’

‘You better not,’ she warns but there’s laughter in her eyes. It fades a little when she asks her next question. ‘Did you have someone, before this? Or… with that group?’

Merle leans back in his chair and shrugs. ‘Not with that group. And before that, couple of month before the turn? Hmm. Lots of bitches wantin’ to suck my dick, none of them female though.’ He smirks at Maggie’s confused look. ‘I were in prison, lady. Now a lot of those prison stories were all talk, but them bitches? Hmm-hmm. Thirsty for it.’

‘Oh my God,’ Maggie breathes as she looks away, clearly unsure whether to be horrified or burst out into laugher.

‘Stop,’ Daryl groans as he folds his hands over his face. ‘You’re terrible.’

‘Just sayin’ how it was, baby bro. Stop your blushin’.’

‘ _Please_ stop,’ the boy moans, putting his forehead on the table in agony. He sits up straight again when Glenn taps the back of his head and puts a plate down in front of him. He hands the other one to Merle.

‘Thank you, Korean Glenn,’ Merle nods happily as he accepts the plate. ‘ _Hey_ ,’ he says sharply when Daryl scoops some of the food up with his fingers and sticks it into his mouth.

Daryl blinks at him with wide eyes.

‘He got ya food and ya ain’t got nothing to say about it?’

Daryl glances up at Glenn, who is looking amused by the exchange. ‘Thanks?’ he ventures.

‘You’re welcome,’ Glenn winks at him before grabbing his wife a plate for them to share.

Merle eats silently for the most part. Daryl finishes fast and pushes his chair closer to his brother so he can lean against him. The oldest Dixon curls an arm around him and continues to eat with his left hand. He’s listening to the quiet conversation Glenn and Maggie have while his eyes track the rest of the family.

‘Who’s the big-ass nigger?’ he asks between bites.

Maggie nearly chokes on her food while Glenn blinks with surprise.

‘Don’t call him that,’ Daryl mutters.

Merle lifts an eyebrow, ‘end of the world and you want me to be politically correct about the state of things?’

Daryl shrugs, ‘just don’t call him that, okay? Ain’t right.’

‘Says who?’

‘Carol,’ Daryl rubs at his nose. ‘Shane did. Rick, too. Everyone.’

‘Everyone, huh?’ Merle looks around the room. ‘Well, I ain’t surprised. Some multicultural bullshit going on here. The little spitfire, she’s got some peppers in her blood, a’right.’

Daryl follows his gaze. ‘That’s Rosita.’

‘You got a problem with that?’ Glenn asks suddenly, eyes narrowed. Maggie reaches for his hand but he doesn’t curl his fingers around hers.

‘With what?’ Merle wipes his mouth on the back of his hand when he looks at the Korean.

‘The _multicultural bullshit_ ,’ Glenn says through gritted teeth.

‘Hell no, seems to have worked out for all y’all,’ the Dixon shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t even mind dippin’ my dick in some spices just to –‘

‘ _Shut up_!’ Daryl hisses.

His brother laughs, clipping him across the back of his head playfully, ‘just wanted to make ya blush again, Darlina. You turned into one uptight bastard, you know that?’ He finishes his food and pushes his plate away. ‘Compliments to the chef,’ he turns to his brother, ‘ready to get some shut-eye?’

Daryl nods. He rises but lingers, hand trailing over the grain in the wood of the table. ‘You gonna stay here or…?’

‘Gonna tuck you the fuck in like you were five years old again,’ Merle says with a laugh, standing, too. ‘Best believe it.’

Daryl laughs and swats at him to hide his grateful expression. Then he walks to the other side of the table, hugging Glenn fiercely before doing the same with Maggie. It’s only when they promise to wake him up when they hear anything about Carl’s condition that he slowly starts to make his way upstairs. His legs tremble when he climbs up.

Merle puts a gentle hand on his back and helps him.

 

 

He wakes up. The first thing he sees is Merle’s face, the edge of the pillow they’re sharing, the sunlight that is filtering in through the window behind his brother. Merle is still asleep. Blue eyes closed and face smoothed out. He looks even younger now, not so much like Will anymore, but even sleep hasn’t removed the traces of his life choices. There’s a small scar on his temple from a broken beer bottle, a burn scar in neck from one of his careless friends, a patch of faint scarring on his left cheek from the time he hadn’t listened to their mother and had popped his pimples with dirty fingernails and little care.

Daryl reaches out carefully and puts his fingers on the man’s jaw. The stubble is coarse. It’s probably been two days since he’s shaved. For just a second, Daryl wonders whether he’ll grow a beard that quickly, too. He knows Glenn doesn’t but Rick does, so he knows it’s different for everyone, but surely brothers can’t be that different.

With a smile, he scoots closer to his brother’s body heat, worming into his personal space. One of his legs over his brother’s, his forehead buried into that shoulder.

A sharp intake of breath tells him he’s woken Merle up with his wriggling. He goes still instantly, heart hammering in his throat.

‘The hell, monster?’ Merle murmurs sleepily, looking down at his chest to find his brother curled around him. ‘What’d ya wake me up for?’ One heavy arm is thrown across Daryl’s back, grabbing him by his armpit and pulling him higher and closer.

Daryl sniggers and peeks at the window behind them. ‘Is it morning?’ he asks with a confused frown.

‘Yeah, you’ve been out cold for forever, man. People had to come in and check whether you were still alive,’ Merle yawns. He rubs at his eyes and seems to wake up properly. He gives his brother a shove, sending him back to his own side of the bed. ‘You smell like you died, kid. Good lord.’

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl mutters as he hugs his pillow, nuzzling it sleepily. He hasn’t taken a shower yet. There’s dried blood on his arms and the sweat has formed a greasy brown layer on his skin. He’s thankful that he’s no longer wearing the same clothes, at least. Instead, he’s wearing sweatpants and a shirt that used to belong to someone else. He freezes. ‘Who changed my clothes?’

Merle yawns again. He arches his back and falls back into the pillows with a grunt. ‘Korea did, I think. Or his girl. I don’t know,’ he waves a vague hand. ‘I had shit to do.’

Daryl relaxes. ‘Like what?’

‘We rigged that wall back up. Those trucks were never really gonna hold for long so we had to remove the rubble, replace those steel plates. It was a bitch, lemme tell ya. Got it done, though. There are some tough sons of bitches in this place.’

Daryl stares at him for a second. ‘Thanks. For helping with the wall, I mean.’

Merle frowns up at the ceiling, ‘’course.’ He rubs at his nose and then turns back to his little brother. ‘You know… what you said, about it not bein’ a competition? I know that. It can’t be,’ he hooks a hand around the back of Daryl’s head, reeling him back in. Their foreheads press together. ‘We’re _blood_. Ain’t nothing stronger than that.’

‘I know that,’ Daryl says, ‘but they are-‘

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Merle laughs, ‘they’re yours and they’re blood. Fine. _Good_ , I mean, ‘cause they look at you like you hung the moon and stars in the sky, boy.’ He strokes his hair, ‘can’t blame me for bein’ a little selfish after not seein’ you for three years, hmm?’

The boy snorts and shoves his shoulder lightly, settling back into the pillow.

The older Dixon sighs. ‘You gonna tell me what happened to ya, or what?’

Daryl scratches at his sheets with dirty fingernails. He frowns a little. ‘What, all of it?’

‘All of it,’ Merle nods. ‘I want to know about dad. About these people, this place, all the places you’ve been. _All of it._ ’

 

 

It starts with Jerry who wouldn’t stop.

It ends with them, curled up together on his bed.

 

The middle is more difficult. He’s not sure how to tell Merle about what happened on that rooftop in Atlanta and just tells him what he knows; that Rick had tried to do right by their dad but had still failed. That it wasn’t his fault, really, but that he’d still hated him for it. Hates him for it, but that he loves him, too.

He tells how Will had left him behind.

He tries to make him understand who Shane was, but he’ll always be _some guy_ to his brother and that’s _not_ _fair_ because he can’t talk about Terminus without crying and Merle still looks a little lost.

Hershel is easier to explain but Woodbury is complicated because Merle doesn’t understand who would let a twelve year old go along on a mission like that even though Daryl keeps repeating that _Glenn_ and _Maggie_ had been taken.

Will getting him out of that fighting pit makes Merle grin and he pulls his little brother on top of him when his dad’s story dies with fire.

The rest of the story is muffled, Daryl muttering it into his brother’s neck and shoulder. About Beth and the cabin, about the tracks and claimers, about Rick killing Joe and arriving at terminus. Shane. About being so angry and not caring enough and then Gareth. About that machete. About the road and the barn and then Aaron and Eric.

Alexandria.

Merle knows the rest.

He’s probably forgotten half of everything his brother needs to know.

‘Got shot, too.’

Merle looks down at him, ‘when?’

‘Back at the farm,’ Daryl shrugs, ‘forgot to mention.’

‘You forgot to mention gettin’ shot?’

‘Yeah. It was just a graze anyway. They thought I was a walker.’ Daryl plucks at his brother’s shirt.

‘Can’t say I understand everything, but, ya know… they’re good people, lookin’ out for you like that, I guess…’

‘They are,’ Daryl agrees. ‘You need to stop callin’ them names all the time. Like, Glenn? And Sasha, too.’

‘’s just words, baby brother. Don’t mean nothing,’ Merle dismisses.

‘It does,’ Daryl insists because Carol had taught him that words _do_ matter and Rick had thrown him into his cell for using the wrong ones. Shane had tried to teach him why it was wrong and in the end just settled on telling him which ones he wasn’t allowed to use anymore. Will’s lessons are nothing if not hard to erase, from his skin or mind. ‘It’s not _just_ words. Michonne isn’t a –‘ he worries at his lower lip, ‘what Will said she was. She’s good people. And so are Ty ‘nd Sasha. Gabriel, too.’

‘Fuckin’ fine,’ Merle groans as he wipes the sleep out of his eyes. ‘Now get off of me and stop stinkin’ up the place. Grab a damn shower, we need to get goin’.’ He pushes his little brother away and gets up, stretching lazily before walking over to the window and peeking out. ‘We need to get those bodies rounded up. Burn them. They’re messing up all those damn picket fence lawns.’

Daryl rolls out of bed, ‘why do I have to take a shower if I’m gonna be draggin’ walkers around?’

‘’cause your big bro told ya to.’

Daryl glares at his brother’s back but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘Asshole.’

‘What’d ya say about callin’ people names again?’ Merle throws a smirk over his shoulder.

‘That doesn’t count!’

‘Disrespecting your elders like that,’ Merle says with a disappointed shake of his head. A little laugh escapes him when he moves to head towards the hallway. ‘What would dad say?’

‘ _Finally grew some balls, huh_?’ Daryl says immediately, mimicking Will.

Merle snorts and holds out his hand for a high-five, ‘see you in a bit, baby bro.’

Daryl claps their hands together.

 

 

They’re eating breakfast when Rick and Michonne come home.

Daryl is out of his seat in a flash, practically yanking the door open as soon as he recognizes the sound Rick’s boots make on the porch steps. He stares up at the cop, eyes wide and a little fearful but he relaxes when Rick gives him a small smile.

‘Hey, you,’ Rick murmurs, reaching out and drawing him into a tight hug. ‘He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Beth is with him.’

‘Can I see him?’

‘Not yet,’ Rick says as he runs a hand through the boy’s hair. ‘He woke up for a couple of minutes today, but he’s – he’s confused, hurting. He wouldn’t want you to see him like that.’

‘He’s my brother, I don’t care what he thinks I-‘

‘Sssh, I know.’ Rick kisses his hair, ‘I know, bud. He was confused when he woke up, he doesn’t yet understand that he lost his… He lost his eye. He didn’t even know where he was, just – we need to give him some time.’

‘But you said he’s okay! Is his brain, like… okay, too?’

Rick laughs softly, squeezing his shoulders before stepping back and meeting the boy’s eye, ‘he’s going to be okay. He just needs some time to adjust and process everything. Maybe you can come by tomorrow. We’ll see how he reacts later today, if he wakes up again. I’m just going to grab a shower and something to eat.’

A chair scrapes behind them. ‘Sounds like breakfast for two more,’ Merle says as he cautiously makes his way over to the door.

Rick straightens at the sight of a stranger in his home.

‘You’re Rick, right? I’m sorry about what happened to your boy,’ Merle glances at Daryl before he extends his hand for a handshake. ‘I’m Merle Dixon. Daryl’s brother.’

Rick stares at him for a moment, his gaze flickers down to the hand then back up to the man’s face. He grabs the hand, shaking it. ‘Hey, yeah I’m Rick – how did you even… Wow, I – you’re his brother?’

‘Yeah, man. I might not be as damn pretty as he is, but that’s just our momma, shinin’ through on his part.’ Merle grins and lets go of Rick’s hand. ‘And you must be Michonne. He told me about the sword. Think he’s a little jealous.’ Merle holds out his hand again.

Michonne raises her eyebrows but shakes his hand. ‘Yes. I saw you yesterday, I didn’t… I’m sorry, we were-‘

‘Kinda busy, yeah, no shit,’ Merle grins. ‘Glad to hear the boy is going to be okay.’

‘Carl,’ Rick nods.

‘Right,’ Merle answers. ‘I’m still learning all them names, there’s a lot of you. He’s been teachin’ me though,’ he throws a wink at Daryl, ‘so it’s all good. Right?’ He tilts his head a little when he looks at Rick.

The cop swallows and clears his throat. ‘Yeah, it’s all good. I’m just… you found each other.’

‘Weren’t no doubt about that. Might have taken me two damn years, but turns out I’ve been lookin’ in the wrong damn state. Didn’t think a Dixon would ever willingly leave Georgia, but here we are.’ He stuffs his hands in his pockets and wobbles on his feet, something Daryl does when he’s nervous. ‘Thanks for – I mean… Thanks for lookin’ out for him.’

‘Of course,’ Rick dismisses easily. He glances at Michonne and shares an incredulous look with her.

The woman hides her smile behind her hand as she scratches at her nose.

‘So, breakfast?’ Merle prompts. ‘I know I’m offerin’ you your own damn food, but you look like you’ve had a rough night.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Monster,’ Merle says with a snap of his fingers, ‘help me out here? Show me where you keep all your shit ‘nd everything.’ He swaggers back to the kitchen, hands still in his pockets.

Daryl grins up at Michonne and Rick, then laughs before running over to his brother, helping him make breakfast for his friends.

 

 

Breakfast is one of the most awkward things Daryl has ever sat through.

Rick won’t stop staring at Merle while Merle pretends not to notice.

They don’t talk much. There’s not much to say.

Michonne watches with a bemused look on her face, occasionally catching Daryl’s eye and throwing him a wink. The boy sniggers into his bowl only to get a glare from his brother.

Later, when they both step out onto the porch, Merle will light a cigarette and sigh deeply. He’ll glance at his little brother with a raised eyebrow and ask; ‘is that what meeting the in-laws is like? Hot damn, brother.’

He calls Michonne by her name though, and Daryl calls the whole affair a raging success.

 

 

He’s in charge of digging graves all morning. They’ve lost a couple of people from Alexandria during the attack and he honors Glenn’s rule from the quarry. _We don’t burn them_.

They burn the walkers. Smoke rises from Alexandria. The whole town smells of ashes while most people help to drag the bodies towards the big fire. Slowly but surely, the streets are being cleared.

Daryl sees flashes of Merle throughout the day. It had been early when Abraham had come to ask for the eldest Dixon’s help with the bodies while the youngest dug the graves. He’d caught him helping Rosita drag a walkers towards one of the trucks, talking to Tara while wiping the sweat from his forehead and accepting a bottle of water Morgan held out to him. Later, he saw him walking the wall with Sasha during his break, talking to Spencer near the gates.

‘He’s your brother?’

Daryl is startled out of his thoughts by Enid, who sits down next to the half-dug grave. Her long brown hair falls over her shoulders as she fidgets with her necklace. She looks up at him for a second. ‘Everyone is talking about him.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl grunts as he pushes the shovel into the earth. ‘He’s my brother.’

‘How old is he?’

The teenager shrugs, ‘twenty-nine? Thirty, maybe. His birthday is near Christmas, so twenty-nine, I think. Why?’

‘He just looks a lot older than you.’

‘Yeah, no shit. Fifteen years.’

They’re silent for a little while.

‘Have you seen Carl yet?’ Enid asks suddenly. She doesn’t look at him.

‘No. He’s okay though,’ Daryl says when the girl goes rigid after the first word. ‘Rick says he’s pretty out of it still, so maybe tomorrow. Want to come?’

‘No.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl shrugs. The grave is almost done but he still needs two more. ‘Yo, anytime you want to take over for a bit, that’s cool by me, you know? The fuck are you loungin’ around for?’ He grins at her to show that he doesn’t mean it too harshly.

She snorts. ‘No, thank you. You’re doing great.’ She twirls her necklace around her fingers. ‘I ran away, when the attack happened? I ran. I left him with Judith and just… I just ran. Climbed the wall and didn’t look back.’

That makes Daryl frown. ‘Thought you were with Maggie?’

‘No. I found Glenn in a town, he told me about the herd and… sort of dragged me back here,’ she laughs a little, looking away.

‘What? You didn’t wanna help ‘em?’

‘I didn’t think there’d be anyone left to help.’

Daryl scoffs and shakes his head. ‘You don’t know us, then. We’re still here. And if this place falls? Hmm. We’ll still be there, just… somewhere else, ya know? But it’s gonna us, at the end of all of this.’

‘You lost people.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods, ‘that don’t mean they’re gone, though.’

Enid gives him a sad little smile. ‘You sound like Glenn.’

‘That what you get, hangin’ around him.’

The girl fidgets with her necklace again. She almost seems nervous. ‘I think I like hanging around him. And Maggie.’

‘Careful,’ Daryl warns as he leans on his shovel again, looking up at her. ‘Blink and they’ll adopt you. I ain’t kiddin’,’ he laughs when Enid snorts. ‘Glenn and I were cool once and then suddenly he’s telling me to go to bed and brush my teeth and eat my greens. Think Maggie knew we were a package deal, so she kinda adopted us both.’

Enid laughs softly. She meets his eye. ‘I don’t think I’ll mind. Is that okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl grins back. ‘Just – don’t run out on us again, or I’ll stomp your ass.’

 

 

The door slams open and heavy footsteps come down the hall.

Aaron is on his feet immediately, drawing his gun and side-stepping past the table into living room.

‘Yo,’ a voice booms, ‘you one of the faggots babysittin’ that little shit? Where is he?’

‘What the - _excuse me_?’ Aaron says, completely stunned by the sudden appearance of Merle Dixon in his home.

‘Yeah, people said he’d be here. Where the hell – there you are!’ He pushes past Aaron roughly and heads over to his little brother, who is standing in the kitchen with Eric. He grabs the boy by his shoulders, pushing him up against the wall. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say nothing? _Huh_?’

Daryl holds his hand out to Aaron, signaling him to stay back. Merle’s hold on him doesn’t hurt. His head hit the wall a little, but not too hard, and he just gazes up at his brother. ‘Say nothing about what?’

‘That crazy ass lady! You could have fuckin’ warned me, you little shit! Spend the whole morning tellin’ me about Rick ‘nd Michonne, gushing about Glenn and Maggie, but you didn’t say shit about that crazy savage who’s going to take my damn balls from me!’

Daryl bites his lip to hide his smile. ‘Which crazy lady?’

‘ _Carol_!’ Merle snarls, ‘that mouse cornered poor old Merle, bein’ all sweet like. I think; maybe she wants to suck my dick, right? That’s cool, so I’m all charmin’ up in that place and then _boom_. Knife to my throat, threatenin’ to take my damn balls if I mess with ya.’

‘You’re messing with me now,’ Daryl points out.

‘Shit,’ Merle lets go of him immediately, then groans, ‘don’t use that against me, you monster. She’s gonna take my balls, for real, and I need them, okay? Damn. She’s crazy. You couldn’t have told me she was crazy?’

‘She ain’t crazy,’ Daryl laughs, shoving his brother out of his space. ‘You’re just an asshole.’

‘She don’t know that yet,’ Merle sulks as he folds his arms and looks away. Then he glances back at his little brother. ‘She seein’ anyone?’

‘I think so,’ Daryl tells him even though he doesn’t know or care.

‘Damn. She’s a spitfire, that one.’ Then he seems to notice Eric. ‘Hi.’

Eric’s eyebrows rise to his hairline, ‘hello,’ he says slowly, glancing at Aaron and then back.

‘I’m Merle, Daryl’s brother. You Aaron?’

‘I’m Eric. That’s Aaron,’ the man says with a little gesture to his boyfriend.

‘Fucking-A,’ Merle grunts.

Daryl pushes himself away from the wall and grabs an apple from the fruit bowl, ‘say sorry to Aaron.’

‘What the hell for?’ Merle frowns as he steals the apple from his brother, taking a big bite out of it before giving it back.

‘Called him a faggot,’ Daryl says, ‘ain’t right.’

The oldest Dixon groans, rubbing at his forehead, ‘you are such a pain in my ass, _that_ ain’t right, Darlina. I swear to God.’

‘Say you’re sorry.’

‘And what if I ain’t?’ Merle leans back on the kitchen counter, watching his little brother curiously. ‘Two men, shackin’ it up here? Hmm-hmm. That’s unnatural, is what it is.’

Daryl narrows his eyes at his brother. He tilts his head to the side. ‘You’re so full of shit, Merle.’

The oldest Dixon snorts and pushes himself away from the counter, ‘yeah, you’re right. Hell, as long as they ain’t staring at _my_ ass, it’s all good with me. Come on, monster, let’s get going. I’m on guard duty and you’re going to keep me company ‘cause that shit is boring as fuck.’ He grins as he passes Aaron, ‘leave the two princes alone in their castle, okay? Load of life-affirming stuff to be done, I’m sure.’

Daryl groans and slumps after his brother, glancing up at Aaron, ‘sorry, man. He doesn’t mean it like that, it’s just.. you know. Sorry.’ Then he takes off running, out the hallway, onto the porch before jumps onto his brother’s back. The older man grunts at the impact but grabs hold of his legs and hoists him a little higher before carrying him towards the gates.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a tumblr now, just like all the cool kids.  
> @jamesjohneye
> 
> I don't understand how it works. Yet.
> 
> Goodnight, and thanks for everything, always.


	65. Comics and mints

 

* * *

 

 

‘You lookin’ for something in particular or just goin’ through my stuff?’

Michonne startles and turns around swiftly, breath stuck in her throat until she spots Daryl, who is lounging against the doorframe. There’s a faint scowl on the boy’s face, causing his brows to draw together and his eyes to be even smaller. The dark hair frames his face, probably just brushed back by Maggie who keeps threatening him with a haircut. Heavy boots knock together as he watches how the dark-skinned woman straightens.

‘Dare,’ she gives him a small smile. ‘Sorry, I would have asked but you were out. Carl asked me to bring him some comics and I figured he’d already read the ones in his room. I was trying to find your stash. You don’t mind, right? He’ll give them back.’

‘We always share,’ the boy shrugs.

Michonne waits a beat. ‘Yeah,’ she draws out the word and looks around the room, ‘so, can you give me some?’

‘He’s readin’ comics?’

‘Yes, Beth brought him the copies from downstairs, but he was already half-way through them when I left so…’

Daryl grunts and brings his thumb to his mouth to bite on his nail.

Michonne sits down on his bed when she sees the gesture. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

The boy shrugs and then knocks his boots together again. ‘’s just – Beth can come see him and he’s up and everything, so…. Why can’t I see him?’

Michonne sighs and pats the spot next to her. When the boy slinks over to sit, she smiles at him, reaching out to push a strand of his dark hair behind one slightly reddened ear. ‘Beth is helping Denise. She’s taking care of him, so it’s not really fair to make that comparison. He doesn’t want to see anyone else right now.’

‘But why not?’

‘He’s…’ Michonne searches for the right words. ‘He’s a little unsure at the moment. He needs to learn to do a lot of things again.’

Daryl frowns.

‘Do you know what happens when you lose an eye?’

He shakes his head.

‘Okay. The main problem for him right now is that he can’t see any depth. You need two eyes in order to see how far away something is, but now, when he reaches for something, he’ll miss. He’s constantly knocking things over or walking into stuff when he tries to go to the bathroom.’ Michonne flashes him a small smile, ‘it will take him some time to learn all of that. A lot of practice.’

‘But he can learn, right?’

‘Yeah, lots of people learned to live and drive with only one good eye. It will just take him a while to get used to it. He thinks it’s embarrassing. Denise is trying to get him to do the exercises she’s found but he gets frustrated and gives up. It’s still early, though. He needs time to adjust.’

‘Still don’t get why he won’t want to see me,’ Daryl mutters as he scowls at his boots. ‘I won’t laugh at him or nothing.’

‘I know that. He knows that. It’s not just that.’ Michonne breathes in deeply and looks away. ‘It took Denise some digging around to find the bullet. She did and she made sure there was no more bleeding but… the wound on his face, it’s… it’s big. He has to cover it with a bandage but even then some of the scars are still visible. It’s not pretty.’

‘What the fuck do I care whether he’s _pretty_?’

The woman laughs despite herself, looking at the sulking teenager next to her.

‘What’re you brayin’ at?’ he mutters. ‘He needs to stop bein’ such a princess.’

‘Talk to me like that again and I’m going to knock you on your ass,’ Michonne says lightly. ‘I was laughing because you are too sweet, sometimes. Now come on,’ she gets to her feet again. ‘Show me where the comics are.’

Daryl drags himself up and walks out of the room again, ‘they ain’t here. The ones we haven’t read are in Carl’s room ‘cause he reads faster. Here,’ he opens the closet in the other boy’s room to reveal two piles of comics. He takes a couple from the left pile. ‘He hasn’t read these.’

Michonne frowns at the title, ‘are you sure?’

‘You want my help or nah? Yeah, I’m sure.’

‘Hey,’ Michonne shoots him a glance, ‘I know you’re upset that you can’t see him, but don’t give me the attitude.’

Daryl sighs and leans against the wall. ‘Sorry. I’m just annoyed. Ain’t shit to do around here. Rosita won’t let me pull guard duty and Maggie won’t let me go hunt because I lost my bow. I can hunt with a rifle. I can even just check the snares, set them up again. We’re going to need the meat. Can you talk to her? Or Rick? He’d let me out, I bet.’

‘Would he really?’ Michonne asks with an arched eyebrow. ‘One of his boys is in the infirmary. He doesn’t need the other one wandering out in the woods by himself.’

‘I can take Merle with me!’

‘Merle is helping Abraham with the wall,’ Michonne reminds him.

‘Aaron, then!’

‘Dare,’ she sighs. ‘You’re staying here. You can help Maggie in the gardens, you can – ‘

‘I don’t want to do _gardening_ ,’ Daryl hisses angrily.

‘You can play some video games and-‘

‘ _Are you fucking serious_?’

‘ _Enough_!’ Michonne snaps back, breathing more heavily now. ‘I need to go back to Carl. We’ll talk about this later. But in the meantime? I suggest you work on that temper.’

‘ _And the attitude and the hair and the everything_!’ Daryl shouts at her before slamming the door closed. He stares at it, unsure of what just happened. He’d been fine one second and then he’d been _so_ angry. He can hear Michonne’s fast footsteps on the stairs. He thinks about ripping the door open, running after her and apologizing, but he doesn’t.

He just stands there for a long time.

It’s Glenn who comes to find him. He doesn’t seem to be surprised to find Daryl on the other side of the door, still staring at the wood. ‘Hey,’ he says as he closes the door again and sits down on Carl’s bed. ‘When are you going to apologize to Michonne?’

‘Never.’

Glenn nods and rubs at his black hair, raking his nails over his scalp. ‘Okay. Then we’re done talking. I’ll come back when you’ve cooled down some more.’

To Daryl’s astonishment, Glenn actually gets up and leaves.

Silence rings out in the room. He grabs some of Carl’s darts and throws them at the board. He’s too angry to aim properly and doesn’t hit anything good, which only makes him angrier. When the last dart even hits the wood beside the board, he groans and throws himself onto his brother’s bed, glaring at the wall and not moving a muscle.

That gets boring quick.

He grabs some of Carl books off the shelves and opens the first one. He doesn’t care about the title. He doesn’t really care about what he’s reading, but he needs to focus on the long words and longer sentences so it takes his mind off of how angry he is. His finger tracks his progress, gliding along under the words he’s deciphering.

After half an hour, he doesn’t even hear the door open behind him. It’s only when Glenn clears his throat that he looks up.

‘Are you ready to talk now?’ the man asks.

Daryl sits up and curls his legs under him, fidgeting with the pages of the book. ‘Yeah,’ he nods.

‘When are you going to apologize to Michonne?’

‘When I see her.’

‘Good,’ Glenn says as he closes the door behind him and moves to sit on the bed, too. ‘She told me you were _acting out_. What happened?’

‘Just got mad,’ Daryl mutters.

‘Yes, but why?’

He shrugs.

‘Dare, come on,’ Glenn sighs as he leans back against the headboard. ‘We can talk, right? About anything.’

‘Yeah, it’s just – I don’t know, I just… I just got mad! First she was goin’ through my stuff and you know Maggie is always giving me a hard time about my hair and – ‘

‘Dare,’ Glenn cuts in. He looks at the teenager. ‘You’re not mad about Michonne going through your stuff and you’re not mad because Maggie wants to cut your hair.’

‘I am!’

‘Okay. Fine, you’re mad about that. Did Michonne apologize?’

Daryl grits his teeth. ‘Yeah, but-‘

‘And did you tell Maggie to stop bugging you about your hair?’

‘No because –‘

‘Tell her and she’ll stop. You know that. So what’s the problem?’

‘If you’ll just let me finish!’ Daryl snaps but then just gnaws on his nail because he doesn’t really have a reason why he didn’t just tell Maggie to stop like Shane had taught him and he really doesn’t care about anyone of their family going through his things. It’s not so weird of her to assume that he’d dragged the comics back to his room. It’d be a logical place to search and they always share everything. She usually asks, though.

And he really hadn’t been around to ask. He’d been too busy sulking near the gate to try and shame Rosita into letting him out.

He’d only come back because she’d started to flip him off every time he glared at her.

‘What’s the problem, Dare?’ Glenn asks again.

He bites on his nail. ‘Feel useless,’ he mutters.

‘You feel useless?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay. Why?’

‘Maggie won’t let me hunt ‘nd Rosita won’t let me pull guard duty. They said they had enough people working on the walls, they didn’t need no kid helpin’ them. ‘s not fair. I lost my bow, didn’t lose both of my damn hands.’

‘I’m pretty sure Abraham didn’t turn your help down because you’re a kid.’

Daryl glares at his boots, ‘well, no, but… He didn’t want my help anyway, so it don’t matter.’

‘Right,’ Glenn muses. ‘There’s something you can do around here. I think you would be really good at it.’

‘Like what? Watchin’ Judy? I’ve been doin’ that for days, man.’

‘Maybe you should graduate to watching her brother, then.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl sighs as he tilts his head back to lean it against the wall behind him. ‘He don’t want to see me.’

‘Maybe he needs a little push. A little reminder that you’re too stubborn to let him be.’

‘Maybe,’ Daryl says hesitantly. ‘But Rick and Michonne said I couldn’t come over, so…’

‘I’m sure you’ll find a way to let him know you’re there for him.’

Daryl nods. ‘Yeah, okay.’ He brings his hands up to scrub at his face. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes I just – I just get _so mad_. Ain’t no real reason for it either, but I can’t stop, ya know? Like I just, I want to fight just so I’ll have a reason to be real mad. My dad used to get like that. I’d look at him and know, right? So I wouldn’t break no rule, wouldn’t do nothing and he’d still find something or just make shit up so he could… you know - be angry and… teach me stuff,’ Daryl frowns and looks away, ‘with, you know...’

‘His belt,’ Glenn says softly, ‘yeah, I know. He’d change the rules just to get you.’

‘Yeah. Like, I don’t care that Michonne goes through my shit but it was just an easy way to get into a fight. I guess, so… so I did.’

Glenn nods. ‘Why would you pick one with Michonne?’

‘She were goin’ through my stuff.’

‘But you said you didn’t care about that. So why her?’

‘Ain’t about her,’ Daryl says as he plucks at his lower lip. ‘Just wrong place, wrong time for her.’

‘You came home angry,’ Glenn says. He looks at the boy. ‘Abraham was in the living room, he asked you what was going on, he bothered you just like Michonne would do later, and you shrugged it off. You shrugged him off and you went for Michonne seconds later.’

The teenager grits his teeth.

‘Dare.’

‘Ain’t goin’ to pick a fight with fuckin’ _Abraham_ ,’ Daryl snaps. ‘If he’s askin’ for it, yeah, he’s gonna get it but…’

Glenn’s eyes narrow. ‘But you’re not going to start something with him just because you’re angry.’

‘No.’

‘But you are with Michonne. Why?’

‘Ain’t her, I keep tellin’ ya. Pssh. Could have been you or Maggie, or friggin’ Beth,’ the boy sulks, ‘anyone, hell, I don’t care. Basic common sense, right? I ain’t going to start nothing with someone who will…’ He swallows his words. ‘It’s stupid.’

Glenn knocks his shoulder, ‘ _what_ is?’

‘’s easy with Michonne ‘cause she won’t do nothing,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Or Maggie. And I get under your skin all the time but you never do shit except lock me in my room, so that’s cool, but… never made him mad before, I guess. Like, real mad. I ain’t stupid enough to find out what he’ll do.’

‘He wouldn’t hurt you.’

‘Best not to find out if he will or won’t, right?’

Glenn closes his eyes. ‘Right,’ he breathes. ‘I hate your dad.’

Daryl frowns, ‘what the fuck?’

‘The things you think about, you worry about… it’s not,’ the Korean shakes his head and rubs at his eyebrows, ‘never mind. Look, you said that you didn’t have a reason to be angry, that you just… explode, sometimes. But you had a reason; you felt like you were useless. That’s why you were upset and went looking for a fight.’

The boy gnaws on his thumb and shrugs.

Glenn looks at him, ‘and I guess you didn’t really want to talk about it, with me or Maggie?’

‘I tried but Maggie said I couldn’t help out.’

‘You asked if you could go hunting and she said no,’ Glenn corrects.

‘Same difference.’

The Korean laughs softly. ‘It’s not and you know it. There’s loads of things you can do, we know that. You’re not just some kid, you’re _Daryl Dixon_.’ He knocks their shoulders together when the boy shoots him a shy grin. ‘But if you storm off in a huff every time Maggie tells you no, you’ll never find out what she’ll say yes to.’

Daryl frowns, ‘like what?’

‘We need your help on the cars. One of the engines gave out, I can’t find the problem so maybe you can have a look?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy says eagerly.

‘And with the Carl situation?’

‘Yeah, I can do that.’

Glenn smiles at him, ‘good. Just - promise me one thing: try to use your words more. I know you get angry and frustrated and we all know to leave you alone when that happens, but it can’t just be us tiptoeing around you. You have got to put some effort in as well. When you get mad, don’t lash out at people who love you. You have no idea how much that hurts us. Try to talk about why you’re so upset and when that doesn’t work? Lock yourself in your room. Go for a run. Work on the cars by yourself until you calm down enough to talk. Can you try and do that for me?’

Daryl nods.

‘Promise?’

He rolls his eyes and uses his words; ‘promise.’

Glenn grins at him. ‘Good. Now promise to let Maggie cut your hair.’

Daryl grunts and pushes him off the bed.

 

 

He sits on Denise’s treatment table and listens to her ramblings about the physical therapy Carl will have to go through in order to get used to his new sight. Sometimes he loses the plot and he’ll glance at Beth, who will giggle and tell him what the doctor meant.

He glances at her now.

‘Something like a tennis ball,’ Beth says with a giggle.

 

 

‘Morning, Dare,’ Rick greets as he walks up to the infirmary. There’s a small smile playing around his lips.

‘’s up, Rick?’ Daryl asks as he throws the tennis ball against the top of the house, letting it bounce off the wall right next to the window.

‘He’s getting pretty sick of that sound, you know,’ Rick says with a soft laugh.

‘Then he should drag his ass over to the window and tell me to stop,’ Daryl grunts as he catches the ball and prepares to throw it again. ‘Or I might miss one morning and throw it through his window. I’ll have to come up and get it.’

‘I’ll convey the threat,’ the cop laughs. ‘And I’ll tell him you’re here to see him.’

‘He knows I’m here,’ Daryl says as he throws the ball against the side of the house again. Right at the spot where Carl’s bed is.

 

 

It takes three days before the window is yanked open clumsily and Carl sticks his head out.

‘Will you stop that? It’s driving me crazy!’

Daryl catches the tennis ball and looks up at his best friend. ‘Gonna let me come up?’

Carl hesitates.

Daryl throws the ball again.

‘ _Fine_!’ Carl hisses. ‘Jesus Christ!’ He closes the window with a bang.

 

 

There’s a huge white bandage covering Carl’s missing eye. It wraps around his head and is mostly hidden by his hair. There’s white gauze pressed into the socket, closing off the wound. The scars that peek out from under the bandages are not as big as Michonne had made him believe.

Carl, however, won’t look at him when he enters. He’s sitting on the bed and reads one of their comics. Chin on the palm of his hand, elbow on his knee, so the hair falls in front of his face and hides most of the damage.

‘Yo,’ Daryl says as he swings into the room, throwing himself onto the bed next to his brother. ‘Rick said you were doin’ okay?’

Carl grunts.

‘‘s been boring without you, man.’

Carl flips a page.

Daryl wriggles around on the bed until he can kick the comic off the sheets. ‘Wanna go outside? Michonne says you’ve been going to the bathroom and back, you must be sick of this place. We can check out the new garden Maggie has been planting. It got tomatoes and such, like what you and your dad did at the prison? She just started though. Could use your help down the line.’

‘She grew up on a farm. I think she’ll be fine,’ Carl says frostily as he bends down to grab the comic off the floor. He misses the first time, fingers just gliding through empty air. He grits his teeth and bends lower only to knock his fingertips into the wood before snatching the comic up.

‘You’ve been doing any of that PT at all?’

Carl glares at him. ‘Fuck you.’

Daryl laughs, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Just, have you? You know I can help with that shit, right? Boring as fuck to throw a tennis ball around on your own. I should know, right? I’ve been doing it for _days_.’

‘No,’ Carl snaps. ‘I haven’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t grab a glass of water without knocking it over, let alone catch a damn ball, Dare!’

‘That’s why you gotta practice, ya idiot.’ Daryl stretches. ‘Have you seen it yet? Like, the actual…’

‘Yeah. It’s… It looks gross. I need to clean it sometimes.’

They’re silent for a little while.

Then Carl scratches at his nose and looks at Daryl. ‘Dad told me that you’ve found your brother.’

Daryl sits up quickly, ‘yeah! Come on, come outside, you can meet him!’

Carl looks back at his comic, ‘nah. I’m okay.’

Daryl deflates. He worries his bottom lip. ‘Did Rick say something, ‘cause, ya know, he’s Merle but he ain’t like Will. He can be nice. I’ll tell him to – you know, not be an asshole to you. I think he knows he shouldn’t be an asshole to you already.’

‘No, dad didn’t say he was an asshole,’ Carl snorts. ‘But he’s a Dixon, so…’

Daryl swats at his shoulder. ‘Stop. Come on then, he’s probably on guard duty.’

‘I can’t climb the ladder.’

Daryl frowns, ‘then he’ll come down, what’s so –‘

‘I can’t cross the _street_ ,’ Carl snaps. ‘I tripped over one of Judith’s toys the other day, how the hell am I going to get out of here in one piece?’

‘That’s the problem? Jesus Christ, you’re such a pussy,’ Daryl laughs as he gets up. ‘Come on,’ he holds out his hand, ‘I’ll be your guide dog. Promise I won’t give you fleas. Come on,’ he wriggles his fingers, ‘we’ll try you grabbing my hand the first ten minutes. Come on, do it. Do it!’

Carl reaches and misses.

Daryl wriggles his fingers again.

Carl blushes and tries again. His fingers brush against Daryl’s this time, letting him know how to adjust. Next time, their hands clasp together easily.

Daryl immediately lets go and moves his hand a little higher. ‘Try again.’

It takes Carl a couple of times again but Daryl doesn’t laugh at him. When their palms finally collide fully, he hauls his brother to his feet. ‘Good job,’ the Dixon praises, ‘now let’s go.’

They slowly make their way downstairs. Carl holds on the railing, fingers white as his feet search for the steps and Daryl walks backwards, ready to catch the other boy should he stumble and fall. He doesn’t.

It’s strange to see Carl walk around so hesitantly. It’s slow going but Daryl doesn’t mind.

At the door, he plops the sheriff’s hat on the brown hair. It hides most of the bandage.

The roads of Alexandria are smooth and clear, which makes it easier for Carl navigate. He pauses at curbs, testing how high they are with the tip of his toes before making the step. His fingers ghost over Daryl’s belt loops, sometimes holding on to his best friend when he isn’t sure whether cracks in the concrete are raised or not. He’ll feel how Daryl walks over them easily and does the same.

People try not to stare at them. Carl is too busy looking at the ground to notice but Daryl can see how they’re all trying to ignore the boy with his blown-out eye.

He doesn’t know whether that’s better. He knows it’s not when he hears Glenn whooping excitedly from near the greenhouses. ‘Way to go, Carl!’ He hollers. ‘Good to see you up!’

Carl laughs and waves at his friend.

‘See?’ Daryl asks when they cross through the solar panels. The ground is uneven here but Carl manages fine. ‘No problem.’

‘It feels weird.’

‘Michonne says you just have to get used to it.’

‘Yeah. It still feels weird though.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Carl shrugs. ‘Shit happens, right?’

‘Yeah. Sucks though. Merle’s up there, still wanna meet him? Or have you had enough?’

‘No, I want to see him, but… He can come down, right? I don’t feel like learning to climb the ladder right now.’

Daryl smirks at him, ‘fine. Yo Merle,’ he shouts up. ‘Come down here for a sec?’

Merle looks down at him, not turning away from Beth, who is standing next to him. ‘You kiddin’ me right now, Darlina? I’m kinda busy here.’

‘Cut it out. Come down for a sec. Carl’s here.’

The older Dixon sighs and pushes himself away from the wall, saying something to Beth before making his way down. ‘The piglet?’ he asks when he saunters over. ‘Oh, shit,’ he laughs when Carl glares at him, ‘that’s – that’s something else, right there. Holy shit, you’ve been teachin’ him the Dixon glare, brother? That ain’t fair.’ He reaches out to flick Carl’s hat. ‘I’m Merle.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Merle waits a beat. ‘Well, so glad to have met you. I’m sure the pleasure was yours. Now-‘

‘Stop being a dick,’ Daryl snorts.

‘He’s glaring me into the ground, what am I supposed to play nice for? Besides, there’s a hot blonde keeping me company up there, so yeah, if you don’t mind, I’d rather go back to that.’ Merle glances at Carl. ‘You’re the one who got shot, right?’

Carl snorts. ‘What, the bandage didn’t give it away? Or the gaping hole in my face?’

‘Can’t see that, smart-ass,’ Merle snipes at him, flicking the hat again.

One corner of Carl’s mouth quirks up. ‘Good.’

‘You look like a girl with your hair like that.’

Carl flips him off.

Merle laughs and draws Daryl in for a quick hug. ‘I like him. See you tonight?’

‘Yeah, later. And thanks,’ Daryl grins.

Merle throws him a wink before climbing up the ladder again.

 

 

Rick takes him out the next day. Carl has been complaining that Rick won’t stay away long enough for him to even try and refill his own water cup without spilling, so Daryl complains louder about being bored and Rick finally caves.

He takes the youngest Dixon out into the woods. They set up new traps, empty the old ones and wander through the woods. They don’t talk much. There’s not much to say, really.

Everything is quiet.

Eventually they circle back to the small town next to Alexandria. Daryl shrugs his rifle higher onto his shoulder. ‘Want to go back?’ he asks the cop. ‘Aaron already cleared this.’

‘We can go through it again,’ Rick says as he scratches at his jaw. ‘See if they missed something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Small stuff,’ Rick says as he jumps over a fence. ‘See if we can find some hairbands for Judith and the other girls. Gonna have to search through some purses, girl’s bags. Feminine hygiene products, too, Olivia says they’re running low.’

Daryl wrinkles his nose.

‘Chewing gum,’ Rick says absent-mindedly. ‘Or mints, something like that.’

‘Olivia complainin’ we’re runnin’ low on _mints_?’ Daryl asks skeptically.

‘Michonne likes them.’ The cop ducks his head and won’t look at the teenager. ‘She’s been helping out a lot, so, I just – It’d be a nice – just, if you see it.’

‘She don’t like them,’ Daryl grunts as he pushes past the man to lead him over to one of the houses on their right. ‘She’s a fuckin’ addict.’

They go through the first house together but don’t find anything they’re looking for, save for some tampons from a girl’s schoolbag. Rick stuffs them into the pocket of his jeans with a small frown. ‘This is going to take ages,’ he mutters. ‘We’re going to need to make a big run soon. Take one of the cars, find some food and whatever else we can find.’ He looks at the teenager, ‘you up for it?’

‘Hell yeah!’

Rick grins and shoves his shoulder, pushing him towards the door. ‘Let’s split up for now. We’ll take a house each, meet out front every time we clear one. Always stay next door to me, okay? Knife, bow, holler.’

‘Rifle.’

‘What?’

Daryl glares at him. ‘I lost the damn bow.’

‘Oh – yeah, right. Knife, rifle, holler. That sounds all wrong, we need to find you a new bow, too.’ Rick flashes him a smile, ‘but let’s stick to hairbands and mints right now. Anything useful.’

 

He finds hairbands for Judith in the room of a little girl.

The walls are drenched in old blood but the stuff in the dressers is clean.

 

Rick finds two boxes of tampons and pads in a bathroom somewhere.

 

It’s one of the last houses and Daryl is on his knees, going through a teenager’s closet to find some clothes that will fit him and Carl. They don’t usually care about what they’re wearing, but the sleeves on Carl’s shirts are getting way too short and they are running low on socks.

He’s stuffing underwear and shirts into his backpack when his fingers brush over pages. For a second he thinks he might have found some more comics, but he realize they’re not that when he pulls them out.

‘The fuck is everyone keepin’ these around for?’ Daryl laughs as he sees the girl on the cover, half-naked. ‘Thought this was what the internet was for.’ He thumbs through a couple of pages before stuffing them into his backpack. Last time he had a couple of those, Beth had walked right in. He’d be mortified if the same thing happened with Rick.

So he quickly zips up the bag, throws it over his shoulder before bounding out of the house, meeting the cop near the cars out front.

Rick doesn’t look too happy. ‘What did you find?’

‘Grabbed some clothes for me ‘nd Carl,’ Daryl answers. ‘Didn’t find the mints, sorry.’

‘Is everyone allergic to chewing gum around here? Christ.’

‘Chocolate, too,’ Daryl sulks. ‘Can’t find any.’

‘Let’s go back to Alexandria,’ Rick says with a small smile. ‘We should do that run soon.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Daryl asks hopefully.

‘No, I want Carl to get settled in first. Tell you what, if I don’t hear you complain about anything all day tomorrow and the day after, then we’ll go.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘You’re actin’ like I’m complaining all the damn time. Just don’t like being stuck behind those walls. I’ve been helpin’ out. Even helped Maggie with planting those seeds the other day. And I’ve been helpin’ Carl loads!’

‘By throwing around a tennis ball,’ Rick smirks.

‘Denise said it’s PT,’ Daryl mutters. ‘He can catch it now. Most of the time.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Been lookin’ after Ass kicker, too. They needed Ty to help with the wall.’

Rick stops walking. ‘I know you do a lot, Dare. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘You did.’

The cop sighs. ‘A little bit. I heard you and Michonne had a disagreement and you blew up in her face. Glenn says you were bored and frustrated. I know things have been – well, hard, but… it’s good now. Quiet. Calm. Everyone just needs a moment to breathe, you can’t go around and lose it when-‘

‘Don’t need another lecture,’ Daryl cuts in. ‘Glenn already gave me one and I apologized to Michonne.’

‘Okay,’ Rick nods. He looks up at the blue sky for a moment, soaking up the sunshine. ‘Shane would have been really proud of you, you know? _I_ am really proud. I didn’t get a chance to tell you after everything went down, but… I saw you driving down the gauntlet,’ he shakes his head. ‘I just thought; look at him now. First time I saw you, you were this angry little boy lurking in Glenn’s shadow. But you helped save Alexandria. You always help save us. And now I see you with Merle?’ He laughs and rubs at his eyebrow, ‘your dad would have been proud, too.’

Daryl gnaws on his nail, ‘think so?’ he asks quietly.

‘I know so.’ Rick’s gaze is drawn by a walker who is ambling down the street. ‘Let’s go back in for a minute,’ he says as he puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder and steers him back inside one of the houses, closing the front door behind them. He gently maneuvers the kid to the couch while he sits down on the dusty coffee table across from him.

Daryl dumps his bag next to him on the couch, falling into the cushions with a sigh.

‘Want to talk?’ Rick asks, tilting his head a little to the side.

The teenager huffs and lets his head fall back, staring at the ceiling, because it doesn’t seem like he has much of a choice. He doesn’t want to talk about Will with Rick because the cop had hated his dad. He doesn’t want to hear anyone calling his dad a son of a bitch again.

Rick is waiting for him to say _something_ , though. He’s checking his Python, rubbing his thumb over the barrel and flipping the chamber in and out of its slot. He’s not looking at him, which helps.

‘Merle’s doin’ a’right, right?’ Daryl murmurs, a little cautious. He’s staring at the cop, trying to catch every expression, no matter how fleeting.

Rick nods. ‘Yeah. He seems… good. Like good people. I mean, he’s crude and rude and loud, but… he’s good to have around. Abraham likes him. Glenn…’ A small smile lifts one of the corners of his mouth, ‘well, he likes him for how happy you are to have him around.’

Daryl bites on his lip. ‘He don’t like him?’

‘I don’t think they’ve spend any time together, to be honest. Rosita thinks he’s okay, Eugene is a little scared of him, but,’ Rick waves a vague hand. ‘Tara calls him an asshole but she still likes him.’

‘But not Glenn, Maggie, everyone else. You.’

Rick rubs at his forehead, ‘we knew Will. It’s… Merle looks like him, talks like him. We’re just… worried that he… you know.’

Daryl draws his knees to his chest, letting his boots rest on the cushion of the couch. He loops his arms around his knees, hiding behind them. ‘Merle weren’t like that though. If I messed up, he’d just lock me in my room for a bit. You know, like Shane used to do at the prison. He’d yell, but that’s just… that don’t matter.’

Rick looks up. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Was he around when Will would do those things?’

Daryl frowns and plucks at the hole in his jeans. ‘No. I mean – I don’t think so. Merle’s loud. Dad wouldn’t mind me much if Merle were there. Had other things to get mad about. And Merle could get him cigarettes and beer and stuff. Sometimes he’d send me if Merle weren’t there and the people at the shop wouldn’t give it to me so... he’d get mad. Would teach me not to waste his time like that, makin’ him wait on nothing.’

Rick grits his teeth. ‘Right,’ he says, pushing the python back into the holster and raking shaking fingers through his curls.

‘Weren’t so bad when Merle was there.’

‘Do you think he knew? Merle?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Maybe you should talk to him about it.’

‘Why? Won’t change nothing.’

‘It might make him understand why we’re so,’ Rick waves his hand again. ‘Why we weren’t too keen to see another Dixon, especially one who walks and talks like Will. It might make him understand _you_ better. He’s going to find out. If he’s staying, he’s going to find out one day, Dare,’

‘He’s staying,’ Daryl says immediately.

Rick nods. ‘Okay. Then he’s going to find out.’

Daryl grunts, scratching at his skin through the hole in his jeans. ‘He won’t care.’

‘I think you know that that’s not true.’ Rick ducks his head a little to catch the boy’s eye, ‘you can say what you want about Merle Dixon, but he loves his brother. Nobody is denying that.’

Daryl flashes the cop a shy mile.

‘Maybe it would be better if you told him, instead of him finding it out some other way.’

Daryl freezes. ‘You ain’t gonna tell him, right?’

‘No,’ Rick says immediately. ‘That’s your decision. But he is going to find out, Dare. Sooner or later.’

The teenager looks out of the window. ‘Later, then,’ he mutters. ‘Can we go now?’

The cop snorts and gets to his feet. ‘ _Rick, thank you for the talk but I’m tired of all the social niceties now so get out of my space_ ,’ he say while trying to imitate the infamous Dixon drawl. ‘Of course, Dare. Let’s head back.’

‘We can talk,’ Daryl pins the cop in place with a sharp look, ‘about why you were so pissed we didn’t find any mints for Michonne.’

Rick scratches at his jaw, ‘or we can just go back to Alexandria in silence.’

‘I could just ask Carl’s opinion on the matter.’

The cop cocks his head to the side. ‘Is this blackmail?’

‘I don’t know, is it?’

Rick looks pained for a second.

‘It is,’ Daryl breathes. ‘ _It is_!’ He laughs, letting his feet fall to the floor so he’s no longer hiding behind his knees. ‘Good lord, I was only jokin’ but… _since when_?’

‘Never!’

Daryl cackles and rolls onto his side, clutching his backpack and pressing his face into the rough fabric to smother his giggles. ‘Liar!’

‘Dare, no, I’m – stop. She’s stealing our toothpaste and I just – you know how she is about her teeth. I just wanted to thank her for being there for Carl and-‘

Daryl peeks at Rick through his bangs. ‘Might be a Dixon, but I ain’t stupid.’

‘I’m serious, Dare.’

‘Fine,’ the teenager pushes himself upright again. He tightens the laces on his boots before getting up and hoisting the backpack onto his shoulders again. ‘It’s a good gift, anyway. For Michonne? She likes mints.’

Rick gives him a warning look.

‘Just sayin’,’ Daryl mutters as he ducks his head a little.

‘There’s nothing going on between me and Michonne, Dare.’

Daryl knows it’s true because Carl hasn’t told him about it, which means he doesn’t know, which means there’s nothing going on. Rick wouldn’t keep it from his son and Michonne wouldn’t be able to hide it either. Still…

‘But ya wish there was, right?’

He yelps when Rick grabs his shoulder and yanks him close. For a second, there’s fear spiking in his system but then he feels knuckles rubbing over his scalp. There’s pain but more laughter as he grabs Rick around the waist to throw him onto the couch. He throws his backpack onto the floor again and pounces on the laughing cop.

 

 

 


	66. Calls himself Jesus

 

* * *

 

 

 

Tara had been the first one to move out after everything calmed down again. She now lives with Denise in the house that functions as the infirmary. It’s no secret that they’re not just friends. It can’t be because Tara won’t stop smiling and Denise blushes but still takes her hand when they walk down the street together.

Daryl likes Denise. She’s always nice to him even though she’s sometimes unsure of how to address a teenager, especially a Dixon teenager. A single glare will send her scurrying away again, not yet used to Daryl’s moods or the coldness he can conjure into his blue eyes. It’s worse now, because Daryl has a new shadow looming behind him with a quicker and far sharper tongue. The mere mention of Merle has most Alexandrians on edge, though some are prepared to hide it.

Daryl can’t really blame them. He, too, is never sure what’s going to come out of Merle’s mouth next.

This time, he hasn’t brought his shadow, however.

The sun is rising over the wall, bathing the small town in a golden light. Shadows grow around him as he slowly walks through the streets, heading back home. There’s a note in his hands, a list of things they need to look for when they’re out there. Denise made it so it mostly consists of medical supplies Daryl doesn’t recognize the names of. He hopes that Rick will know what they are and where they can find some.

There are other things on the list, too. Clothes, boots, books for the children.

Daryl frowns and gnaws on his thumb as he tries to decipher all the words. Without having to think about it, he makes a sharp right turn and heads towards the pantry. He’d gotten the list from a sleepy looking Tara at her home. Denise had left it on the counter for him before she went to get their rations.

‘Yo, Denise!’ he cuts through a garden when he spots her. ‘The thing at the bottom right here,’ he says as he holds the note out to her, ‘you’re talkin’ about the drink, right?’

‘Good morning, Daryl,’ she says, ‘and I am, but,’ she shrugs and doesn’t continue.

‘Sorry,’ the teenager mutters. ‘G’morning. It’s not medical.’

‘No, I drew a line between the important stuff and that,’ the woman says as she points out the line on the paper. ‘I just figured, if you saw it.’

‘A’right.’

‘Anything remotely medical is a priority!’

Daryl rubs at his nose and glances up at her, ‘yeah, I wouldn’t know about all that. That’s Rick’s job. I can search for a drink.’

‘You can look for food first! Food might be a higher priority than medicine right now. And gas or batteries or books for the kids or clothes. It’s just, if you see it, if it just happens to, you know, be _right there_.’

‘You like it, right?’ Daryl shrugs because he searches for stuff people like all the time. And everyone knows to keep an eye out for comics or chocolate bars for the youngest Dixon.

‘No,’ Denise says to his surprise, ‘I don’t drink pop.’

‘What the hell’s pop?’

‘Oh, I’m originally from Ohio,’ she says as she jabs her thumb into a random direction.

That doesn’t explain anything to Daryl so he just blinks and kicks his boots together. ‘Why do ya want it?’

Denise hesitates for a second. Then she steps closer to him. ‘Tara was talking about it in her sleep, I think.’

Daryl slowly takes a step backwards, reclaiming his space. His hands reach up to grab hold of the strap of his backpack and he turns his shoulder slightly towards her, shielding himself. He likes her, but she’s not Maggie or Beth or Carol.

‘So either she likes it or she doesn’t, but if she likes it, it’d be a really nice surprise,’ Denise continues and nods to herself. ‘I’m not good with that kind of stuff,’ she tells the teenager. ‘And she and Heath are going on that two-week run. I just thought it’d be a nice going-away present. Just, uh,’ she suddenly seems embarrassed and waves her hands, ‘don’t go out of your way. And, uh, if it gives you any trouble…’

Daryl mimics her nervous fluttering with her hands. ‘I won’t.’

‘Okay, good, ‘cause it’s not important. I should’ve said so instead of just drawing a line. Do you understand the rest of the things on there?’

‘No, but that’s Rick’s problem,’ Daryl mutters as he slinks away. He throws her a cheeky grin over his shoulder, ‘I’m gonna be lookin’ for some pop!’

 

 

‘Rick is driving.’

‘But I can do it.’

‘Rick is driving,’ Maggie repeats.

‘ _But I can do it_ ,’ Daryl nags. ‘Merle says it’s just like with my bike. That it’s _easier_ with a car even!’

The woman glares at him. ‘ _Rick is driving_ , end of. If you keep whining like this, you’re not going out at all.’

‘I’m not whining,’ the teenager protests, ‘I’m just _saying_ that-‘

‘Monster, shut the fuck up about it and let the pig drive. Good lord. You should be thankful she’s not tannin’ your hide right now for bein’ such a little shit today. Cut it out.’

Both Daryl and Maggie turn to look up at the gate. Merle is sitting on the platform, legs dangling off the wall as he keeps guard. There’s an automatic rifle slung over his broad shoulder and a dangerous smirk on his face. Even from this distance, Maggie can see that blue eyes narrow in warning.

‘Need me to come down and show ya good?’ the man asks the boy.

‘No,’ Daryl says promptly.

‘Didn’t think so,’ Merle grunts as he turns back to the rest of the world.

Maggie takes a step towards the platform, staring up at the oldest Dixon with narrowed eyes. ‘Say something like that again and you’ll be sorry,’ she says. ‘Threaten him again,’ she says when Merle turns back with a surprised look that quickly morphs into anger, ‘and I’ll make you regret it.’

‘What the hell, sugar-tits?’ the oldest Dixon asks as he leans on the balustrade.

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘I’ll call you whatever the hell I want, doll-face. This ain’t nothin’ to you, I was just teachin’ my blood a lesson.’

Maggie glares up at him. ‘Like Will used to do?’

‘Yeah,’ Merle nods, mouth now just a thin line as he glares right back. ‘Because I hate to break it to you, Pixie, but this Sesame street bullshit ya got goin’ on? It got nothing on _blood_. He’s mine. But if you have a problem with that, I can come down there. Face to face, ya know? Makes it easier to,’ he smirks, ‘ _talk_.’

‘Stop!’ Daryl hisses at them both. ‘Just fuckin’ _stop_.’

‘You’re just like your father,’ Maggie snarls at the older Dixon.

Merle lifts an eyebrow. ‘I should fuckin’ hope so. Might have been a redneck asshole in your eyes, but he was a good man. He got Daryl all the way to that prison, got him out of that Woodbury hellhole y’all send him into. He loved that kid and if you think I’m any different, you’re more stupid than ya look.’

 _‘Don’t,’_ Daryl pleads when the woman opens her mouth. Shock and outrage is written all over her face. ‘ _Cut it out, Merle_!’

‘Stop bein’ such a little bitch, Darlina,’ his brother snaps as he jumps down from the platform, landing with a grunt before sauntering over to Maggie. ‘Little miss sunshine here seems to have a problem with our daddy and you’re just gonna let it slide? Pssh,’ he grins at the woman, getting into her personal space, far too close, their noses almost touching, ‘not me.’

Maggie lifts an eyebrow, ‘your daddy was a worthless piece of shit.’

Rage flashes over Merle’s features. Before he can do anything, Daryl knocks him back, shoving him away from his friend and putting himself between them. ‘Stop. _Don’t_.’

‘Are you going to hurt me, Merle?’ Maggie asks as her hand finds the knife on his belt, ‘because that’s what your daddy did. Oh, Dare didn’t tell you about that part of Woodbury? About your daddy’s little torture chamber where he set the Governor on us? Where he beat Glenn? Tortured him? Dare didn’t tell you about that?’

Merle frowns and his gaze flickers to his little brother.

‘He was sorry!’ Daryl protests, turning to his friend but Maggie just sneers at him.

‘ _Sorry_? He wasn’t sorry, Dare. You know he wasn’t. Next you’re going to say he didn’t mean to throw a walker at Glenn.’

‘He didn’t know you were my friends!’

‘That shouldn’t matter, Dare! He did it because he could and wanted to!’

A car rolls to a stop beside them, startling the boy a little but causing Merle to lean back on his heels and cross his arms in front of his chest. There’s a nasty scowl on his face when the door opens and Rick steps out quickly.

‘What’s going on?’ he demands.

Maggie hesitates for a beat. ‘We’re just discussing what a piece of shit Will was.’

Rick straightens and rolls his shoulders back. ‘Dare,’ he says softly, ‘get in the car.’

‘No,’ the boy says stubbornly.

The cop glances at him before stepping closer to Merle and Maggie. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here –‘

‘Ain’t none of your business neither,’ Merle snaps before Rick continues.

‘- but this ends now,’ Rick looks at Maggie. ‘That’s his dad you’re talking about. We know what he was, and you know that Daryl misses him. Don’t do this. Don’t talk about Will like that when he’s around.’

‘Don’t talk about him, ever again,’ Merle inserts with a glare.

Maggie glares back at him, ‘don’t you start. I’m serious, you say something like that to him again-‘

‘Girl, I didn’t say shit!’

‘ _Enough_ ,’ Rick snaps.

Daryl shivers and takes a step back, away from him. It’s an unconscious move. He only realize he’s done it when Maggie looks at him with concern and Rick relaxes his body language after a glance his way.

Merle tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes, blue eyes fixed on his little brother.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be on guard duty?’ Rick asks the older Dixon.

To Daryl’s surprise, Merle only gives him a nasty sneer before climbing back onto the platform, turning his back on all of them.

‘We’ll talk later,’ the cop tells Maggie. ‘You should know better than let a Dixon rile you up.’

‘He was threatening to teach Dare-‘

‘He wouldn’t have!’ Daryl snarls, ‘he’s always sayin’ that but he ain’t – just stay out of our business!’

‘He was the one sticking his nose in while we were having a conversation!’ Maggie objects.

Daryl scoffs and moves to the passenger side of the car, yanking the door open. ‘He’s my blood. He doesn’t need a reason to stick his nose in.’ He falls into the seat and doesn’t look at Maggie anymore, staring at the gate instead.

After a minute, Rick slides in beside him, closing his door with a bang. He sighs heavily before looking over at the teenager. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Talk or ride?’

‘Ride,’ Daryl mutters as he puts boots on the dashboard, ‘I aint got nothing to say.’

‘Okay,’ Rick twists the key and lets the car roll towards the gate slowly. When they get there, Eugene opens it up before leaning against Daryl’s side of the car, waiting for the boy to lower his window.

‘I mapped out some of the agricultural supply places in the area,’ the man says while he passes a piece of paper to the teenager. ‘Even if they’ve been cleaned out, my bet is that the sorghum would be untouched.’

Daryl frowns and passes the paper to Rick. He doesn’t know what sorghum is and glances at Eugene for an explanation.

‘That’s a criminally underrated grain,’ the fake scientist says. ‘It could change the game with our food situation from scary to hunky-dunky’

Daryl bites his lip to keep from grinning at the expression.

Eugene looks very serious as he nods. When neither the boy nor the cop says anything, he continuous; ‘I’m talking sustainability, drought tolerance, grain to stover ratio that is the envy of all corns. Think about it,’ he adds when Daryl just blinks up at him.

Rick drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

‘Thanks,’ the teenager says softly, always a little unsure of what to say.

‘All right,’ Eugene says as he steps back from the car. ‘Okay.’

Rick eases the car out of the gate, maneuvering it past their walker traps with practiced ease. The window rolls up again.

‘I never know what the fuck he’s talkin’ about,’ Daryl says with a frown. ‘What the hell is sorgem?’

‘Sorghum,’ Rick corrects with a soft laugh. ‘It’s some type of grain. And apparently, it’s criminally underrated.’

‘’s what ya get for havin’ a stupid ass name.’

‘Don’t insult the grain that’s gonna make our food situation hunky dunky, Dare.’

The boy glances over at Rick, who is biting back a smile. He laughs. ‘Fuckin’ fine.’

Rick shifts in his seat, long fingers curling and uncurling around the leather of the steering wheel. ‘Today is the day,’ he says confidently. ‘We’re gonna find food, maybe some people. The law of averages has gotta catch up.’

‘I don’t know,’ Daryl mutters as he stares out of the window. ‘Aaron and Sasha say they haven’t seen anyone for weeks. Maybe we ain’t gonna find nobody. Maybe that’s a good thing.’

Rick glances at the sulking teenager next to him. Slowly, he reaches for one of the cd’s, pushing it into the player.

Daryl follows the movement out of the corner of his eye. ‘Don’t,’ he begs, ‘don’t. Please don’t.’

 _Give me the downbeat maestro_!

The cop lifts his right hand and starts to snap along. ‘Draws ‘em away from home,’ he shouts over the music.

 _I wanna lay it on the line_.

Daryl glances at the man, a smile tugging at his lips. ‘ _’cause everything I do, I wanna do it in double time_!’ he shouts with the music, drumming the beat on his knees just to make Rick roar with laughter.

 

 

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ Daryl twists in his seat to look over his shoulder while Rick hits the breaks. ‘Back it up!’

Rick slings his arm around Daryl’s headrest and backs the car up until they hit the last intersection.

‘Ain’t that how you spell that bullshit weed?’

‘Grain,’ Rick corrects, ruffling the boy’s hair as he puts his hand back on the steering wheel. ‘Sharp eye, man. Let’s go check it out.’

It’s just a small warehouse on one of the side streets but sorghum is printed on both the roof and the metal garage door. There are no signs of looting; all the windows are intact and the doors are still locked. A couple of walkers are roaming the fields, but they’re too far away to even hear the car roll up to the warehouse.

Rick gets out first, looking around for a second before motioning that Daryl can get out too. The boy slinks over to the garage door, kneeling down beside it and getting his bolt cutters out of his backpack.

The cop side-steps towards the corner of the building, looking down the side before moving towards another door.

‘Hey, hold up,’ Daryl calls out. ‘It’s best to be safe, right?’ He thinks about the last time he’d opened garage doors like this. Then it had been Aaron kneeling beside to lock and almost getting bit due to the Wolves’ trap. ‘You cover it?’

Rick takes his spot behind Daryl’s right shoulder, gun raised. He steps past the boy as soon as the door rattles open, revealing a dark garage. There’s a truck parked in the middle of it. ‘Yeah, we’re good,’ the cop says as he checks the sides for walkers. ‘One more time?’ he asks with a nod at the truck.

‘It ain’t locked,’ Daryl mutters. He waits until Rick is behind him again before pushing the door up. ‘Holy shit!’

The back of the truck is filled with food. Cans, bottles, piles and piles of it.

‘Well, how about that,’ Rick laughs. ‘Law of averages.’

Daryl jumps into the truck, eagerly rooting through the stuff.

‘We’ll find your chocolate later,’ Rick smirks. ‘Come on, let’s get this thing going, grab our gear, come back for the car later.’

‘I can drive it back.’

‘And set Maggie on me?’ the cop shakes his head. ‘We’ll come back later. Let’s stick together. We’ll take another way back, see what we can see.’

Daryl doesn’t think it’s worth the argument so he just grabs hold of the latch to close the back again. ‘Think it’ll start?’

‘Yeah, I do. And if it doesn’t, you can fix it,’ Rick clasps his shoulder for a second, squeezing tightly.

 

 

The truck does start.

On the way back, they come across a small gas station. It looks pretty wrecked but Rick stops anyway. It’s only midday and they still have plenty of time to get back to Alexandria before dark. Daryl doesn’t mind the pit stop. He likes rooting through shops, trying to find stuff that he can bring back for the various members of his family.

They all have small requests for whenever he goes digging through the old world’s buildings. Candy and chocolate, but also CD’s from specific people, books and other random stuff. He has a list in his back pocket, one he always keeps on him because he’s bad at remembering the names of the titles of the books and he can’t always remember who Beth’s favorite artists are.

The gas station doesn’t look very promising but that’s okay.

Daryl tries to open the doors but they’re locked. He peeks inside, hands against the dirty window. The shelves have been toppled over. He’s walking towards the side of the building in order to find another way in when he comes across a vending machine.

It’s on its side and he can’t see whether it’s still stocked.

‘Yo,’ he calls out to Rick while banging on the side of the machine. ‘Give me a hand with this. Let’s flip it over.’

They both take one corner and push. It rocks back but won’t topple. It crashes back onto the floor.

‘I don’t think we got it,’ Rick states unnecessarily.

Daryl wipes the sweat from his brow and looks around. He spots a couple of rusty chains on the side of the building. ‘I got an idea,’ he mutters as he grabs them. It takes some wriggling to get them around the machine but he manages to hook them on tight before attaching them to the truck.

Rick drives forward until the machine topples over. A sharp whistle from the teenager causes him to stop and get out again.

‘It’s soda and candy,’ he says with a frown. ‘Why the trouble?’

Daryl beams when he sees the soda cans. Orange, so probably the right flavor. ‘Weren’t any trouble,’ the boy grins happily, eagerly moving forward to remove the chains so he can break the glass.

Running footsteps and then someone smashes into Rick, forcing the cop into the machine.

Daryl draws his gun as the person whirls away from the cop, taking a couple of stumbling steps backwards, away from them.

It’s a guy. He raises his hands immediately in surrender.

Rick barely needs a second to recover before he’s drawing his python and stepping up next to Daryl, both of their guns aimed at the guy’s head.

Eyebrows rise for a second. The man seems to be smiling. Daryl can’t be sure because the lower part of his face is covered by a white bandana. Long brown hair frames his face, covered by a dark beanie. He wears a trench coat, heavy boots, dark brown jeans. Two belts crisscross at his waist.

He cocks his head a little to the side. ‘Hi.’

‘ _Back up!_ ’ Daryl shouts. The sudden appearance of the stranger has his adrenaline spiking.

‘Keep ‘em up!’ Rick warns.

‘Whoa,’ the guy says, ‘easy guys. I was just running from the dead.’

‘How many?’ Daryl demands to know while Rick slowly backs up to check the alley.

‘Ten, maybe more. I’m not risking it. Once it gets to double digits, I start running.’ The man’s voice is muffled by the bandana but he sounds younger than Rick, closer to Glenn or Tara’s age. It’s hard to tell with half of his face covered.

‘Where?’

‘About half a mile back. They’re headed this way,’ he warns. ‘You probably have about eleven minutes.’

Daryl stares at the guy.

He’s staring right back.

His eyes are blue, Daryl thinks, a little surprised. The hold on his gun relaxes for a fraction before he catches himself. His fingers go white in the metal as he grits his teeth. He’s not sure what to do now but he can’t risk taking his eyes off of the man to glance at Rick for directions.

He relaxes when Rick slowly lowers his gun. ‘Okay, thanks for letting us know.’

The man nods, ‘yeah, there’s more of them than us, right? Gotta stick together,’ he tells Rick before he glances at Daryl again. He tilts his head to the side and wriggles his gloved fingers, ‘ _right_?’

A beat of silence.

‘Dare,’ Rick says softly.

Daryl blinks. He’s still holding the gun up. He lowers it quickly, taking a step back so he’s closer to Rick than the guy. A blush starts to creep up his neck.

‘You have a camp?’ the man asks as he drops his hands and turns back to Rick.

‘No. Do you?’

‘No. Sorry for running into you. I’m gonna go now.’ He starts to walk away. ‘If this is the next world, I hope it’s good for you guys.’

Daryl looks back at Rick with a frown. ‘The hell?’ he mutters.

‘I’m Rick,’ the cop calls out, ignoring the teenager. ‘This is Daryl. What’s your name?’

The man stops running. He waits a moment before turning around and tucking his bandana down. He has a beard and kind smile.

Daryl’s gaze travels over his body, from the army boots to the narrow hips, lean chest and sharp eyes. Nobody in the new world has a fashion sense anymore but he can’t help but think that the older guy looks… _cool_.

‘Paul Rovia,’ he says, spreading his arm and smiling, ‘but my friends used to call me Jesus. Your pick.’

‘You said you didn’t have a camp,’ Rick calls out. ‘You on your own?’

‘Yeah. But still,’ the smile fades into something a little darker, ‘best not to try anything.’

‘Best not to make threats you can’t keep, either,’ Daryl says, a little mesmerized.

‘Exactly,’ Paul smirks as he starts to walk backwards again. After a couple of steps he turns and starts to run.

‘How many walkers-‘

‘No,’ Daryl interrupts, ‘not this guy!’

‘How many walkers have you killed?’ Rick shouts.

‘Sorry,’ Paul shouts back, ‘gotta run! You should, too! I think you’ve got about seven minutes!’

Daryl stares at the last point he’d seen the man before he shakes himself out of it, turning back to Rick. ‘What the hell was that?’ he growls.

Rick is frowning and lowers his voice a little. ‘He was clean. His beard, it was trimmed. There’s more going on here.’

‘He didn’t have a gun, either.’

‘We could track him, watch him for a while,’ Rick proposes. ‘Get to know more, see if he’s really alone. Maybe bring him back.’

Daryl shakes his head. ‘Nah, guy calls himself _Jesus_.’

The sound of gunshots startles them out of their discussion. It seems to come from the other side of the gas station. Daryl raises his gun immediately and moves so he can ghost in Rick’s footsteps. The cop slowly makes his way to the side of the building, glancing over his shoulder once to check whether the boy is in the right position. He is. They’ve done this hundreds of times already. Usually only to bust open a front door, but that doesn’t matter.

Daryl covers Rick while Rick takes point.

When they reach the end and Rick peeks around the corner, the cop’s shoulders slump. ‘Firecrackers,’ he says, stepping aside so Daryl can see the barrel and the smoke. ‘Shit.’

It all reminds Daryl…

‘He swiped your keys, didn’t he?’ he asks.

Rick reaches for his back pocket, ‘ _shit_!’

They run back to the truck.

And arrive just in time to see how Paul throws Daryl’s pack out of the window and drives off.

 

 

They run for miles and miles until they come across the vending machine. Daryl reaches it first, slamming his hands down on the glass and breathing hard. He’s not sure why the thing got left behind. Maybe the rusty chains had broken.

He throws the backpack on the ground to search for his crowbar.

Rick comes to a stop next to him. He’s completely drenched in sweat and wheezing slightly, doubling over to catch his breath.

Daryl’s smile is a bit smug when he straightens. His breathing has already evened out again, his heartbeat returning to normal. The dark hair is slick with sweat, but that’s nothing new. ‘Old timer,’ he teases when he finds the crowbar and smashes the window in.

Rick gives him a half-hearted glare.

There’s not much left inside the machine. Some chips and pretzels, but also the cans of soda Denise had asked for. He stuffs them into his backpack, feeling rather pleased with himself. ‘This was a special request from the doctor,’ Daryl tells the cop. ‘Asked me for it. Calls it _pop_.’

‘Hey, whatever she wants,’ Rick says with a huff of laughter.

One of the cans has a tear in it. Daryl tilts his head back and lets the soda gush into his mouth. He passes it to his friend when he feels like he’s drank half of it.

‘She saved Carl’s life. We didn’t know her and she turned out to be all right. If there’s still people out there, and they’re still people?’ Rick takes a drink and then passes the drink back to the boy. ‘We should bring ‘em in.’

Daryl wrinkles his nose and empties the can. He throws his backpack on again. ‘What, like this guy?’

‘No,’ Rick shakes his head and scowls at the empty road in front of them. ‘Fuck this guy. You good to go a bit longer?’

‘I weren’t dyin’ two seconds ago, old timer,’ Daryl grins as he leans back into the machine, grabbing something from the bottom. ‘And we still got a trail. Let’s go.’

‘Lead the way then,’ Rick laughs as he starts to run.

Daryl easily overtakes him, racing ahead.

 

 

They creep through the woods. It’s a good thing that Daryl had taught Rick how to walk quietly because Paul is walking around the truck, inspecting the tires. He has just replaced one of them which had taken so long that Daryl and Rick actually caught up with him.

Daryl follows Rick’s silent directions and creeps towards the front of the truck. He can hear how Paul throws something into the back and then closes it again.

Next there’s silence.

And then a couple of grunts as Rick pounces on the guy.

‘Hold still and _maybe_ we won’t hurt you,’ the cop growls.

Daryl can’t see him. He’s still rounding the truck, knowing that Rick deliberately send him around the front so he wouldn’t come across Paul first. With a curse, he runs towards the back.

‘Sure thing,’ Paul says.

And then there are more grunts, the sound of elbows hitting a stomach, Rick crying out.

Daryl slips around the corner and sees Paul heading his way. He tries to take a swing at the older guy, but the man dodges it easily, grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing the boy against the truck.

Daryl grunts as his back and head collide with the metal. Pain flares, causing bile to rise in his stomach. He groans and pushes himself away from the vehicle, ready to take another swing, but Rick beats him to it. The cop tackles Paul, shoving him into the ditch.

They both draw their guns.

‘ _This is done_ ,’ Rick snarls.

A walker comes stumbling out of the bushes to their left.

Paul sighs and works himself up to his elbows, looking more exasperated than scared. He’s on his back staring up at them, legs between Rick and Daryl. The trench coat has shifted a bit, falling off one shoulder. Daryl can see a tiny sliver of bare skin, just a hint of his shoulder and chest. The padded vest Paul wears doesn’t have any sleeves.

Daryl changes the grip on his gun. His gaze shifts from the promise of bare skin back to Paul’s eyes.

Paul, who is watching him.

Daryl scowls.

‘Do you even have any ammo?’

Both Rick and Daryl take aim and fire. The walker goes down and Daryl likes to think that it was his bullet that hit the skull first.

‘Okay,’ Paul breathes. ‘You gonna shoot me over a truck?’

‘There’s a lot of food on that truck,’ Rick says through gritted teeth. ‘The keys. _Now_.’

‘I think you know I’m not a bad guy.’

‘Yeah? What do you know about us?’ the cop challenges. ‘Give me the keys.’ He cocks his gun. ‘This is the last time I’m asking.’

Paul sighs and falls back into the grass, ‘they’re still in the truck.’

After a nod, Daryl slinks away to check, putting his gun back into his holster. The keys are still in the ignition. He takes them out just to be sure and passes them to Rick. ‘Prick was right.’

He finds Rick some rope to tie Paul up by the side of the road and then inspects his backpack. The cans have exploded inside his backpack. It must have happened when Paul threw him against the side of the truck. ‘Damn it,’ he mutters.

‘You’re gonna leave me here like this?’ Paul asks with raised eyebrows. It causes his forehead to wrinkle. ‘You’re really gonna do that?’

‘The knots aren’t that tight,’ Rick tells him. ‘You should be able to get free after we’re long gone.’

‘Maybe we should talk now!’ Paul tries when Rick gets up and moves away.

‘Nah,’ Daryl answers when the cop doesn’t even respond. ‘You’re lucky there’s one left, or I’d have stomped your ass.’ He holds the only whole can of soda up and shakes one that’s broken.

‘Sweet tooth?’ the man asks with a small smile. ‘How old are you?’

‘Probably fifteen by now,’ Daryl says but he can feel his ears burn when the man’s smile widens. ‘And it ain’t for me. Someone asked me…’

A low whistle cuts through the air. Rick, giving the _move out_ signal Daryl had taught him years ago.

Daryl cringes, shakes the broken can one more time before throwing it down near Paul’s booted feet. ‘Here, in case ya get thirsty. Gotta go.’ He hurries to the passenger’s side and jumps in.

Rick is twirling the keys around a finger. He lifts an eyebrow. ‘What are you making conversation for?’

‘Weren’t.’ Daryl carefully places the last can of orange crush in the holder between them. ‘’s for Denise,’ he smiles. ‘Or Tara actually, but Denise is gonna give it to her, so…’s a present.’

Rick smiles as he puts the key in the ignition, ‘that’s why you wanted that vending machine so bad.’

‘Yeah. She helped Carl, right?’

‘She did. And you’re a good man, Dare,’ Rick grins.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl puts his boots on the dashboard and sticks his middle finger out of the window. ‘So long, ya prick!’

 

 

They’ve found a CD with country songs and Daryl is very happy. He’s slouching in his seat, not really paying attention to where they’re going, and licking the chocolate from his fingers. It feels like a victory meal.

‘Still worked out,’ Rick says over the music. ‘Today still is the day.’

Daryl hums along to the music. Chocolate is melting on his tongue as he breaks more pieces off so he can share with the cop. His mind drifts back to Paul.

Paul who had set off firecrackers in a trashcan before stealing Rick’s keys and getting the timing just right so he could get away with the damn truck. No matter how much Daryl hates him for trying, he’s still more than a little bit impressed by how smoothly the guy had stolen their shit.

Paul who’d been so covered up in his trench coat, beanie, gloves, vest, pants and shirt, that Daryl’s mouth had gone a little dry when he saw that pale sliver of a bare shoulder.

The teenager frowns and licks at his fingers. He can’t quite shake the blush he’s been sporting since he first saw Paul outside of the gas station, when his gaze had  lingered on those slim hips and that lean chest. Or since he’d noticed that they’re about the same height, a little smaller than Rick, and that if he’d lean in he could…

He glances at Rick, eyes wide and heart in his throat.

The cop is drumming along to the music, eyes glued to the road in front of them.

The boy slouches a little more in his seat, trying to disappear.

That causes Rick to glance at him. One corner of his mouth quirks up. ‘What? What did you do?’ he asks with a laugh.

‘Didn’t do nothin’.’

‘Well, you look guilty about something. Did you eat all of the chocolate already?’

‘No, here,’ Daryl holds a piece out and Rick takes it with a satisfied hum. He looks out of the window again, gazes at the trees that flash by and become just another green haze. There’s a nervous tingling in his spine, his fingertips, it flares when he thinks about Paul.

He tries not to.

The guy was an asshole, anyway, for trying to steal their stuff and throwing him against the truck. His backpack is a sticky mess thanks to him.

‘Hey, look at that.’

Daryl glances over his knees. ‘Yeah. A barn.’ He puts his feet down so he can lean forward to have a better look. Just as he sucks the last bits of melted chocolate off his fingers, he hears a strange noise. It seems to come from above them. ‘You hear that?’ he asks while he turns the music down. ‘I think that son of a bitch is on the roof!’

Rick glances at him, ‘hold on.’ He slams on the brakes when Daryl puts his hands on the dashboard to brace himself.

The truck stops abruptly.

There’s a flurry of limbs, clothes. A dull thud.

It really is Paul who gets catapulted off the roof, down the windshield and into the grass in front of the truck. Daryl can only stare as he pops up again. The teenager slowly turns towards Rick, an amazed smile starting to form on his face. It fades instantly when he sees Rick’s murderous look.

Apparently Paul saw that too because he’s gone in a flash, running through the field.

Rick chases him with the truck. When they get close, Daryl opens the door, ‘I’ll get him,’ he says before jumping out and running after the man in the trench coat. He can vaguely hear Rick calling his name but he ignores it in favor of trying to keep up with Paul, who is surprisingly fast and agile.

They chase each other around and around.

Rick tries to help but eventually just parks the truck. A couple of walkers have gotten free from some tractor and now head over to them. Daryl shouts that he’ll take care of Paul so Rick can focus on taking the walkers down.

It’s not that easy to get a hold of Paul, however.

Daryl curses when the man runs in a circle only to end up back at the truck. He dives into the driver’s seat, trying to close the door but Daryl grabs hold of it before he can. ‘Come here!’ the boy growls as he jumps on top of the man, trying to drag him back out of the cabin.

There’s a lot of tugging, pushing and shoving.

And then a horrible moment of stillness.

Paul has stolen Daryl’s gun during the fight. And he’s aiming it right at his face.

‘Duck,’ he says.

Daryl ducks.

The bullet whizzes over his head. Something falls into the grass behind him. When Daryl turns to look, he sees a walker with a blown-out brain. It must have been pretty close to him. Due to all the chaos, he hadn’t even heard it approach.

‘Thanks,’ the teenager breathes before darting forward and punching the man in the jaw. ‘That’s _my_ gun!’ He grabs the weapon and then tries to drag Paul out of the truck again. In the struggle, one of them must have hit something because suddenly the vehicle starts to roll back.

Right towards the lake.

‘Oh, whoa!’ Paul shouts while Daryl scrambles to get out of the car.

There are hands on his hips and back, pushing him towards the door. It takes him a second, but Daryl leaps into the grass, rolling away so he won’t get crushed by the big tires. He looks up just in time to see Paul tumble out as well. The other man is not so lucky, however. The door hits his head and he falls into the grass, unconscious.

‘Daryl!’ Rick shouts as he watches how the truck rolls into the water and starts to sink. ‘Daryl! _Dare_!’

There’s a hint of hysteria clinging to the word.

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl shouts back, sitting up and checking his gun. With a grunt, he gets up and stalks over to where Paul is lying in the grass. He kicks his shoulder, rolling him onto his back. For a moment, he just stares at the slack face of the older man. He thinks he might have been right; he’s probably just as old as Glenn is.

Rick comes running over, barrels into his back, arms wrapping around the boy’s shoulders, hand folding over his heart as he draws him into his chest. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl murmur as he brings his hands up to hold onto Rick’s forearm, leaning into him for a moment. ‘Law of averages.’ He scoffs. ‘That’s _bullshit_ , man. Let’s go check them cars, get the hell out of here.’

‘What about the guy?’

‘What about him?’ Daryl shrugs as he slips out of his friend’s embrace.

‘Well, he helped you.’

The teenager scoffs again. ‘Maybe.’

Rick sighs, ‘he ever pull a weapon on you?’

‘Like twenty seconds ago! My own!’

‘ _Dare_ …’

‘Fine,’ the teenager scowls at his boots and then glares at the man on the ground. ‘Let’s put his trickster ass up in a tree.’

Rick bites his lips for a second and rubs at the back of his neck. He seems to be hiding a grin. ‘Yeah… we’re not putting him up in a tree, Dare.’

 

 

Daryl sits on the backseat with Paul, who is still unconscious. They’ve bound his hands and feet together again, but that didn’t work last time so Daryl offered to keep an eye on the man while Rick drives.

So that’s what Daryl is doing. He’s keeping an eye on the man. He’s _not_ staring.

The beard looks coarse, just like Rick’s always does. There are a couple of streaks of blond between the brown. It’s not bushy enough to hide pale lips. Daryl sneaks peeks out of the corner of his eye. He knows that Rick can see them through the rearview mirror and doesn’t want to be caught staring.

The car suddenly swerves a little and Paul’s body sags against Daryl, his head almost lolling onto the teenager’s shoulder.

Daryl quickly shoves him back into his own seat before glaring at Rick. But Rick is looking at his side mirror, checking the empty road behind them. He probably swerved to avoid some branches or a pothole.

‘He took a pretty hard hit,’ the cop says. ‘Denise needs to look him over.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You wouldn’t have gone through with it. You wouldn’t have left him.’

‘I would’ve,’ Daryl objects. ‘Maybe not in a tree ‘cause his ass is so heavy. Maybe locked him in a car, ya know. But I would’ve.’

‘No. I know,’ Rick looks at him via the mirror. ‘Shane wouldn’t have left him. Or Glenn, or Maggie. And you wouldn’t have either. I meant what I said before, Dare. Shane would have been proud of you. And you’re a good man.’

Daryl grunts. He gnaws on his fingernail while sneaking a glance at Paul. ‘Oh,’ he wriggles around to get into his front pocket, fishing a small roll out of it. ‘Got you something, by the way,’ he leans over, between the two front seats so he can pass it to Rick.

Rick takes the roll and turns it over in his hand. He laughs when he realizes what it is. ‘You got me mints.’

‘Technically, I got Michonne mints, but you can give them to her. Say they’re yours,’ he falls back into his seat with a sigh.

The cop slides it in his own pocket and looks at him via the mirror. ‘Thank you, Daryl.’

‘Yeah,’ the boy flashes him a wicked grin. ‘Does that make me your wingman?’

‘I’ve told you-‘

‘Yeah, yeah, there’s nothin’ goin’ on,’ he looks out of the window. ‘It totally makes me your wingman. That’s so cool.’

Rick doesn’t say anything.

Daryl could have sworn that he saw Paul’s lips twitch but when he looks over, the man’s face is devoid of any expression.

 

 

They drag Paul into Denise’s house. She checks him over but doesn’t find anything wrong with him. He doesn’t show any signs of a concussion so Daryl and Rick put him in the cellar.

Rick writes a note for him at the kitchen table.

Daryl grabs a glass of water and one of Carol’s cookies. He places the items next to Paul on the ground.

Rick kneels down to put the note up against the water. ‘We’ll see,’ he says as he studies Paul’s face. Then he glances down before looking at Daryl, who is leaning against the doorframe. ‘You got him a cookie?’ He sounds incredulous.

Daryl stills. ‘They were right there on the counter, so I just grabbed it, didn’t think about it, really, so it don’t matter none. They’d have gone stale otherwise, ya know? It’ll go stale now, too, but, ya know, it’ll still be good when he wakes up but…’ He stops his own rambling and shrugs, ‘he’ll be hungry when he wakes up. We missed dinner.’

He curses himself for not thinking of that excuses in the first place.

‘Right,’ Rick says with a small smile. ‘That’s nice of you.’

‘Pssh,’ the teenager scoffs.

‘ _Anyway_ ,’ Rick laughs as he puts his hands on the boy’s shoulder, steering him out of the room. ‘It’s pretty stupid of us to go out there, isn’t it?’

‘Yep,’ Daryl grins back. ‘Do it again tomorrow?’

‘Yep!’

 

 


	67. Choosing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warning; explicit sexual content (by a minor)

 

* * *

 

 

 

Daryl sits outside on the stoop of Denise’s place while he keeps guard. He smokes one of the cigarettes he’d stolen out of Merle’s pack earlier. He doesn’t think his brother will mind or even notice. The smoke relaxes him a little, causes his spine to melt into the hard steps behind him as he stares up at the night sky.

It’s hardly surprising that he can’t stop thinking about Paul. It’s the first guy in ages that hadn’t actively tried to kill him when they met. It mystifies Daryl that the man hadn’t been carrying a gun. There hadn’t even been a holster on his hip. Instead, two small knives had been clipped to his belt. The sheaths simple and worn.

Rick had searched him carefully, padding him down. Daryl always thought that was a little bit ridiculous because he’d never heard of anyone hiding anything important in their boots, so his mouth fell open when the cop pulled a small blade out of a hidden sheath on the man’s ankle.

If he hadn’t been impressed before, he is now.

The man is _badass_.

Rick had told Tara and Denise the story of how they found him, how they had to chase him for miles before making him surrender. Peer pressure eventually made him unbutton his shirt and show Denise the imprint of Paul’s boot on his chest. It had been red and would bruise, but hadn’t broken any bones.

Rick had laughed it off, calling the man a damn ninja.

Daryl reaches into the pocket on the side of his left leg to pull the small knife out. It snags on the fabric of his pants but doesn’t rip the fabric. He’d swiped it off the kitchen counter before Tara had taken the other knives upstairs with her and Denise to keep them safe.

The handle is cold against his skin but it warms quickly when he grips it tightly. It’s sharp. It blinks in the moonlight as he turns it over and over.

He imagines Paul’s hands wrapped around it. Leather warmed by touch, supple due to heavy use, imagines the blade piercing a skull with one quick jab, the force delivered by the same arms and hands that had thrown him up against the truck.

He quickly puts it down beside him. The cigarette between his lips, smoke in his lung and now the palms of his hands pressed into his eyes. The tingling in his spine is back, it slowly spreads to his belly, his chest and fingertips. He can feel a blush creeping up on his neck, biting at his ears.

‘Hey, kiddo.’

The cigarette almost falls into his lap when he looks up, lips parting in surprise, but it’s only Abraham, who’d been doing his rounds. The man is standing on the pavement, automatic rifle dangling from his wrist.

‘Tough day?’ he asks the boy. ‘Heard you and Rick found some asshole on the side of the road.’

Daryl shrugs and takes a drag before lowering the cigarette. ‘Weren’t no asshole.’

‘No?’ Abraham lifts a skeptical eyebrow. ‘Tried to steal our stuff. Beat you up.’

‘He didn’t _beat me up_ ,’ Daryl mutters before rubbing at his eyebrow and wincing. ‘Maybe a little, but.. ya know. ‘s all good now.’

‘Right. Want me to take over watching him a while?’

‘Nah, I’m good. I think Mack is comin’ later.’

Abraham cocks his head to the side. ‘Go to bed, kiddo. I got it.’

He sighs and drags himself to his feet. It’s been a long day and he’s got a feeling that Abraham won’t leave him alone until he actually goes home. ‘Don’t know why we’re watchin’ him anyway. Denise locked the door to her house and he’s staying in the damn cellar. What’s he gonna do? I’ve been here for over an hour and nothing happened.’

‘I don’t know. Better safe than sorry, I guess.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl takes a final drag and drops the cigarette between his feet, stomping it out.

‘Need me to walk your ass home?’

Daryl glares but his expression softens when he sees that Abraham is just teasing him. ‘To keep me safe or to make sure I don’t steal one of your cigars? I know where you keep ‘em.’

A threatening finger is his only warning.

‘Fine,’ the boy grins as he slinks away, leaving the man to guard the door. ‘Got shit to do anyway.’

‘It’s past midnight and you’re not pulling guard duty,’ Abraham calls after him. ‘What’re you going to do?’

‘Count some damn sheep,’ Daryl laughs, ‘mind your own damn business, man. See ya.’

 

 

The house is completely silent when he comes home. In the semi-darkness, he can see that Rick’s boots have been kicked under the coffee table so the cop made it home fine. Carl’s hat is hanging from its hook near the door. He can’t spot Maggie and Glenn’s boots anywhere but they could have worn them upstairs even though they don’t, usually. Maybe he’s got the days mixed up and they’re still on guard duty.

Merle’s jacket is missing. Daryl knows his brother is patrolling the South side of the wall.

He sneaks upstairs, carrying his own boots in his hands because no matter how silent he can walk in them, Michonne always seems to hear him. Not when he pads towards his room on sock-clad feet, though.

He closes the door softly and flicks the light on his bedside table on. The light is warm. It flickers a couple of times before settling.

With a soft sigh, he sits down on his bed. The vest gets thrown onto a chair near his dresser, he pulls his socks off and places his knife next to the light on the bedside table. He shrugs out of his shirt, letting it fall on the bed behind him.

For a moment he lets his elbows rest on his knees, hunching over and staring at the floorboards. Shaking fingers rake through his long hair.

‘The fuck are you doing?’ he whispers to himself. ‘The fuck are you _thinking_?’

He thinks about blue eyes and the skin around them wrinkling due to a smile, gloved fingers wriggling as he waves and the way booted feet had pounded the earth as they’d dashed through the field to get to the truck. The way those hands had grabbed him, thrown him against the metal.

He thinks about being pushed up against the side of the truck, with narrow hips slotting against his this time, his hands pinned by gloved ones, that smile close to his own.

‘Fuck,’ Daryl pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes until he sees nothing but stars and darkness. ‘You don’t even know him.’

The tingling sensation is back though. He can’t help it. It runs up and down his spine, causes his skin to feel too tight and hot. A blush spreads over his naked chest. He chases it with his hand, running his fingers from his neck to his collarbone to his left nipple. The skin is sensitive there, he knows.

‘Fuck,’ he lets himself falls back onto the bed. Arousal swirls in his veins. It’s hardly the first time that happened. Him and Carl often joke that the only good thing about Alexandria is the fact that there are so many doors that lock.

That includes his bedroom.

He hopes his family thinks he locks it every night because he fears intruders or walkers.

Not because of what he does under his covers.

It’s not usually like this, though. When he normally touches himself, quick and hurried and always scared of getting caught no matter how many times he’s checked the lock, he doesn’t usually think about someone. It’s just his hand, curled around himself and his mind occupied with the thought of kissing someone, hell _anyone_ , just the thought of a body pressing close and lips on his and a tongue and…

He groans and lets his hand glide over his abs to his navel, fingernails scraping through the trail of hair until he slips his hand under the waistband of his jeans and boxers.

‘Fuck, shit,’ he curses softly when his belt digs into his wrist, pinning his hand in place. ‘Get the fuck off!’ Clumsily, and with his wrong hand, he undoes the belt so he can grip himself. He bites on his lip to stifle a groan.

This time, he does think about someone else. Not just hands and lips and hips, but gloved hands and blue eyes and narrow hips. He bites the wrist of his left hand and then kisses it, imagining his own skin to be pale lips.

‘Fuck this,’ he whispers to himself as he hastily undoes the buttons of his jeans, shoving them down his hips to his thighs, along with his boxers. His knees fall open as he reaches down to cup himself with one hand, the other finding his chest again, palm over his nipple.

He tilts his head to the side, imagines exposing his neck for someone to swoop in and lick the smooth skin leading up to his jaw. He imagines a beard scratching, a smile nipping at his earlobe, clever fingers dancing over his ribs. ‘Fuck, fuck yeah,’ he arches into his own touch, hips bucking until he groans and stills, muscles twitching when his fingers get coated with his own come.

He’s panting when he finally opens his eyes again, staring up at the dark ceiling.

The heat fades from his blood. Goosebumps start to appear on his arms when he sits up, grabbing his shirt to clean up his mess. He pulls up his pants again. His hands almost shake too badly for him to do up the buttons.

‘Shit,’ he breathes as he stumbles to his feet, staring at his soiled shirt. Fear replaces arousal instantly. He dashes over to his bedside table, yanking the bottom drawer open and stuffing his shirt in, pushing it to the back so no one will find it. For a second, he thinks about burning it but that would draw too much attention.

It’s not the first time he’s used an item of clothing to clean himself up, of course. He usually just waits until the morning before washing them himself. Sometimes he’ll run into Carol or Tyreese when he tries to sneak his shirts or boxers onto the clothes line to dry but they never say anything about it. The knowing smirks Tyreese throws him are humiliating enough. At least Carol is a good enough actor to just keep a straight face.

But this is different. And he fears that people will just _know_.

That they’ll know he came while thinking about some guy licking the side of his neck. That he’d bucked his hips and had hoped to find a matching hardness instead of the soft folds of girls.

He doesn’t want to think about what might happen when his family finds out.

Maybe Rick will grab him by the ear and drag him out of the house, throwing him into the gutter the way Will had so often done when he had been too drunk to care that his son was only six and still scared of the dark.

Or maybe Glenn will finally unbuckle his belt and let it slither from the loops, cracking it once to get a feel for it before telling him to brace himself.

He puts shaking hands on the bedside table, hunching his shoulders as he bows his head. Cold sweat forms between his shoulder blades.

‘They said it was fine,’ he whispers as he tries to calm himself. ‘Aaron and Eric. Tara and Denise. They said that was _fine_. It didn’t change nothing.’

But it will because it’s fine for other people to be like that. Not for him. He knows that. He’s a Dixon and Will didn’t raise a faggot, that’s for damn sure, Daryl thinks as he puts more pressure on his fingertips, letting them turn white on the wood.

This was a mistake.

‘You ain’t even like that,’ he snarls as he pushes himself away from the bed to grab his backpack. He digs around in it, finding the dirty magazines on the bottom. The pages snag on the zipper when he yanks them out but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t take him long to find a girl he likes. He puts the magazine on his bed and stares down at it.

The tingling sensation runs up his spine again when his gaze roams over the pages.

A girl leaning against the booth of some diner. Skirt so short he can almost see under it, mid-riff exposed with only a white shirt covering her breasts. Black hair in a high pony tail. Lips wrapped around a straw so she can drink a milkshake.

He almost sags down with relief when he can feel himself harden at the thought of those lips. That he feels hot when imagining his hands covering those breasts, soft and warm, or his hands pushing that skirt even higher and finding…

He doesn’t know what that will feel like.

He only knows he wants to feel it, one day.

With a sigh, he throws himself back onto the bed, next to the magazine. He laughs softly, reaching down to palm his half-hard cock through his jeans. ‘At least ya aint totally broken,’ he mutters to himself as he grabs a package of cigarettes from a drawer, lighting one even though Carol has told him a thousand times that he’s not allowed to smoke on his bed.

The nicotine helps. He can think more clearly now. The fear and panic dull into a nagging sense of worry. His blood is no longer on fire or made of ice. The sweat, from both arousal and panic, dries on his skin.

He blows the smoke up in the air. He knows different people like different things, of course. Like Aaron and Eric, who are gay. Or Tara who only likes girls. He frowns and scratches at his cheek. Surely there are people who like both? Maybe he’s like that.

He hopes not. Maybe this thing with Paul was just a one-time thing.

Except he knows it’s not.

It’s not even a Paul-thing, if he’s really honest. Paul is just the first real guy who’s caught his eye. He knows because his gaze always lingers a bit too long on the guys in the magazines. He doesn’t suppose that Carl even notices them. Or maybe he just pretends that he is the guy.

Daryl does that, too. But sometimes he imagines being _with_ that guy as well.

He sits up with a groan, flicking the ashes onto the floor.

Then he perks up a bit. If it’s both, guys and girls, he can just choose, he supposes. If it doesn’t matter to his brain or gut, or wherever the tingling sensation from his spine comes from, who it is, then he can just choose to like girls. That would make everything better. Easier.

He’s smiling when he makes his way to the window, cracking it open so he can put the cigarette out and throw the but onto the roof to hide most of the evidence of his crime.

 

 

A hand folds over his mouth.

Daryl jerks awake, hand reaching for the hunting knife on his hip and heart hammering in his throat while he fights against whoever is looming over him.

‘It’s me!’ Carl hisses. He waits until the Dixon boy is staring up at him with wide eyes, now focused, before slowly removing his hand from his mouth. ‘There’s someone in our house.’

Daryl sits up quickly. The door to his bedroom is open. He frowns and looks beside him. The magazine is still on the covers but Carl doesn’t seem to have noticed it. ‘I locked my-‘

‘They’re going through the rooms,’ Carl says softly. ‘They picked the lock on mine, too. It woke me up.’

‘What the hell?’

Footsteps come down the hallway. Boots, not heavy enough to be Abraham’s and without the distinct clicking of Rick’s heels. Someone passes Daryl’s door and heads for the stairs. The brothers only have to share one look before Carl is handing Daryl his gun from the nightstand and sneaking back to the door.

The door doesn’t creak when he opens it.

Daryl puts his boots on and pads over to his brother. They’re silent as they slip into the darkened hallway. It’s a good thing they know the place by heart. All the doors they pass have been cracked open, a sure sign that the intruder has gone through the whole house.

Carl holds his hand up and Daryl freezes behind him. The Grimes boy takes a slow breath and then flicks the safety from his gun, side-stepping and taking aim at the same time. ‘What the hell are you doing in our house?’

Daryl quickly steps up beside him, pressing his own gun to the back of a head.

‘I’m, uh, sitting on the steps, looking at this painting, waiting for your mom and dad to get dressed.’ The man glances over his shoulder at Carl. ‘Hi. I’m Jesus.’

Paul.

Daryl lowers the gun while Carl cocks his head to the side, a move he’s learned from his father.

There are stumbling footsteps and suddenly Rick appears behind them. Half-naked, in the process of buttoning up his jeans and looking like a deer caught in headlights when his son turns to look at him. Michonne exits Rick’s bedroom. She’s still pulling her shirt down.

‘Carl,’ Rick breathes.

The boy frowns at his father before turning back to Paul, his gun still against the back of his head.

Another door downstairs bursts open and Abraham, Glenn and Maggie run up the stairs with their weapons drawn.

‘It’s okay,’ Michonne says quickly.

Rick tears his gaze away from his son and pulls his shirt on. ‘You said we should talk. So let’s talk. Abraham, get him out of here. Glenn, Maggie, keep an eye on him, too. He’s slippery. Carl…’

‘I’m fine. Come on, Dare. I’ll help you find a shirt.’ The boy turns on his heels and stalks back to Daryl’s bedroom. The Dixon boy follows with a small shrug at Rick.

When he closes the door behind him, he looks up just in time to see how Carl lets himself fall onto his bed. ‘Oh my God,’ the boy moans. ‘That’s… _uugh_.’ He looks up, ‘did you know? About my dad and Michonne?’

‘How the fuck was I supposed to know that?’ Daryl scoffs.

‘I don’t know,’ Carl shrugs. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘I know, right?’ Daryl mutters as he hunts through his closet to find that black shirt he likes. ‘It’s gross as shit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But hey, could have been a lot worse than Michonne. At least she’s good people, you know?’

‘I guess…’

‘You guess? Michonne is cool as fuck,’ Daryl laughs as he grabs the shirt and pulls it on. ‘And she doesn’t take any of Rick’s bullshit, so that’s good.’

‘I know,’ Carl mutters into Daryl’s pillow. ‘I just don’t want to think about my dad… you know, doing _that_.’

Daryl snorts. He’s grown up watching girls stumble out of his dad’s bedroom, long after his mom was gone. It hadn’t been a secret what they’d been doing, especially since Merle did the exact same thing with his own girlfriends. Together, they’d boast about it on their couch, laughing and drinking and trying to get Daryl to blush, always ganging up on the youngest Dixon when they had the chance.

The black shirt he’s picked out is wrinkled but clean. He puts it on and brushes his hair out of his eyes, checking his reflection in the mirror inside his closet. The blue eyes narrow. Maybe he should let Maggie cut his hair after all.

‘Who’s the guy?’ Carl asks as he sits up. ‘Jesus?’

‘Paul,’ Daryl murmurs as he scrubs a smear of dirt from his cheek. ‘It’s the guy your dad and I found yesterday. We thought we’d locked him up good but he’s a damn ninja.’

‘Right.’ Carl frowns as he gets to his feet, ‘Are you done preening or do you want to jack off some more?’ He grabs the magazine from the bed and throws it at Daryl’s back. ‘You didn’t even share this!’

‘We ain’t sharin’ no porn, man,’ Daryl laughs, flipping his brother off. He quickly puts the magazine inside his closet. ‘Get your own.’

‘I can’t go outside the walls right now,’ Carl says with a gesture at the bandage that covers his missing eye, ‘so you’ll have to get some for me.’

‘Pssh,’ the Dixon boy grabs his backpack and throws it down next to the door. ‘Grab your own from there for next time. Ain’t seen those so that’s cool. I don’t need ‘em back with sticky pages neither.’

 

 

He realizes everything might be a bit more complicated than he’d originally thought when he sees Paul in their kitchen. The man is sitting at the head of the table, legs falling open as he practically melts into his chair. His shoulders are little hunched but that’s the only trace of unease Daryl can spot. The man is watching the others but the sharp, blue eyes snap to Carl and Daryl when they enter.

Carl takes the seat next to Michonne.

Daryl bites back a grin at his friend’s teasing when he sees that Michonne turns away from him slightly so she won’t have to face the boy just yet. Daryl leans against the back of Glenn’s chair, catching Maggie’s hand to squeeze her fingers for a moment when she reaches for him.

Jesus’s gaze flickers from Maggie to Glenn and then Rick before it pins Daryl in place again. ‘So you’re not really Rick’s. Interesting.’

 ‘Don’t talk to him,’ Glenn says.

Daryl lifts his hand to flick Paul off.

It had seemed so simple late last night, the fact that he would just choose to be attracted to girls if he liked both genders. It’s kind of hard to do when Paul shoots him a small smile before nodding at Glenn. His body doesn’t seem to agree with his mind. That damn blush is starting to creep up his neck again. He feels nervous but knows he shouldn’t be.

Rick walks in and takes the seat closest to the new guy. ‘So how did you get out?’

‘One guard can’t cover two exits or third-floor windows. Knots untie and locks get picked. Entropy comes from order, right?’

‘ _Right_ ,’ Daryl snaps as he pushes himself away from the chair to pace behind the guy. It still feels like he’s failed Rick somehow by not guarding the place right, even though there’s nothing he could have done if Paul really escaped from the third-floor window. There’s shame biting at his ears though.

Rick leans back in his chair when the boy snaps, eyebrows raised for a second before calming him with a glance.

The teenager leans against the wall with one shoulder and pretends not to sulk.

‘I checked out your arsenal,’ Paul says to Rick. ‘I haven’t seen anything like that in a long time. You’re well-equipped but your provisions are low. Very low for the amount of people you have. Fifty-four?’

‘More than that,’ Maggie states.

Paul gives her a small smile. ‘Well,’ he looks down at his hands, ‘I appreciate the cookie. My compliments to the chef.’

‘Yeah, she ain’t here,’ Daryl growls. He ignores the way Maggie cocks her head to the side and Rick scratches at his beard to hide his smile.

‘Look,’ Paul turns to the teenager, ‘we got off to a bad start, but we’re on the same side. The living side. You and Rick had every reason to leave me out there, but you didn’t. I’m from a place that’s a lot like this one. Part of my job is searching out other settlements to trade with. I took your truck because my community needs things and both of you look like trouble. I was wrong. You’re good people.’

Daryl scowls at his boots and hopes that the red tips of his ears aren’t showing. He’s relieved when Paul turns back to Rick, sagging a little against the wall.

‘And this is a good place,’ Paul smiles at Rick. ‘I think our communities may be in a position to help each other.’

‘Do you have food?’ Glenn asks.

‘We’ve started to raise livestock,’ Paul nods. ‘We scavenge, we grow. Everything from tomatoes to sorghum.’

Rick waves his hand at the guy, ‘tell us why we should believe you.’

‘I’ll show you. If we take a car, I can take you back home in a day and you can all see for yourselves who we are and what we have to offer.’

‘Wait,’ Maggie puts her hands on the table and leans forward. ‘you’re looking for _more_ settlements. You mean you’re already trading with other groups?’

Paul leans back in his chair with a secretive smile. Pure joy makes his eyes shine even brighter. ‘Your world’s about to get a whole lot bigger.’

 

 

Rick decides they’ll head back to Paul’s community the next morning. It gives Glenn enough time to fix up the RV while Maggie draws up plans for some sort of trading agreement.

 

 

Eric blinks but follows the teenager down into the garage without a word. He closes the door behind him and sits on the small set of steps while the boy wanders around the room. Fingertips ghost over the workbench, some spare parts for the bike he misses, before they curl around a wrench, lifting it out of his toolbox. He slaps it against the palm of his hand while he paces.

Eric sits and waits.

‘You said, that if I, you know, had, like, questions and stuff,’ Daryl fidgets with the wrench before leaning over his workbench to inspect his other tools, ‘that I could ask you.’

Surprise flickers over Eric’s face. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Of course.’

The teenager grabs a tin can filled with screws and digs around for a while. It doesn’t look like he’s searching for something in particular.

‘Do you _have_ any questions?’ Eric edges when the silence continues to stretch between them.

‘Guess,’ Daryl mutters as he shoves the tin can aside and walks over to where the bottles of motor oil are stacked against the wall. He checks them even though he already knows which ones are empty. ‘So you’re… you’re gay, right?’

‘Yes.’

Daryl glares at Eric because he can hear the smile in the word.

‘ _Obviously_ ,’ Eric laughs when he can’t hold it back anymore.

‘If you’re just going to make fun of me…’ Daryl says as he moves towards the door.

‘I’m not making fun of you,’ the man says but he doesn’t get up to stop the boy. ‘You know that. If you’re uncomfortable, just say so and leave. But don’t storm out. We can talk.’

The blue eyes narrow but Daryl grits his teeth and moves towards a different workbench on the other side of the garage. Away from the door. ‘Fine,’ he grouses just because he’s horribly embarrassed about all of this. He doesn’t want to have this conversation but he needs to know so he’s just going to bite the bullet. ‘So you just like guys, right? Like, _only_ guys?’

‘Yes.’

‘You ever tried to stop?’

‘ _Excuse me_?’

Daryl lifts his eyebrows at Eric’s affronted tone. ‘Have you ever tried to stop liking guys?’

Eric looks at him for a long time. His fingers tighten on his knee, fingertips almost white from the pressure. ‘No,’ he says eventually. ‘I never tried. There’s no reason why I would have wanted to try that.’

‘What about Aaron?’ Daryl hoists himself up on the workbench and kicks his feet.

‘Why are you asking this?’

‘Why aren’t ya answerin’?’

Eric lifts an eyebrow. ‘Because the question can be considered to be _incredibly_ hurtful and I’m trying to figure out whether you’re asking it because you’re just ignorant or trying to be hurtful.’

Daryl blinks at the frankness. ‘I ain’t tryin’ nothing. It’s just – you said Aaron’s parents didn’t like it that he was into, like, guys, right? So I thought, maybe he tried to stop,’ he winces when Eric’s eyes narrow, ‘because it would be, like, easier?’

‘Do you mean easier or better?’

The teenager wrinkles his nose and kicks his feet against each other. He glances at the man through his bangs. ‘Glenn ‘nd Maggie says that it’s okay, to, you know, be… And Tara’s cool and all, so… And you and Aaron, I mean… I like you. You’re good people, so…’ He shifts, hands gripping the edge of the table. ‘But it would have been easier for him, right? To just like girls instead.’

‘I suppose,’ Eric allows. ‘It’s not easy to be different from other people. Not everyone accepts it, accepts us the way we are. But that’s just the thing, Daryl; we can’t change it. And you can’t choose who you’re attracted to.’

A block of ice lands in the pit of Daryl’s stomach.

‘We’re born like this. We didn’t _chose_ to like guys, that’s just a part of who we are,’ Eric gives him a small smile. ‘We didn’t see a cute guy walking down the street one day and decided; that’s it!’ He laughs, ‘it’s not that simple. Or maybe it is simple in the fact that we were just born this way.’

‘Right,’ Daryl chews on his fingernail while he thinks.

Eric lets him. He scratches at some dirt on his jeans until he can feel that the blue eyes are focusing on him once more. He shoots the boy an encouraging smile.

‘So,’ Daryl grabs the wrench again and fidgets with it some more, ‘but, like, if you had, like, _options_ , you _could_ choose, right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just – nothing or guys ain’t much of a choice, right? But if he, like, if he’d like girls, too, it would be… he could choose.’

Eric presses his lips together to hide another smile. ‘That’s not really how it works, Dare. There are lots of people who aren’t attracted to anyone, for starters.’

‘What?’

The look of genuine surprise on the teenager’s face breaks Eric’s resolve and he laughs. ’I know it’s hard to imagine for someone in their teens, but yeah. Some people just don’t have those feelings, for anyone. But we can go through the whole range another time. Let’s go back to your question.’ He thinks about it for a moment. ‘So you think that if someone is bisexual, they could choose who they like?’

‘Bisexual?’

Eric’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You don’t know what that means?’

Daryl tilts his chin a bit higher. ‘No.’

‘Oh. Well, that just means that you like both boys and girls. You really haven’t heard that term before?’

‘Done told ya.’

‘Okay, it’s just-‘

‘Look, there weren’t any people like that in our town, okay?’ Daryl snaps. ‘And it’s – ‘ He stops himself and looks at his knees.

‘It’s what, Daryl?’

The boy shrugs.

‘Dare.’

‘It’s fine for you, okay, to be – like, gay. Or bisexual. That’s okay if it’s you, or Tara or someone. Just, not for me, okay? I ain’t like that.’

‘I never said you were,’ Eric says slowly.

‘Good, because I ain’t. It’s not natural for people like me.’

‘What does that even mean, Dare, people like you? How are we different?’

‘You ain’t no Dixon,’ the boy shoots him a grin but it fades when he sees the look on Eric’s face. ‘But it don’t matter anyway,’ he says quickly, ‘because I ain’t like that. I’m, you know. I like girls.’

‘ _Right_.’

‘I do!’

‘Hmm-hmm. That’s why you have questions, right? Because you like girls. And you thought I’d know all about that.’

Daryl winces. He gnaws on his nail and then takes a deep breath. ‘You won’t tell nobody, right?’

‘That you like girls?’

‘And maybe some boys?’ the teenager murmurs, curling his shoulders and trying to make himself as small as possible. ‘ _Maybe_. But I like girls too, so I ain’t really, you know, like that. But you still can’t tell Merle.’

Eric laughs. ‘Oddly enough, I never really feel the compulsion to have a conversation with Merle Dixon.’

‘Right. You can’t tell Glenn either though. Or Rick. Anyone.’

The laughter fades. ‘Why not? I mean – I know it’s not my place to talk about that with them, but why won’t you? You said they were fine with it.’

‘’s different when it’s your blood, I think,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘I mean, Tara’s blood, but she’s not like – she’s not their… you know.’

‘Not their kid?’

Daryl nods.

‘Daryl,’ Eric leans forward, elbows on his knees. ‘I think you need to have a little bit more faith in your own family. They love you. They won’t stop loving you just because you think you might be into boys and girls. And you can’t choose, Daryl, even if you like both the same because you don’t like people because they’re a guy or girl. You like them for who they are. Because they’re smart or funny or kind or brave or hot or all of that. Or maybe you like them because they’re clever and strong and fast and have a ridiculous nickname.’

The blue eyes widen and then narrow.

Eric smirks at him. ‘Rick told me you found a guy called Jesus by the side of the road.’

‘Yeah – well – this is – this ain’t about him, so…’

‘Right.’

‘I’m gonna go,’ Daryl says as he hops down the bench and heads over to the door. He lingers on the threshold, ‘I’m serious though. You can’t tell Merle or nobody. He’ll fuckin’ kill me.’

Concern flashes over Eric’s face. ‘Dare, we can-‘

‘Just promise me you won’t tell.’

Eric works his jaw and then nods, ‘I promise.’

 

 

Rick and Daryl are standing next to each other on the platform near the gate. The teenager is pulling a guard duty so Abraham can keep an eye on Paul. The stranger is currently meeting with Maggie to prepare some kind of deal. She seems to like him.

‘I just spoke to Carl,’ Rick says. He’s not looking at Daryl, clearly uncomfortable discussing this subject, ‘about me and Michonne. It’s… it’s real. And it just happened last night, that’s why we hadn’t told you two about it. But it’s real.’

‘Okay.’

Rick glances at him. ‘Okay,’ he says carefully, almost like he thinks the word is a trap and Daryl is going to lash out unexpectedly.

The teenager shoots him a tiny grin. ‘She liked the mints then?’

‘She liked the mints.’

The grin grows as Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘I’m totally your wingman now.’

Rick laughs. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he looks out over the woods to their left. A couple of walkers amble through the trees. One of them gets stuck in the bushes. It gets left behind. ‘Jesus liked the cookie.’

The Dixon boy narrows his eyes and then scoffs, ‘I’m Carol’s wingman now, too?’

‘Or she is yours.’

Daryl blushes and scowls at the cop, but Rick is staring out over the woods and won’t look at him.

‘There’s a storm coming,’ the cop says softly as he watches how dark clouds gather on the horizon. ‘It’s a good thing we waited with heading out until tomorrow. It looks like a lot of rain. Some of the roads might not be able to take it. They could wash away. Merle warned me about the storm this morning and he was right. There it comes.’

‘See? He’s useful to have around.’

‘Sometimes,’ Rick nods.

Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet again. ‘Are you gonna take him with you to Paul’s place?’

‘No. I need him here.’

‘But I get to come, right?’

Rick shoots him a smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Thanks.’ Daryl grins at his boots, ’not that I listen to you or anything,’ he knocks his shoulder against Rick’s arm, ‘but thanks.’

The cop puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. ‘Any time, Dare.’

 

 

 


	68. Hilltop

 

* * *

 

 

‘Here, homemade oatcake,’ Denise says as she thrusts a small package at Daryl, who is sitting on the steps of his home. ‘Complex carbohydrates, omega-3s.’

Daryl wrinkles his nose. ‘Nah. I’m good. We’ll make a pit stop. I’ll pick up something then.’

‘Like rabies?’

‘Is this because I tried to get you that stuff?’

‘Yeah. And you remind me of someone I used to know.’

That makes him take it. He stuffs it into his pocket. ‘Well, I hope it tastes better than it looks. ‘cause it looks like shit.’

‘Shit’s still better than road kill. Okay, maybe… just eat it.’

He smirks as she gives him another flustered wave before walking away. ‘Hey,’ he calls out to her, ‘I’ll still find ya some of that stuff, ya know? Gonna have to bake me something better when I do!’

Denise looks over her shoulder, flashing him a smile before she disappears around the corner.

The rest of his family is bustling around him. Some people are passing around boxes of ammo to make sure that everyone has a full clip while others sharpen their knives. Glenn is checking the battery of the RV but Daryl had already checked the whole engine block yesterday when Abraham had asked so he won’t find anything wrong with it.

‘What are you going to find for Denise?’

Daryl looks up to see Maggie standing next to him. Her dark hair is brushing her shoulders, framing her pale face. He knows she hasn’t been sleeping much, worried about their supplies and whatever is lurking outside the walls. Sometimes he feels a little guilty about not helping her out in the garden as much as he probably should have, but he knows that Enid has been stepping up and taking his spot.

That’s fine. He’s never been much of a farmer, anyway.

‘Some kind of soda she wanted to give Tara,’ Daryl says as he shields his eyes from the sun. ‘I had it but we lost the truck and Paul broke the rest of ‘em by swinging me against the truck. Exploded in my backpack.’

‘That’s sweet of you, trying to find more.’

The teenager shrugs.

‘Would you mind carrying the crate with water bottles onto the RV?’ She asks him. ‘It’s heavy.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ he jumps up and follows her back to the kitchen. The crate is incredibly heavy but he manages to lift it up, using his knee to buck it higher into his arms. Maggie shoots him a grateful smile as she grabs two more canisters.

‘Oh, we were just coming to grab those,’ Michonne says as she steps into the kitchen.

Paul is standing behind her.

‘Oh, Dare already helped so we’re good to go.’

‘That looks heavy,’ Paul darts forward to put his hands on the crate, ‘want me to take it?’

‘No,’ Daryl grounds out, ‘just get the fuck out of the way, man. Like you said; it’s heavy.’

Paul holds his hands up in surrender as he quickly steps aside to make way for the teenager.

Maggie shoots him a curious look as they walk towards the RV. ‘You know no one blames you that he escaped yesterday, right? He climbed out of a _third-floor window_ on the other side of the house.’

‘I know that.’

‘Okay,’ she says slowly, drawing the word out. ‘You just seem upset with him. You were snapping at him during the meeting, too.’

‘Maybe I just don’t like people who beat me up.’

‘Right,’ Maggie gives him a small smile as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘He just seems like good people, you know? Maybe you can give him another chance. He didn’t know you and you would have done the same thing if the roles had been reversed. You can’t blame him for trying to survive.’

‘I don’t,’ Daryl says as he hoists the crate into the RV. ‘He’s still an asshole for trying to take our shit though. Anyway, it looks we’re about ready to go. Is it okay if I meet you at the gate? I want to swing by Merle before I go out.’

 

 

It’s not that hard to find Merle. He’s started to hang out more with the building crew and the rest of the guys and women who pull guard duty. Those guys seem more accepting of his crude jokes and sharp tongue, with the men joining in and the women witty enough to put him back in his place. Sometimes Daryl misses him at night, when his family is sitting around the kitchen table together and his brother isn’t there but he knows it’s for the best.

Right now Merle is sitting with a couple of guys against the wall. He’s in the middle and the loudest as he tells one of his stories. The rest of the guys are grinning, eyes glinting as they wait for the punchline they know will come. When it finally does, they explode into laughter, shoving Merle’s shoulder and punching his thigh for being lame.

For a second, Daryl hesitates. His brother seems to be having a good time, maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered.

That notion fades from his mind when Merle looks up and spots him. His brother’s smile becomes even bigger. ‘Hey, monster,’ he laughs, waving him over. ‘Haven’t seen you in ages. What’s up?’

‘Nothing, just… we’re headin’ out in a few and I just wanted to see ya.’

Merle smirks at him. He waves at his friends, ‘fuck off out of here for a minute. The prince of the apocalypse came down from his tower to talk to his blood.’

The men snigger but get up and move away. It all reminds Daryl of the crew Merle used to have in their old town. The various guys who would always be hanging around the bar or their trailer, leering and smirking and making a pest out of themselves until one of them got into trouble. And then they’d be all bloodied fists and drunken shouts until the cops showed up.

The sight of them meant trouble for anyone who wasn’t part of the group. Luckily, Daryl had been. An honorary part, at least. It meant that he never had to worry about the strangers in the bar because there was always someone willing to break a jaw for him, and he rarely had to walk all the way home from school when he missed the bus because someone would see him walking alone and offer him a ride. It also meant a lot of teasing about his feminine looks when he’d been younger, of course, or some cartoons drawn on his cheeks whenever he’d fallen asleep at the bar, but that had been harmless teasing. Something he gladly traded for the protection of Merle’s gang.

‘Sit your little ass down and give your brother a cigarette,’ Merle says as he holds out his hand for one.

‘’s my last one,’ Daryl warns as he falls into the grass and throws the package at his brother.

‘Good, you shouldn’t be smoking anyway,’ Merle mutters around the filter. ‘Kills ya.’

‘Everything does these days.’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ he flicks his lighter open and lets the smoke drift into the air between them. ‘I heard you were going to that new place?’

‘Yeah.’

Merle purses his lips for a second. ‘Stick to Glenn, okay?’

Daryl narrow his eyes. ‘What for?’

‘’cause the damn chink loves you, he wouldn’t let nothing happen to you. Rick asked me to stay behind, keep an eye on things here, so… Someone’s gotta keep an eye on ya.’  He passes the cigarette to his little brother to share.

‘Thanks.’ Daryl takes a drag and licks his lips while letting the smoke spill from his lungs. ‘Carol said you were goin’ to move houses. What’s that about?’

‘Mouse knows all, sees all, huh?’ Merle takes the cigarette back. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna move in the house down the street. Next to Susan. I’m getting kind of tired of crashing on Rick’s damn couch, to be honest.’

‘Is this about the stuff with Maggie?’ the teenager asks as he squints at his brother.

Merle shrugs. ‘Not really. I don’t give a fuck about her or what she thinks she knows about us. It’d be nice not to be around her or them all the damn time though. They look at me like I’m the devil.’ He scratches at his cheek. ‘The stuff she said about dad. Was that true?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Figured it don’t matter now.’

‘It don’t,’ Merle agrees, ‘but that don’t mean I have to hear it from fuckin’ _Maggie_ first. We’re blood, boy. Means we have no secrets, right?’

Daryl nods and looks away. ‘Right.’ He worries at his bottom lip. ‘We found this guy, Rick and I.’

The older Dixon laughs softly, ‘yeah, I heard that, too. He fucked you up some, huh? Abe told me, man.’ He knocks their shoulders together, ‘need me to beat him up for you?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl grins, rolling his eyes. ‘He’s just some asshole. We had this whole truck full of stuff, right? And we just lost it. So fuckin’ annoying. Managed to save some chocolate though. Already ate it,’ he laughs when Merle holds out his hand for it. ‘Sorry.’

‘Monster,’ Merle mutters as he takes another drag from the cigarette. He doesn’t pass it over to share anymore but that’s fine by Daryl. ‘What kind of stuff was in the truck?’

‘Just a shitload of cans and bottles.’

‘You know what’s great about a shitload of cans and bottles?’

Daryl frowns. ‘What?’

‘That they’re watertight.’

‘You mean…?’

‘You know how to fuckin’ swim, right? Ain’t so hard. If you can swim, you can dive and now if you can dive…. Hmm-hmm-hmm. Now old Merle ain’t that strong a swimmer,’ his brother says with a faint scowl, ‘but maybe Korea or the pig are. That firecracker of yours, Rosita? Bet she looks real nice gettin’ all wet, if ya know what I mean.’

Daryl scoffs but still shoots his brother a grin. ‘I know what ya mean.’

‘’course ya do,’ Merle laughs, reaching out to ruffle the boy’s hair.

They watch how a couple of people walk by and start to make their way over to the church for a prayer circle Gabriel is organizing near the solar panels.

‘You know,’ Daryl shifts so he can lean against his brother’s side, head on his broad shoulder, ‘I could come stay with you.’

Merle ends the cigarette on a patch of dirt next to him and folds an arm around his brother’s shoulders, hugging him tightly. He presses his cheek to the boy’s hair. ‘What’re ya talkin’ about now?’

‘If you move out of Rick’s house. I could come with you. Stay with you.’

Merle noses at his hair and sighs deeply, ‘nah.’

Daryl frowns, ‘you don’t want me there?’

‘Hell, I’ll have more rooms than I know what to do with, of course I’ll make one of them yours,’ the oldest Dixon scoffs, ‘but you ain’t stayin’ there. We have a late night playin’ cards or whatever, yeah, you crash there but… You’re stayin’ with Rick for now.’

‘Why?’

‘’cause they’re good for you. They look after ya. And you can pretend to be little miss independent all day long but…’

‘Hey!’ Daryl protests, jabbing his elbow into Merle’s belly.

His brother laughs and shoves him aside, ‘that hurt, ya fucker!’

‘Good!’ Daryl grins as he tries to scramble out of his brother’s reach because he knows what’s coming next. There’s a playful glint in the blue eyes and it’s the only warning he ever needs.

Merle pounces.

There’s pulling, grabbing, shoving until fingers curl into fists and Daryl gets the first punch in which tells Merle that he’s ready for it to go rougher. He almost regrets it when he feels Merle’s muscles tense under the palms of his hands, when he’s forced onto his back and gets punched in the belly. Hard enough to make him gasp for air but not enough for bruises.

He laughs.

The fight is fairer now than it had been three years ago. Then Merle would let him get one punch in before forcing the younger Dixon onto his belly, sitting on his back until he surrendered. Now, Merle has to work for it.

Daryl is fast, trained by two cops but still too impulsive to remember the training when he feels cornered. He lashes out with a grunt, trying to hit Merle’s shoulder to force the bigger man off of him, kicking at booted feet to make him lose his balance.

Merle is trained by the army, however.

And the boy doesn’t stand a chance.

A minute for Merle to get used to his brother’s new strength but then he ends the fight easily. Slamming Daryl down into the dirt, one hand on his brother’s face, the other on Daryl’s wrist so he can twist his arm behind his back painfully.

Daryl screams but only because he hopes that it will make Merle let go.

Merle knows when he’s faking it, though, and the older Dixon only laughs.

‘ _Daryl_!’

The boy grunts when he hears Glenn’s voice. ‘Get off me, Merle,’ he mutters because he knows what this looks like to the rest of his family.

His brother, however, just digs his knee into the boy’s lower back. ‘I don’t think I will. This is a good spot. Nice and comfy,’ he sits down on his brother, forcing the air out of his lungs. ‘You just bite that dust for a little while longer, monster. There’s a good boy.’

‘Glenn’s comin’.’

‘So?’ Merle grins. ‘Scared he will see what a pussy you are?  Cat without its claws.’

‘Daryl,’ Glenn appears in his peripheral vision. The Korean stops abruptly and frowns at the two Dixon brothers. ‘Dare,’ he says, ‘Shane taught you better than that.’

‘What?’

‘Come on, man,’ Glenn smiles, ‘ _get him.’_

‘The fuck are you-‘ Merle starts but that means he’s distracted.

Daryl yanks his wrist free and bucks his hip, causing his brother to almost fall over. He twists around, manages to scoot out from under Merle and kick him back.

The victory is short-lived.

Merle pounces on him again, slamming into him, hands on the boy’s shoulders and straddling his hips. A hand closes around his neck. ‘Game over?’

‘Game over,’ Daryl laughs. The fingers slide away from his skin, never leaving a bruise, just the warning every big brother leaves behind; I can still take you.

Merle grins back and gets up. He holds out his hand to haul the boy to his feet. ‘Come on, up you get.’

Daryl stumbles to his feet and waits until Merle turns his back before jumping him again, now curling his arms around his neck, his legs around his waist.

The older Dixon groans but quickly grabs hold of his legs so the boy doesn’t slide down before starting to walk towards the waiting RV. ‘Damn monkey. Good morning Korea, thanks for almost fuckin’ that up for me.’

‘Good morning, Georgia,’ Glenn shoots back easily, falling into step beside him. ‘And you’re welcome. We’re ready to leave, Dare. Yes,’ the Korean laughs when Merle opens his mouth, ‘we will look after him, Merle.’

‘Pssh, he can handle himself. Was gonna tell you not to make him save your ass all the time.’

Glenn snorts before ducking into the RV that’s waiting in front of the gate.

Daryl slides off his brother’s back and wobbles on his feet for a second.

‘Go on then,’ Merle urges, ‘I’ll open up the gates. See you in a few days.’ He saunters over to the metal barrier.

‘Wait! I – ‘ Daryl bites on his lip and then runs to the oldest Dixon, jumping up into his arms again, hugging him so tightly that it almost hurts.

‘Whoa, good lord,’ Merle curses as he’s forced a couple of steps backwards by the impact. ‘What’s gotten into you?’ he murmurs even though he still hugs the teenager, letting him take the comfort. ‘What the fuck’s wrong, man?’

‘Nothing, just – _please_.’

‘I got ya,’ Merle hushes. ‘I got ya, monster.’ With a groan, he hitches the boy higher, ‘you’re gettin’ way too big for this.’

‘Until I break your back,’ Daryl mutters into the warm neck, breathing his brother in. ‘You promised.’

‘Yeah – I remember, was just a joke, bro. I got ya.’

After a minute, Daryl slides back onto his own feet, keeping his hand on his brother’s belt to keep him close. His forehead against his sternum, enjoying the sensation of Merle running his hands through his hair.

‘For real, you’re freakin’ me out, baby brother,’ Merle says softly.

‘You just never know, right? What could happen.’

‘Right,’ the older Dixon says but he sounds suspicious. ‘You sure there ain’t nothing you got to tell me?’

Daryl nods. ‘See ya,’ he says as he steps away.

‘See ya soon, monster.’

He leaves Merle at the gate. A puzzled expression slowly morphing into one of concern as he yanks the gates open.

Daryl closes the door of the RV behind him, falling onto the couch with a heavy sigh and staring at his own boots to avoid the worried glances Michonne and Rick shoot him. They’re sitting in the front two seats, Rick is driving, and they probably saw his goodbye.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks darkly. It’s none of their business anyway.

Rick had been right when they had talked just outside of Alexandria.

Merle is going to find out. And not just about the scars.

Daryl pushes the curtain aside to catch a last glimpse of his brother. Maybe not right now, but soon, probably. Eventually, anyway.

And he wants to have one last memory of the time Merle loved him as much as he loves Merle.

 

 

It’s midday when Daryl’s stomach starts to rumble. He’s splayed out on the couch opposite Glenn and Maggie, his boots pressed against Abraham’s thighs. The sun shines in through the window, making him sleepy with its heat. He doses, slipping in an out of consciousness.

He wakes up just long enough to see how Abraham leans forward to talk to Glenn, something about pancakes, to see how Rick reaches out to grab Michonne’s hand, to feel how Glenn brushes the hair out of his face.

Sometimes he sees flashes of Paul as he moves around. He talks to Michonne and Glenn, sleeps for a little while and then spends his time just staring out of the window, watching how the trees flash by.

With a soft groan, Daryl sits up and wipes the sleep out of his eyes.

‘Hey,’ Glenn says. His hand is on Maggie’s belly while his wife sleeps. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, fine.’ He digs around in his pocket to pull the oatcake out. ‘Hungry.’ After a quick headcount he breaks it into equal pieces. ‘Here,’ he passes it around his family and keeps one piece for Maggie inside the wrapping. ‘Denise made it. Said it should taste better than roadkill but I don’t know.’

Glenn laughs softly, ‘thanks, Dare.’

The teenager nods before glancing at Paul. He holds out a piece for him, too. The fact that his ears burn doesn’t bother him anymore. At least the blush isn’t spreading to his cheeks or the bridge of his nose.

‘Thank you, Daryl,’ Paul says with a surprised quirk of his eyebrows as he takes the piece.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl answers lamely. ‘I mean – you’re welcome.’ He breaks little piece off his own part and eats it, not really tasting anything as his mind races. After a couple of seconds of silence, he looks up. ‘You kicked Rick.’

Paul blinks and glances at the back of Rick’s head. ‘Yes. But I’ve already apologized for that.’

‘No,’ Daryl can feel the blush creep onto his cheeks now but he soldiers on. ‘I didn’t mean – just… you did, right? How? He says you’re a damn ninja or something.’

‘Oh. I studied martial arts before all of this.’

‘Like in them movies?’

Paul smiles. ‘I guess. They always made it seem a lot more spectacular though. I don’t come with special effects.’

‘Nah, you just climb out of third-floor windows to make me look stupid,’ Daryl flashes him a shy grin to show that he doesn’t mean it in a bad way.

It makes Paul laugh softy. ‘Yeah, sorry about that. It wasn’t your fault. I’m just really good,’ he throws the boy a wink before turning back to the window and checking their route.

‘Morgan does martial arts, too,’ Daryl says hastily to keep the conversation going. ‘He has a stick. A bo, I mean. He does stuff with a bo.’ He winces at his own words. ‘I was going to ask if he wanted to teach me, but… stuff happened and everything.’

‘It’s always useful to learn new skills,’ Paul nods. ‘Times are changing. Maybe he can still teach you when you go back.’

‘Yeah…’ Daryl watches how Paul’s attention slips away from him. He grits his teeth but can’t think of anything else to say to the man so he just slumps in his seat, tapping the toes of his boots together as he sulks a little bit. ‘What?’ he asks when he notices that Abraham is looking at him.

‘Nothing,’ the ginger says while he looks at Glenn.

‘ _What_?’ Daryl snaps at the Korean.

‘Nothing,’ Glenn smiles as he cards his fingers through his wife’s hair. ‘The cake was disgusting, by the way. Thanks for sharing.’

‘Shit, for real?’

‘Yup,’ Abraham grins. ‘Try some chocolate next time.’

‘Or flowers,’ Glenn adds with raised eyebrows.

‘Or ask him to dinn-‘

‘Whoa!’ Daryl grabs hold of the back of the couch when Rick slams on the breaks. ‘Yo Rick,’ he shouts, ‘what’s going on?’

‘We got a crash ahead,’ the cop says. ‘Looks like it just happened.’

‘Good to know that whatever this was just now, wasn’t the only thing to crash and burn, huh?’ Abraham laughs as he clips the teenager over the back of his head before leaning over Rick’s shoulder to look through the wind shield.

Luckily, Paul seems to be too occupied to notice the exchange. First because Maggie almost slid into his lap when Rick hit the brakes and then because he recognizes the vehicle. ‘It’s one of ours,’ he says as he leans down next to Rick to have a good look. Then he whirls around, opening the door and jumping out of the RV.

The car probably hit a small cluster of walkers. Daryl doesn’t understand why, it’s the middle of the day and the roads are clear, but he’s seen stranger stuff happen so he doesn’t question it until Rick pulls his gun on Paul.

‘If this is a trick,’ the cop says, ‘it won’t end well for you.’

Paul seems genuinely distressed however. He doesn’t raise his hands in surrender this time, just scans the ground next to Rick. ‘My people are in trouble. They don’t – we don’t have a lot of fighters. I know how it looks but I’ll play it out,’ he says. ‘Can I borrow a gun?’

‘No,’ Daryl says as he wanders back to the asphalt. ‘Got tracks right here,’ he tells Rick.

‘Human or.. I mean, can you tell whether they’re…’ Paul asks.

‘Human,’ Daryl mutters, ‘not dead yet. They went that way.’

‘Are they okay?’

‘They’re tracks, not medical records, good lord,’ Daryl snaps as he glares at the man. ‘They’re good enough to walk.’

‘Lead the way,’ Rick commands.

The tracks are easy enough to follow. Boots coated with blood; clear footprints on the asphalt for anyone with a good enough eye. They get lucky because the group had swerved into someone’s backyard, the soft earth embracing their heels and remembering their path. Daryl guides them around the corner, through an alley and then to a low building across a patch of grass.

The tracks end there.

‘They’ve got to be in there,’ Paul says as Rick inspects the front door. It’s dark inside. They can’t hear any movement.

‘We moving in or what?’ Abraham demands. His hand is already on his gun.

‘How do we know this ain’t firecrackers in a trashcan?’ Daryl asks.

‘You don’t!’ Paul says, sounding a little frustrated and very worried.

‘We’ll get your people,’ Rick promises as he reaches for his handcuffs. ‘You’re staying here with one of us.’

Paul looks over his shoulder at Michonne for help.

She shakes her head. ‘That’s the deal.’

With a sigh, Paul holds out his hands so Rick can cuff him.

‘Y’all go, just be careful,’ Maggie says.

Paul frowns and tries to look at her, almost shaking Rick off as he twists around but the cop yanks his free hand back and snaps the cuff closed. ‘ _You_ are staying? I thought…’ he looks at Daryl.

‘Yeah, we’ll be careful,’ Rick says with a grunt as he tightens the metal rings. ‘And if we’re going in there, not knowing what’s inside? I’m gonna need Daryl on my six.’

‘He’s just a -‘

Rick whistles sharply to get everyone in formation.

‘Fine,’ Paul grinds out as he takes a step away from the door. ‘Just hurry.’

Daryl rolls his shoulders back and takes his gun out.

‘You hear me whistle, you shoot him,’ Rick tells Maggie. ‘Let’s go.’

At the command, Daryl slips forward to pull the door open. The rest moves past him, with Glenn as the last one. It’s second nature to follow him now. The door falls closed behind them and both the man and the teenager look back at Maggie for a second.

She gives them a nod.

The group naturally breaks off in groups of two, which leaves Daryl with Glenn. They make their way down a darkened corridor. Walkers are snarling somewhere in the shadows. It doesn’t take them very long to show themselves.

One of them comes stumbling out of a room on their right. Daryl pulls Glenn’s shoulder back and jams his knife into the skull. He ducks down when he hears another one coming, thrusting Glenn to take care of it. The Korean does, driving his knife deep into a temple.

A noise in the room next to them causes Glenn to turn right sharply, gun raised and knife in his non-dominant hand.

Daryl follows him, darting forward to drag an office chair out of the way. Someone is hiding behind a filing cabinet.

‘Come out,’ Glenn hisses, ‘we’re with Jesus. Let’s go.’

‘I can’t go with you,’ a man says as he climbs to his feet. His arms are raised above his head. He glances between the strange man and the boy. ‘I’m looking for my friend. He’s close. He’s hurt from the crash.’

The guy only knows that his friend went down the hall in a panic.

Daryl rolls his eyes at Glenn and then ducks out of the office again. He stays silent and low until he spots Abraham’s figure down the hall. The ginger is pinning a guy to a wall. Daryl smirks and darts past him. ‘Come on, man, let’s go!’

They’re in and out in less than ten minutes.

Everyone who’d survived the car crash safe and sound outside, reunited with Jesus who looks happy to see them. Rick throws the keys to the cuffs at Daryl before turning to talk to one of the survivors, the one Daryl and Glenn had pulled from behind the cabinet.

Daryl sheaths his knife and grabs the cuffs, accidentally yanking Paul closer to him, before unlocking them.

‘Thank you again, Daryl.’

‘Weren’t nothing,’ the teenager shrugs. ‘They could have gotten themselves out of that mess. Don’t know why they hid like that. Were only, like, ten or something walkers inside.’

‘Ten is a lot if you’re already scared of just one.’

‘Pssh. How the hell do you make it if you’re scared of just the one?’

‘You rely on other people to save you,’ Paul says with a small smile. ‘And you hide behind walls. I care about my people, but they’re very good at both.’

Daryl grunts as he sticks the cuffs in his back pocket.

‘It looks like you’ve done this before.’

‘I hate walls,’ the teenager mutters as he walks away. ‘And don’t need nobody savin’ me.’

 

 

He sits with Maggie and the guy he’d helped save in the back for the rest of the way to Paul’s community. Mostly because he can’t bear the thought of Abraham making another joke at his expense in front of Paul, but also because he likes to hang out with Maggie. The last time they’d talked, she’d been calling Will an asshole and riling Merle up. He wants to make sure they’re okay.

They are.

She smiles when he settles down beside her, a little shy as he presses his leg against hers.

‘Talked to Merle,’ he nods. ‘He’s fine.’

‘That’s good,’ Maggie says even though it’s clear that she doesn’t care much about how Merle Dixon is doing.

‘He doesn’t know,’ Daryl tells her. ‘I don’t think he knows, about,’ he glances at the stranger who is sitting at the other side of the table, ‘about Will and, you know. How he did things.’

That causes the woman to frown, ‘people usually know, Dare. People who you’re close to, they usually know even if they pretend they don’t.’

‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know. And nobody is going to tell him, okay? Not you, not Glenn, _nobody_.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because my dad was a good man no matter what y’all think.’

‘Then it shouldn’t matter if Merle knows right? It shouldn’t change anything, if he’s such a good man.’

Daryl flashes her a small grin, ‘then you don’t know Merle. He won’t like it none that someone had put their hands on me. Even if it was dad. Y’all think he’s this terrible person because he used to drag me to the bar and everything, but that was the safest place I could be. With his friends. With him. At least he didn’t leave me alone at home with dad’s sleazy friends hanging around, trying to get funky. He used to have this gang, right? Merle? He used to have this gang. This girl was part of it. She worked at the tattoo shop.’

The corner of Maggie’s mouth quirks up. ‘Did she teach you how to draw?’

‘Yeah, she learned - _taught_ me how to do the wildflowers I did on Carl. Stuff like that. She taught me how to do skulls and everything as well, but, you know… They aren’t as fun.’

‘You like the flowers better?’

Daryl frowns, ‘they have meanings, you know? It’s not because they’re _pretty_. I can draw every wild flower you can find in Georgia. And I used to have this book about all the poisonous plants and flowers in the world. It was fucking awesome. Sometimes I’d draw those, too. A skull is just death. ‘s boring.’

‘Right,’ Maggie nods. Her attention is drawn away when the stranger starts to check the content of his bag. Pills rattle in their bottles. Daryl knows they’re some kind of medicine by the color of the containers. The man seems to be reading the labels.

He glances up when he feels Maggie’s gaze on him. ‘Name’s Harlan, by the way.’

‘Maggie,’ the woman smiles. ‘That’s my husband, Glenn. And this Daryl.’

Glenn is leaning against the doorpost and nods in acknowledgement.

‘We’re bringing back medication, so you may have saved more people than just us back there, Glenn. And Daryl, of course.’

‘You’re a doctor?’ Glenn asks.

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘You have any prenatal vitamins in there?’

Harlan smiles. ‘For you?’ he asks Maggie.

She nods.

‘Well, eh, I was an obstetrician before and I most definitely owe you. So I’d say you two just hit the jackpot.’

Daryl frowns and kicks Glenn’s boot.

The Korean glances at him. ‘Oh, it means he specialized in pregnancy and childbirth.’

The teenager grins. ‘Sweet!’

 

 

Daryl jumps out of the RV and into the puddle of mud Rick got the vehicle stuck in. He grimaces slightly before holding out his hand to Michonne, helping her get to dryer land without slipping.

‘My southern gentleman,’ she teases, squeezing his hand in thanks as she moves to take her spot at Rick’s right hand side.

Daryl rolls his eyes and goes to stand next to Paul.

‘That’s us,’ the man tells Rick. ‘That’s the Hilltop.’

The walls are made of wooden poles. They’re just as high as the ones at Alexandria, snaking away into the woods, making it impossible for them to see just how big this new community is. Smoke rises from behind the gates. Probably barrels to keep the fire going all day long. They had used the same system at their own place so the ones on watch could make tea and coffee to keep them going until Merle told them it would draw too much attention.

Smoke means people, after all.

Abraham grunts and passes an automatic rifle to Daryl.

Paul glances at it but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he starts to walk towards the gate. The rest of his people follow suit. Daryl’s family waits until Rick falls into step behind Paul.

The path leading up to the big gates is just wide enough for a single truck. It’s made of dirt. That last rain storm has done some damage to it, which is why the RV got stuck a little way down. Daryl jumps over potholes and kicks at clumps of dirt. He looks up with a jerk when a voice calls out to them.

‘Stop right there!’

Rick takes aim and Daryl brings his rifle up, too. Behind them, Michonne grabs her katana.

‘You gonna make us?’ Daryl yells up to the two men who are guarding the gate. He can’t make their faces out. He can only see the spears stacked beside them. The points made of metal and wicked looking. The two men are both wielding one.

‘Jesus, what the hell is this?’ one of them calls out, voice a little shrill.

‘Open the gates, Kal!’ Paul commands. ‘Freddie’s hurt,’ he holds out his hands to both Rick and his own men, trying to make peace. ‘Look,’ he tells the leader of Alexandria, ‘sorry about these guys.’ He turns back to his own people, ‘they get antsy standing up there all day doing nothing!’

The annoyance is clear in his voice.

‘They give up the weapons, then we’ll open the gates!’

‘Why don’t you come down here and get ‘em,’ Daryl challenges.

‘Gentlemen!’ Harlan dashes forward, ‘look, we vouch for these people, all right? They saved us out there! Lower the spears.’

‘Look, I’m not taking any chances,’ Rick says to Paul. ‘Tell your guy Gregory to come out here.’

‘No.’ Paul turns back to him, ‘don’t you see what just happened? I’m letting you keep your guns. We ran out of ammo months ago. I like you people. I trust you. Trust us.’

Rick looks at him for a long second and then raises his hand, twirling his finger and whistling sharply.

Daryl lowers his rifle immediately.

‘Open the gates, Kal.’

This time, they open. The heavy metal plates creak when they swing inwards, revealing several wooden structures and then a large building. People are walking around, talking to each other and doing their chores. A woman is leading a cow over to a small enclosure, a man is working on metal near an oven, another woman feeds a couple of chickens.

Daryl’s gaze roams over the faces and the buildings, trying to get a sense of the scale of the place while also trying to remember where everyone is. His grip on the rifle tightens. He glances over his shoulder at Glenn and Maggie, but they’re walking with the doctor at the back.

He takes a couple of quick steps so he’s right beside Rick.

The cop looks relaxed enough as he follows Paul towards the big building in front of them.

The gates close behind them.

‘There was a material yard for a power company nearby,’ Paul walks backwards so he can address Rick directly. ‘That’s how we put up the walls. A lot of people came from a FEMA camp. The trailers came with them.’

‘Federal Emergency Management Agency,’ Rick tells Daryl quietly as he looks around. ‘They were used at the refugee camps, quarantine zones, things like that.’

Daryl nods his understanding.

‘How did people find out about this place?’ Michonne asks.

Paul points at the large building. ‘That’s called Barrington House. The family that owned it gave it to the state in the ‘30’s. The state turned it into a living history museum. Every elementary school for 50 miles used to come here for field trips. This place was running a long time before the modern world built up around it. I think people came here because they figured it’d keep running after the modern world broke down.’ He points towards the top of the building, ‘those windows up there let us see for miles in every direction. It’s perfect for security. Come on,’ he smiles. ‘I’ll show you inside.’

 

 

He’s never been in a place as fancy as this. Hardwood floors gleam in the sunlight, rugs as big as his old bedroom in the trailer, chandeliers dangling from ceilings so high that Daryl actually needs to look up to see them. A large staircase leads to the second floor.

Daryl walks in and stares at the painting on one wall. People in fancy dresses and expensive suits, with wigs on and jewels around their necks. Smaller paintings of animals and the house, framed by wood coated with gold. He leans close to look at a teapot on a shelve somewhere. It’s made of silver and he can see his own reflection in it.

Someone has been polishing these damn things, he muses with amazement.

‘Good gracious Ignatius,’ Abraham says.

Daryl can’t be sure whether he’s impressed or disgusted.

‘Most of the rooms have been converted to living spaces,’ Paul says as he closes the door behind them. ‘Even the ones that weren’t bedrooms.’ He shoots Daryl a small smile.

Daryl quickly steps away from the silver teapot and scowls at his boots.

‘People live here _and_ the trailers?’ Rick asks.

‘We plan to build. There’s babies being born.’

A door behind Daryl opens and he quickly darts behind Paul, who is closest.

It’s a man, about Rick’s age, who comes out. He’s smiling and wearing a clean suit. Shirt, jacket, slacks. ‘Jesus,’ he greets cheerfully, ‘you’re back!’ Then his eye falls onto the teenager behind the scout before it flicks to the rest of the group. ‘With guests.’

‘Everyone, this is Gregory,’ Paul says. ‘He keeps the trains running on time around here.’

‘I’m the boss,’ Gregory says with his arms spread out.

Daryl already knows they’re not going to get along.

‘Well,’ I’m Rick, we have a community –‘

‘Why don’t y’all go get cleaned up, hmm?’ Gregory interrupts with a look at Daryl.

Paul shifts his weight and blocks his view.

‘We’re fine,’ Rick says but it sounds forced.

‘Jesus will show you where you can get washed up,’ Gregory continues like he hadn’t heard the man. He steps closer, ‘then come back down here when you’re ready. It’s hard to keep this place clean.’

For a moment, Daryl really isn’t sure what Rick is going to do. He grips his rifle a little tighter in case Rick shows him a lesson in southern hospitality.

But Rick just grits his teeth and nods. ‘Yeah, sure.’

Paul glances at Daryl and rolls his eyes. ‘Follow me,’ he says with a small smile as he ducks past Rick and heads up the staircase.

Abraham waits for Daryl at the bottom, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder and giving Gregory a nasty glare. ‘Come on, kiddo. Let’s go dirty it up upstairs.’

 

 

Maggie goes to talk to Gregory.

Daryl washes up in one of the bathrooms. Blood and mud swirls down the drain as he washes his face and arms under the tap, not bothering to take a shower even though Paul had told him they could. He fixes his hair, making sure that it’s brushed out of his face a bit and not a complete birds nest before he lobes down the large staircase to rejoin the rest of his family.

His gaze lands on Paul immediately.

The man has taken off his long coat and the vest. He’s wearing a simple white shirt. The sleeves have been rolled up past his elbows, revealing his pale forearms. The blue eyes are narrowed as he looks at Rick, who is sitting on a small cabinet.

Daryl had been the last one to clean up. It looks like the talks are already done because Maggie is standing on the side with Glenn next to her.

‘We want to generate trade, Gregory does,’ Paul insists, ‘but ammo isn’t something we urgently need.’

‘Well, how’s that?’ Rick asks.

‘The walls hold. We just brought in more medicine. Gregory wants the best deal possible.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Abraham folds his arms in front of his chest, ‘we want things, too.’

‘We need food,’ Rick nods. ‘We came all this way, we’re gonna get it.’

The threat sends shivers down Daryl’s spine.

Paul hears it, too. ‘I will talk to him and we will work this out,’ he tells the leader. ‘Circumstances change. We’re doing well now, and you will next. I will make him understand that. Can you give me a few more days?’

Rick sighs and looks away.

‘We can,’ Michonne tells the scout with a nod.

Daryl feels something jump inside his stomach. He grins at Glenn. They’re going to stay here for a few days.

Glenn lifts a questioning eyebrow at him. ‘What?’

Daryl freezes. ‘Nothing,’ he says quickly, his mind racing to find an excuse for his excitement. ‘They have a cow.’

The whole group turns to look at him.

‘Do they now?’ Rick asks as he stands up. There’s laughter in his blue eyes and he can barely hold back his grin. He turns to Paul. ‘How about a tour of this place? Glenn and Maggie can go see that doctor, Abe and Michonne can try to find something to get the RV out of that mess in front of your gates. Clear the path.’

Paul tilts his head to the side, ‘so a tour just for you and Daryl?’

‘Yeah,’ the cop puts a hand on the teenager’s shoulder. ‘Just us for now.’

‘Okay,’ the scout shrugs before walking towards the big doors. ‘Follow me.’

Just before they walk out of the building, Rick drags Daryl close to him. ‘What does this make me,’ he whispers to the boy, grinning widely, ‘wingman or chaperone?’ He laughs before shoving the boy towards Paul. ‘Go ask him about his cow.’

 

 

 


	69. Dare

 

* * *

 

 

 

It all happens so fast.

One second he’s practically skipping to catch up with Paul, who is going to give him and Rick a tour of Hilltop, and the next moment he is breaking some guy’s arm.

He grabs the wrist, straightens the arm and then just _pulls_.

The man screams.

Daryl pants as he takes a step back, caught off guard by the sudden adrenaline spike. Everything was quiet until some group came back to Hilltop, talking about a drop being light and some guy being taken and then Gregory had a knife in his belly and Rick was punching a guy and-

‘Stay back!’ a guy roars. ‘Anybody who tries to stop me is killing my brother!’ It’s Ethan. He’s sitting on top of Rick and presses a knife to his throat. The eyes are crazed as he looks at Glenn, who’d tried to come to Rick’s aid.

‘Drop it,’ Michonne says.

It causes Ethan to look her way.

It’s the last thing he ever does. Rick has managed to grab his own knife and stabs him in the neck. Blood pours out over him before he manages to shove the body to the side. It coats his chin, his neck and shirt. Daryl barely sees it anymore.

He has drawn his gun and is pointing it to the guy who’d been trying to choke Abraham before he got his arm broken by an angry teenager.

Everyone is staring at them. At Rick, who just brushes himself off and looks around the area, checking on his people before meeting the other gazes. ‘What?’ he asks.

‘Ethan!’ the man near Daryl shouts. He’s holding on to his arm, trying to crawl to his dead friend. ‘You killed him!’

‘He tried to kill Gregory, then me,’ Rick says.

A woman comes out of nowhere. She punches Rick so hard that he falls to one knee.

Michonne works her to the ground, having Rick’s back. ‘Don’t!’ she warns as the woman glares up at her.

There’s a lot of shouting. The guys from the gates come forward with their spears, demanding that Rick drops the python but Rick refuses and points it at their heads instead.

‘Everyone, this is over!’ Paul shouts as he runs over, planting himself between Rick and the members of his community. Arms outspread to keep them both at bay, voice stern when he turns to Rick first, ‘it’s over. Ethan was our friend,’ he turns to his people, ‘but let’s not pretend he was anything more than a coward who attacked us. He did this. And these people stopped him,’ he gestures to Rick’s group.

Daryl slowly lowers his gun. He looks around the area. The blood, the body now being cradled by a crying woman. The man who is kneeling next to him, hunched over and biting back sobs of pain, clutching his own arm.

‘What can I do?’ Rick asks.

‘Put the gun away,’ Paul answers. ‘You’ve done enough.’

Rick does as he’s told.

‘You need to know that things aren’t as simple as they might seem. Just give me some time.’

Harlan comes running to tend to Gregory’s stab wound and the other man’s broken arm. Maggie, Glenn and Michonne help them carry the wounded towards the medical bay.

Daryl looks down and kicks Abraham’s boot. ‘Hey, man,’ he murmurs. ‘You good?’

The ginger seems a little dazed as he grins up at the teenager. ‘Yeah. I’m better than all right. You’re one tough son of a bitch, you know that? Thanks, kid.’

‘Ain’t no kid,’ Daryl huffs as he claps their hands together to haul the man to his feet.

 

 

Paul is standing in front of the fire place an hour later. He’s pushed some of the long strands of hair behind his ear and fidgets with his hands while he speaks. Daryl lets his gaze travels over his frame, missing most of the conversation as he wonders who the hell wears a white shirt during the apocalypse and why the hell he looks so good in it. The two belts are gone. Daryl knows that Tara still has his knives so maybe he just doesn’t want the extra weight on him right now. He doubts that the man doesn’t have any backups however. He had a backup in his boot, for Christ’s sake, surely he has more knives laying around.

Daryl’s attention is drawn back to the actual conversation when Rick pushes himself away from the desk. ‘We heard the name “Negan”. A while back, Daryl and Abraham had a run-in with his men. Who is he?’

‘Negan’s the head of a group of people he calls the Saviors. As soon as the walls were built, the Saviors showed up. They met with Gregory on behalf of their boss. They made a lot of demands, even more threats,’ Paul says. ‘And he killed one of us. Rory. He was sixteen years old. They beat him to death right in front of us.’

Glenn glances at Daryl and shivers.

‘Said we needed to understand, right off the bat,’ Paul continues. ‘Gregory’s not exactly good at confrontations. He’s not the leader I would’ve chosen, but he helped make this place what it is and the people like him.’

‘He made the deal,’ Maggie says.

‘Half of everything,’ Paul nods. ‘Our supplies, our crops, our livestock. It goes to the Saviors.’

‘What do you get in return?’ Glenn asks.

‘They don’t attack this place. They don’t kill us.’

‘Why not just kill them?’ Daryl asks with a shrug.

Paul turns to him. His expression is hard to read. ‘Most people here don’t even know how to fight, even if we had ammo.’

‘Well, how many people does Negan have?’ Rick wants to know.

‘We don’t know,’ the scout admits. ‘We’ve seen groups as big as twenty.’

‘Now, hold up,’ Daryl scoffs. ‘So they show up, they kill a kid and you give them half of everything? These dicks just got a good story. The bogeyman. He ain’t shit.’

‘Well, how do you know?’

Abraham flicks his fingers from where he’s sitting on one of the fancy chairs. ‘A month ago, we took his guys out PDQ. Left them in pieces and puddles. Send them a proper Dixon goodbye with an RPG. Not that one,’ he adds when Paul’s gaze snaps back to Daryl. ‘The one that’s old enough to drive. You haven’t met him yet. Tough as nails, both of them.’

Daryl smirks with pride. ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,’ he tells Paul. ‘If we go get your man back, kill Negan, take out his boys, will you hook us up? We want food, medicine and one of them cows.’

Paul looks at Rick.

Rick shrugs. ‘Confrontation’s never been something we’ve had trouble with.’

‘I’ll take it to Gregory,’ Paul says but he looks troubled as he walks away.

 

 

Rick, Michonne, Glenn and Maggie stay behind to work on the new deal with Gregory and Paul. That leaves Abraham and Daryl to get the RV out of the mud pool in front of the gates. The teenager doesn’t mind much. He listens carefully to Abraham’s instructions, grits his teeth when he needs to give the RV a hard enough push to cause it to rock slightly and tries again when he messes it up on the first try.

By the time Abraham hoots and manages to steer to RV onto dry land, Daryl is covered in mud and sweating. He jumps onto the back of the vehicle, gripping the ladder tightly even though his hands keep slipping from the metal.

Inside the gates, he washes his arms and face as Abraham holds up a canister with rain water, creating a make-shift shower for the boy.

‘Wanna head back in?’ the ginger laughs when Daryl shakes his hair dry like a dog.

‘Best not. They want to keep the place all tidy ‘nd everything, gotta get dry or I’ll drip all over their damn carpets. You can go back, though.’

‘And leave your skinny ass here by its lonesome? Hell no.’

Daryl wipes his wet hair out of his face and glances at the people surrounding them. Most don’t pay them any mind. They’re gathering supplies for a pyre to burn their dead on. ‘You don’t trust ‘em?’

‘Not one bit,’ Abraham says. ‘You take a bunch of traitors and cowards and stick them in a fancy house. Sooner or later, your back is getting stabbed. Got to watch each other’s, is all I’m saying.’

‘They’re not _all_ traitors and cowards.’

‘You mean Jesus?’ the man asks as he surveys the area. ‘No, but he’s clever. That’s a whole other kind of pain in our asses.’

Daryl hums as he looks around the area. ‘Let’s check this place out while we’re here.’

‘Roger that.’

Almost as soon as they set out, Daryl realizes that Hilltop is much smaller than Alexandria. Barrington house looms large at the end of the footpath but the walls creep up right behind it. They start on their right, because Daryl is leading the way and he’s spotted several animals in their pens. Chicken that scurry around nervously as his heavy boots stomp past, riling each other up until they’re just a flurry of screeches and feathers. The other pen holds the cows. Just a couple of small ones. Daryl can’t tell whether they’re just young or whether they’re never going to get any bigger. They’re obviously used to being handled. They don’t shy away when the teenager leans over the low fence to stroke their backs, they just watch him with and flick their tails to chase some flies away.

The trailers line up next to the wall. Six of them in total. They’re quite big so Daryl guesses that a lot of people could live in them which makes it hard to estimate how many people are actually part of Hilltop. He spots people sitting on the little steps but they eye him warily and he makes sure to not come too close to them. Most of them saw how Rick had killed their friend and how he had broken some guy’s arm.

So he ducks between the trailers, curious and eager to find out what’s hiding in every crook and corner of this place. He wonders whether Paul lives in one of the trailers or whether he has a room in Barrington house.

Daryl jumps up to inspect a large tractor that’s standing at the back, behind a couple of small trees, partly hidden from view. It almost looks too big for Hilltop. There are fields on the other side of Barrington house, but hardly large enough fields to need such a tractor. Maybe it had been part of this place before the walls had been rigged up, when the world had been bigger.

He slinks back to the main area in front of the house and walks over to where a guy is bringing a hammer down on glowing metal. A blacksmith, he realizes with a sense of awe because he’s never seen one at work before. The stuff of stories and movies, he thinks when sparks fly, red and angry. The clanking of metal on metal causes the hair on his arms to rise.

The man looks up for a brief second when the teenager leans against one of the poles, obviously entranced by the work. His gaze shifts to the ginger standing guard behind him. He doesn’t say anything, just shoves the piece of metal back into the ovens before wiping the sweat from his brow.

‘Hey,’ Daryl says when it looks like the man is taking a break. ‘What are you working on?’

‘Spearheads.’

Daryl remembers the wicked looking metal on the thin poles from up on the gate. ‘Cool. Do you make all the weapons here?’

The man shrugs. ‘I try to teach others, they do some of the work now, too. The easy stuff, I guess.’

‘Do you make knives?’

‘I do. Why? You need one? It’ll cost you.’

‘I don’t need one,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘I know that Paul carries three, right? Did you make those or did he find them somewhere?’

The man throws his gloves onto a table and grabs a bottle of water, taking a couple of swallows before turning back to the teenager. ‘Yeah, Jesus carries three, usually. Two he found when this all started. I made one for him. It was a special request.’

‘The one on his ankle?’

The blacksmith frowns. ‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘It’s weird lookin’.’

That makes the man laugh, caught off guard by the honesty. ‘Oh – yeah, I guess so. The small one he carries is a throwing knife, so it doesn’t have the usual thick handle. It’s supposed to just glide through the air so it has to be as thin as possible, streamlined, too. You should ask him to throw it for you once, you’ll see what makes it special.’

Daryl smiles and wraps his arms around the pole, scratching at the wood with his fingernails. ‘Yeah, maybe. How did he pay for it?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ya said it’d cost me. How much?’

The man shrugs. ‘We trade. You give me something I want, I give you something you want. Or you give to the community. Food. Supplies. Jesus doesn’t have to pay. Nobody here is able to repay him for all that he’s done. The least we can do is give him something when he finally asks for it.’

‘Right,’ the teenager pushes himself way from the pole, ‘don’t want one anyway. Was just curious. Thanks.’

‘Yeah,’ the man nods, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Daryl Dixon.’

‘Okay. See you around, Daryl.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl gives him a lazy salute before wandering back to Barrington house. After a couple of steps, he notices that Abraham is watching him. ‘What?’ he asks as he runs up the steps two at the time, balancing on the ridge of the top one, waiting for the man to catch up.

‘Nothing, just – you’re a curious one, aren’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want to know how shit works. How people work.’

‘Know thy enemy,’ Daryl grins at him.

‘That’s Merle but not you,’ Abraham grins back. ‘You think everyone is your friend until they prove you wrong.’ He laughs and reaches out to ruffle the boy’s hair. ‘That’s Glenn, all right. Through and through.’

Daryl freezes on the top step. He watches how the man opens the large doors and enters the house. He doesn’t follow.

 

 

It’s dark when he wakes up. He remembers falling asleep in front of the fireplace, curled up next to the heat, enjoying the way the warm air would dance over his face. It’s colder now. He digs his fingers into the pillow to warm them up, stretching a little bit even though he doesn’t want to move. His hip hurts, his shoulder too. He’s on the ground with only the pillow to make it more comfortable.

He remembers falling asleep to the soft murmur of his family.

Jesus has given them a room in Barrington house. Multiple rooms at first, but Rick insisted that they’d rather spend the night together even if that meant some would have to sleep on the floor. It was quickly decided that Michonne and Maggie could have the bed while Abraham took the couch. Glenn had an armchair while Daryl had curled up on the floor in front of the fire.

The fire has gone out.

There’s a blanket draped over his shoulder now.

‘I don’t know, but he must know _something_. He was with them.’

Rick’s voice startles Daryl even though it’s soft and low, just a rumble in the darkness. The teenager slowly sits up, careful not to make a sound. When he looks at the bed, he can see Rick’s outline. He’s sitting with his back to the boy, on the edge of the matrass. Maggie is sitting next to him.

‘He won’t talk,’ Maggie says just as softly.

‘He will. What does he have to hide? He’s with us now.’

‘Is he?’

Rick grunt as he scratches at his cheek. ‘He’s with Daryl, at least.’

Maggie sighs as she leans back against her pillows, one arm wrapped around her belly. ‘I don’t like him. There’s something about him that doesn’t add up. He loves Daryl, I know that, but he left him with Will. He threatens to smack him around to teach him a lesson but Daryl claims his brother has never put a hand on him. ‘

‘Daryl thinks he didn’t know. About Will.’

‘I think he’s right,’ Maggie answers. ‘Does that make it better or worse?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rick sighs. He leans on his elbows and runs his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know anymore. Maybe Daryl is right, you know? Maybe we’re sticking our noses where they don’t belong.’

‘He needs us.’

‘You never know where you stand with him. You push and he bares his teeth, you pull and he runs into the other direction, you leave him be and he just… he disappears.’

‘Isn’t that the whole idea of parenting?’ the woman asks with a smile. ‘You and Carol are the only ones with experience here. We’re all looking at you.’

Rick shakes his head. ‘I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. I’m trying, but… Carl didn’t want to come out here. He said that a kid with a messed up face wouldn’t make a good first impression. What do you do with that? Tell him he’s wrong even though he’s not? That it’s not his fault? Leave him behind because you want to protect him from people who will do a double-take?’

‘You’re giving him time to figure things out. That’s all he needs,’ Maggie says. ‘Let him do it on his terms. Carl’s strong. He’ll figure things out.’

‘I hope so.’

They’re quiet for a little while. Daryl holds his breath as he rolls onto his back to alleviate the pain in his hip and shoulder. The darkness is slowly melting away now that he’s been awake for a couple of minutes. He can see that Glenn is curled up in an armchair, his feet on the couch on which Abraham is sleeping.

Michonne is in the bed with Maggie, facing him. Her eyes are closed, one arm curled around her pillow and with a blanket tucked around her shoulders, just like Daryl had. He suspects Rick had been making his rounds before settling down next to Maggie.

‘I wanted Carl to be here. To see what the new world could become,’ Rick says now. ‘Communities, working together. A new world.’

‘Is that why you let Dare come with us?’

Daryl turns his head to see how Rick nods. He feels bad for listening in on them but he also wants to hear what they’re saying when they think he can’t hear them.

‘You saw him,’ Rick says. ‘He’s strong. I meant what I told Jesus out there; we need him on our six. He’s not a little boy anymore. He’s a man now, but he still has that…’ he searches for the right word. ‘You saw. The doors opened and he hid behind Jesus when Gregory came out. He’s still not sure. He hasn’t found his footing yet.’

Maggie nods. ‘But he’s getting there. He’s not scared of speaking up anymore. He’s getting better at controlling his temper, walking away when he has to, setting boundaries.’ She plucks at the blanket that covers her legs. ‘He likes Jesus.’

‘Yes.’ There’s a smile in the words, Rick rubs at his beard to hide the physical evidence.

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Jesus?’ Rick looks at Maggie. ‘I trust him to know that there will be consequences if he tries something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Trick us. Not honoring the deal we’re trying to make.‘

‘So we trust Jesus but not Gregory?’

‘Gregory is a coward. He might be in charge but Jesus seems to be pulling a lot of strings. He knows these people. They respect him. We need him on our side.’

‘He is,’ Maggie says while she wriggles her feet so her toes dig under Rick’s tights to keep them warm. ‘I like him, too. I like this community.’

‘Well, they have a cow, so that’s something.’

Maggie chuckles. ‘That was cute. He got all excited about it.’

Rick laughs softly, shaking his head a little.

‘What?’ the woman asks curiously. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Rick assures her. ‘Abraham went with him while he went exploring earlier. Said Dare got to pet the cow.’

Maggie laughs, too. ‘Sometimes I just want to lock that boy in a room somewhere and pinch his cheeks all day,’ then she sobers a little. ‘There are days when I think we don’t get to come back from all of this. When I think about what we had to do to get here, no matter how justified it was. We still did it and we carry it with us. But that boy… He gets excited about petting a cow and jokes around with Carl all day and blushes when he dances with Rosita… And he butchered a man inside a church, watched Shane get… He carries all of that but is still so light on his feet.’

‘That’s why I wanted him to come,’ Rick says softly. ‘Because he’s both. He’s strong, stronger than most, but he’s also kind. He’s going to be the future of these places. Him and Carl, Judith, and Enid. And your little one. He needs to know that the world is bigger than Alexandria. That there’s more than just our walls.’

‘Shane once told Glenn that Will raised one hell of a kid,’ Maggie smiles.

Rick nods. He looks at Maggie. ‘We all did.’

‘He used to get so angry when someone would imply that he wasn’t Will’s.’

Rick snorts, ‘Carl got a right hook every time he said Shane was his dad.’

‘He loved Will.’

‘Yeah. But he loved Shane, too. And he loves you and Glenn. Carl.’

‘You,’ Maggie laughs as she kicks the cop lightly. ‘I’ve got a feeling that he tells you things he won’t tell me or Glenn.’

‘That’s not true,’ Rick says with a shake of his head. ‘And it wouldn’t matter if he did.’

‘No. I’m just glad he trusts us enough to let us in. In the days after Shane’s death? I feared we were going to lose him.’

The cop nods and runs a hand through his curls again. ‘Yeah. We didn’t though. We got him back. He got himself back. Like I said; sometimes it’s difficult to know when to push or pull or leave him be.’ Rick shifts his weight a little bit, ‘there’s something going on with him right now.’

Maggie cocks her head to the side, ‘what?’

Daryl freezes.

‘I think I know what it is,’ Rick says slowly. ‘It’s not my secret to share, but… I hope he works it out on his own. That he knows we’re here, no matter what. That we love him, no matter what. I hope he tells you and Glenn. I just hope he figures it all out.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

Rick sighs. ‘It’s nothing bad. It’s… It doesn’t matter. To us, at least. He’s scared, but… I just hope he knows we’re here for him. It doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have said anything. Get some sleep,’ the cop stands and watches how Maggie settles down. ‘He’s _fine_ ,’ he assures her when she protests softly. ‘He’s fine, I promise.’

Daryl listens how Rick walks to the other armchair and sits down. His boots hit the surface of the coffee table and then everything is quiet for a long time. When he’s sure that Maggie is asleep, he sits up again and grabs his gun from under the bed, stuffing it into his holster before getting to his feet. He’s too nervous to sleep now. His heart is still hammering in his throat.

He creeps towards the door.

‘Don’t spy on us again,’ Rick says, voice soft and low.

Daryl freezes first and then rolls his shoulders back before glaring in the general direction of the armchair. It’s too dark to make the cop out. He’s sitting in the shadows of the night. ‘Stop talkin’ about me behind my back then.’

‘We would have talked with you if we’d known you were awake.’

‘You knew I was awake.’

‘Maybe I wanted you to hear some things, even if you’re too scared to talk about them.’

‘Like what?’ Daryl scoffs, trying to bluff his way out of this conversation. ‘I ain’t scared of nothing.’

‘Like how you can’t keep your eyes off of Jesus.’

‘Pssh. That ain’t true.’

‘Please don’t lie to me,’ the cop sighs as he rubs at his eyes. ‘And stop lying to yourself, Dare. It’s okay. Whatever it is that you’re going through; _it’s okay_. Are you just confused about things, or is it a crush, or…’

‘ _Shut up_ ,’ the teenager hisses. ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.’

Rick laughs softly, ‘just because I never had those feelings for a guy doesn’t mean I don’t know, Dare. We can talk about it. Or you can talk to Glenn, or Maggie or –‘

 _‘I ain’t like that_! Shut up about it!’

‘You think I don’t know why you said goodbye to Merle like that? You already know what this is and you already know you can’t hide it forever. You don’t have to, Dare. We _love_ you. And if Merle reacts badly? That would hurt and it would be awful, but you’ll still have _us_. All of us.’

‘Love is always conditional,’ Daryl remembers. ‘Blood.’

‘Then why did you say goodbye to your brother like you were going to lose him?’

The teenager presses his fingernails into his palm. ‘Because sometimes even blood ain’t enough. You’re right. I just – you’re right, about… about me, but I ain’t… I ain’t, ya know, like Eric or Aaron or…’ it’s hard to breathe suddenly.

Rick gets up.

‘ _Don’t_ ,’ Daryl says, taking a step back. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want…’

‘Time to stop running, Dare,’ the cop tells him. ‘It’s time to be your own person. You’re not Will or Merle and you’re not Shane or Glenn. Not Carl. You’re not a Dixon. You’re _Daryl_.’

‘I ain’t runnin’.’

‘But you’re still going for the door.’

‘I just…’ the boy swallows thickly, ‘I can’t.’

Rick sighs and sits back down with his head in his hands. ‘Stay inside the house,’ he says. ‘Please. And think about what I said.’

 

 

‘So you’re Glenn’s.’

The voice drags Daryl out of his thoughts. He’s sitting on a railing in the attic of Barrington house. He’d climbed a set of stairs to get to the watchtower. The large windows would offer a nice view of the surrounding woods during the day, but it’s night now. There’s nothing but darkness and stars out there. If he’d turn to the other side, he could see the faint glow of a small fire near the gates of Hilltop, but he likes the stars better.

There’s a sketchbook in his lap, a pencil between his teeth. The tips of his fingers are stained gray from where he’d rubbed at the paper to get the shading just right. Every inch of the first sheet is covered.

He’s not surprised to find Paul standing there. The man is smiling, something which he seems to do a lot. It does something funny to Daryl’s stomach. He pays it no mind. He’s not in the mood right now. He doesn’t feel like putting up a front, smiling back or trying to strike up another conversation. He’s too tired to want to impress the guy.

‘I didn’t know what to think when Maggie asked me for some paper and a pencil,’ Paul says with a nod at the sketchbook. ‘You like to draw?’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Daryl looks down at his drawing and adds a detail in the right corner.

‘When I first saw you, I thought you were Rick’s.’ Paul sits down next him, slowly, as if he expects to be send away.

‘Ain’t nobody’s no more.’

That draws Paul’s gaze to him. The smile fades a little. ‘Did something happen between you and Glenn?’

Daryl scoffs. ‘No. I just ain’t _his_ , a’right? I’m a Dixon, just…. I’m a Dixon, not a Rhee, or Grimes or Ford or… not a Walsh, even. A Dixon.’

‘Abraham said you had a brother.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl looks down at his drawing, letting his pencil tap against the paper.

‘Blood matters, right? You’re both Dixon’s, so…’

‘We always say that, right?’ Daryl bites out bitterly. ‘The most important thing; blood. But then shit happens and they know things and suddenly it doesn’t matter at all and you’re just… not, anymore.’

‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Paul says softly.

‘Pretty soon I won’t be a Dixon at all, I think. Just Daryl,’ he lets the pencil drag over the paper, creating a stark, jagged line over his drawing. It ruins it. ‘It don’t matter,’ he wipes his hair out of his face and glares at the stars, and then at Paul. ‘Stop stickin’ your nose in. Ain’t nothing to you.’

He’s glad that Paul just takes that in stride, that he doesn’t point out that he hadn’t been sticking his nose in at all, that he was the one who shared something that needed an explanation.

Paul shifts, long fingers curling around the railing next to his thighs. He looks down at his knees. ‘Do you want me to leave, Daryl?’

‘No.’

Paul nods. ‘I’m glad. I like it up here. It’s the furthest away you can get while still being right here. We say we use it for surveillance, security, but most people here don’t see the point. The walls hold and there are people to guard them. They think it’s enough. It’s usually just me up here, whenever I need it.’

Daryl frowns, ‘need it?’

The man shrugs as he looks towards the gate, watching how the silhouettes of his friends guard the wall. ‘I like being on my own. I like being around people, too, but sometimes I just need a moment to recharge. Before all of this, I had a lot of friends. There wasn’t a weekend that I didn’t have some kind of party, a birthday or a festival to go to. During the week I would visit friends, have coffee, eat dinner at their place to catch up. They were great people, good friends,’ Paul says with a small smile, ‘but I was happiest when I finally pulled that door closed behind me and walked home on my own again. It wasn’t really me, all that social stuff.’

‘Why’d you do it then?’

‘Peer pressure,’ Paul shrugs. ‘Believe it or not; I’m actually very easy to like.’ He flashes the teenager a grin.

‘When you’re not stealing someone’s stuff,’ Daryl grins back, blushing a little because he knows how easy it is to like the man.

‘Yeah. But seriously, people would just invite me all the time and I was scared that if I said no too often, they would stop doing it. That I would lose them all together.’ He kicks his heels against the spindles. ‘That I would end up alone.’

‘Thought you said you liked being alone,’ Daryl murmurs as he scratches at his nose.

‘Sometimes, but other times it’s more fun to have people to go to the movies with, or a concert or a play. I might not have looked forward to it all, but I usually enjoyed myself once I was there. My friends were great. Being alone was great, too. I needed both in my life.’

Daryl nods his understanding. ‘So that’s why you come here? To have both?’

‘Yeah. People don’t like to talk to Gregory directly so they come to me. It forces me to engage with the community, listen to everyone’s stories and opinions, try to work something out. Sometimes I come here at night to recharge, be alone for a bit. Other times I go on a run. We don’t have a lot of runners so everyone is very grateful when I leave and come back days later. I don’t think they realize I’m doing it for my own sake, too. It’s not just about the supplies.’

‘I get it.’

Paul looks at him again, ‘yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ the teenager rubs one sweaty palm dry on his jeans. ‘We had a place for a while – another place, ya know? Were lots of people there. There weren’t too many kids and something had happened earlier that caused me to have a bit of a reputation of being, like, _wild_ , I guess. Some people knew my dad, so that didn’t help neither. They were always trying to talk to me, get me to teach them shit, ask me stuff. I used to explode every five seconds. Don’t like it when people are all up in my business.’

Paul smiles and nods.

‘Shane let me hunt on my own. That helped,’ Daryl murmurs as he gnaws on the back of his pencil before remembering that it isn’t his. He taps it against his bottom lip for a second before lowering it again. ‘Taught me how to politely tell them to fuck off, too, so…’

‘That helped, too?’ Paul laughs and knocks their shoulders together lightly. His gaze glides back to the gates, checking it, before he looks up at the stars again. ‘Who is Shane?’

‘Was. He was my friend, took care of me. He was Rick’s partner on the force, before.’

‘I’m sorry you lost him,’ the man says. ‘I didn’t mean to… I’m just trying to figure your group out.’

‘Ain’t much to figure out. I was twelve when it all started, lost my dad early on. Was just us and then it was just me, so Shane kinda took me in, I guess. Looked after me. Found Rick, Maggie, Michonne, all the others. Lost Shane. Now I’m just… everybody’s. Nobody’s.’

‘What about Glenn? You seem pretty close.’

Daryl snorts. ‘Was the first person of that group I met. My dad, ya know, didn’t like him much,' he ducks his head a little so he won’t have to look at Paul. ‘Glenn bein’ a chink and all.’

Paul doesn’t react visibly to the slur. He doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t frown. ‘But you liked him?’

‘He gave me an oreo.’

The man next to him chokes on an unexpected laugh.

Daryl grins and blushes.

‘So that’s the way to your heart, huh? Chocolate.’

‘Yeah,’ the teenager smirks. ‘I were in the middle of eatin’ some when you went stomping around on the roof of that truck. It went down with it. ‘s why I hate you.’

‘You don’t hate me,’ Paul grins as he knocks their shoulders together again.

‘Nah,’ Daryl admits. He sneaks a peek out of the corner of his eye. The other man is still grinning, he can see flashes of white teeth. The skin around his blue eyes wrinkles while he tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. _God, you’re beautiful_ , Daryl thinks hazily before quickly looking away when the blue eyes settle on him. ‘You’re all right.’

‘High praise indeed,’ the man teases. ‘Talking about high praise,’ he pushes one of Daryl’s hands off the sketchbook in his lap, leaning a little into the boy’s space to do so, ‘this is really good. Beautiful. I should get you some colored pencils as well.’

Daryl hums and shrugs.

‘Shame about this,’ Paul runs his finger over the jagged line in the middle.

‘I can cover it up, ain’t nothing,’ Daryl says before biting the inside of his cheek. ‘It’s stupid anyway, just something I liked to do, before, ya know? I do other shit now. I hunt,’ he says quickly, thinking it’s more macho than drawing. ‘Build traps, too. I used to drive a motorcycle.’

Paul gives him an amused look. ‘Really?’

‘Build it myself in Aaron’s garage. Some asshole stole it though. It’s gone now.’

‘Shame,’ he looks down at the paper again. ‘Can I have it? The sketch,’ he says when the boy frowns at him. ‘I’d like to have it.’

Daryl squirms a little, ‘sure, I mean… yeah. Want me to cover it up real quick?’

‘It’s your work. You’re the artist. Is it done or should I wait?’

‘You should wait a little bit.’ Daryl shoots him a small smile and goes back to work, blending the shadows and creating a new flower with sharp lines to cover up the snag. It only takes him a couple of minutes but it’s a couple of minutes next to Paul, which is why he decided to correct it. ‘Okay,’ he says when he’s just fuzzing with shadows and fears that Paul can tell. He rips the page out. ‘Here.’

‘Thank you, Daryl,’ Paul says as he take it, He holds it in both hands, careful not to crease it. ‘It really is beautiful.’

‘They’re poisonous.’

Paul lifts an eyebrow, ‘they’re real flowers?’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ Daryl swings his legs nervously. ‘They used to grow in the forest behind our trail- home. Our home,’ he says quickly, trying to cover up the fact that he used to live in a trailer park.

‘So it’s a self-portrait in a way, then. An origin story,’ Paul smiles as he smooths the paper out once more before leaning forward on his knees, eyes on the stars again. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Daryl looks at Paul. At the way the other man stares out of the window, clearly lost in thought, the way he pushes some strands of his brown hair behind one ear. At his blue eyes, those pale lips, that little scar just below his eyebrow.

Paul isn’t looking at him. That’s a good thing. A great thing because Daryl thinks he would never have dared if the other man had been looking at him.

But he does, now.

He shifts so he’s sideways and then leans in.

He kisses Paul’s cheek.

 

 

 


	70. Sudden understanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings; foul language, homophobic language and slurs.

 

* * *

 

 

 

‘Ah.’

It feels like he’s dying. He can’t really breathe, doesn’t really want to either because his lips are still so close to Paul’s cheek, almost touching, and he fears that even exhaling would break this moment. He doesn’t want this to end. Not only because he can still feel the texture of Paul’s skin on his lips, but also because he fears what will happen when he draws back.

This is real, he suddenly realizes. It’s not his dark bedroom and his thoughts, it’s Paul and this will have consequences.

He feels sick.

It doesn’t help that the soft sound Paul made is not one of pleasure. It’s not one of disgust either, just a soft puff of air that signals sudden understanding.

The man slowly turns his head, looking at the boy out of the corner of his eye, not facing him because that would cause their heads to collide.

‘I’m sorry,’ Daryl says before he realizes he’s opened his mouth. His voice sounds small and fragile. ‘I didn’t-‘ he swallows thickly, his nose brushing against Paul’s cheek when he looks away from those blue eyes, down at that shoulder that reminds him of the sliver of skin he’d seen.

‘Don’t run,’ Paul says softly. ‘Please don’t run.’

Daryl grips the railing tighter, trying to force himself to stay. The urge to bolt is there, electrifying his nerve endings and causing bile to rise in his throat. His palms are sweaty. He can feel a blush taint the bridge of his nose.

‘Why did you do that?’

The boy groans in the back of his throat, squeezing his eyes closed. His shoulders sag a little to make himself as small as possible without moving his hands from the railing.

‘I think I have the right to an answer, Daryl.’

‘I don’t know,’ the boy whispers. ‘I just – I wanted to. I’m sorry.’ He winces when he realizes he’s never thought about whether Paul is actually gay. He’s thought about it of course, but only in absolute certainties. He’s only imagined Paul to be gay, never considered the possibility that he might not be. He’s been so wrapped up in his own world that he’d never thought that Paul could be straight.

‘Okay,’ Paul nods. He smiles at the boy. ‘At least that’s a good reason.’

Daryl opens one eye. ‘Why the fuck else would I…’ He doesn’t want to finish that sentence and make it even more real.

‘Not everyone’s intentions are so pure,’ the man smirks. ‘People kiss other people for a whole lot of reasons. Manipulation, humiliation, for example. It’s easy to turn people’s affections into something cruel, especially when they’re… outside of the norm, I guess. Different.’

‘Are you… different?’

The smirk fades into a gentle smile. The skin around Paul’s eyes wrinkles. ‘Are you asking whether I’m gay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I am,’ Paul nods. ‘And you’re going to hate me forever for saying this, but; I’m very flattered and think you’re great, but… I’m,’ he laughs, ‘I’m _old_ , Daryl. I’m almost twice your age. And while it’s not really _I could have been your dad_ territory, it’s close enough that I fear for my balls when Maggie finds out.’ He laughs when Daryl winces again. The boy drops his forehead to the man’s shoulder with a groan. ‘It’s not just the fear of Maggie that’s making me say no though. I can’t think of you like that, I’m sorry. I look at you and you’re just… you’re a kid.’

‘Ain’t.’

‘To me, you are,’ Paul says with finality. ‘And like I said; I’m very flattered. Someone is going to be very lucky to have you at their side, one day.’

Daryl tries to breathe in deeply but that just makes things worse because he’s still leaning on the other man. His cheeks are burning with humiliation, his ears, too. He can’t bring himself to sit up and face the man.

Paul lets him take his time. He looks out of the window again. ‘First kiss?’ he asks the boy.

‘Yeah…’

The shoulders shake a little to indicate that Paul is laughing again.

‘Stop,’ Daryl groans.

‘Sorry,’ the man says even though he doesn’t sound sorry at all. ‘At least you hit your target and everything. I did, too, the first time I ever kissed someone. Just, you know, way too hard. I was a little too enthusiastic about it all. Almost knocked the guy’s teeth out with my own.’

Daryl snorts.

‘You did hit your target, right, you weren’t going for…’

‘Nah,’ Daryl sits upright, dragging himself away from the man. He looks at his own knees. ‘Chickened out.’

‘I’m glad. Your real first kiss should be with someone special. Someone who wants it as much as you do.’ Paul reaches out and pushes a strand of Daryl’s hair behind the boy’s reddened ear. ‘Someone who actually sees it coming,’ he grins.

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter. The tightness in his chest is easing a little. The panic has ebbed away due to Paul’s easy laughter and the way he’s teasing him just a little. There’s no disgust in the man’s eyes, no fear in his touches, no judgement whenever he smirks. He slowly lets go of the railing, trusting himself not to bolt.

He puts his hands on his knees but still can’t look at the man.

‘I think it was very brave of you to take a chance, by the way,’ Paul says lightly when he casts a look at the gates again. ‘Is this the first time you felt like that about-‘

‘Can we stop talkin’ about it?’ Daryl asks, slumping so he can hide his face in his hands. ‘You don’t like me. Fine. I get it. I won’t do it again.’

‘Sure. Okay,’ Paul leans on his knees with his elbows and glances at him. ‘How are you feeling right now?’

‘ _Mortified_.’

‘Yeah,’ Paul snorts, ‘I’m sorry, there’s not much I can you do about that. It’ll stay that way for a little while, I think. We’ve all been there, Dare. Don’t worry about it.’

Daryl nods. ‘Ain’t. Just – ya know. It’s weird, sittin’ here, with you and…’

‘It’ll fade,’ Paul muses. ‘You’ll find out that I make the worst jokes and I crack my knuckles and I’m never around when you actually need me. Trust me, I’ve been told I’m very easy to get over once you discover all those things about me,’ he laughs softly and knocks their shoulders together. ‘Just don’t run, okay? I’d still like to be your friend. Does anyone else know? That you’re gay?’

‘Ain’t gay.’ Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand and looks away. ‘I like girls, too.’

‘Bisexual then,’ the man says easily. ‘Does anyone know?’

‘Eric. Rick. I told Eric, and Rick… He just knew, I guess. Saw.’

‘Good. It’s not a secret worth keeping,’ Paul tells him. ‘It’ll eat you up, if you let it.’ He looks at his boots. ‘I know you’re not… It kind of freaks you out, right? That you like a guy.’

Daryl shrugs.

‘I was just like you, in the beginning, when I first noticed that I wasn’t like other boys, that I was gay. I worried about it. How are people going to react? What’s my family going to say? What’s everyone going to think? I worried about it so much that it just kept getting bigger in my head. I thought that it was going to define me, it was such a big deal to me. That I was going to be Paul I’m-gay Rovia.’ He snorts and kicks his boots against each other. ‘That was all in my head though. When you think about Rick, the first thing that crosses your mind is not; he’s straight. Who you like is not who you are.’

‘Changes you, though,’ Daryl mutters.

‘No,’ Paul shakes his head, ‘you’ve always been like this. It doesn’t change you, at all. The way you deal with it, _that_ can change you. The way other people react to it.’

Daryl bites on his lip. ‘My brother is going to kill me.’

‘Then he doesn’t deserve the title,’ the man says with a tiny shrug. ‘You can choose your family, Daryl. People did it before all this started and we’ve been doing it ever since. They’re not going to leave you. Glenn and Maggie, Rick and Michonne, Carl, Carol. They’re not leaving. And if you brother tries anything, it’ll be the last thing he does.’

‘I don’t want him to know. I just found him. I can’t lose him.’

‘Maybe you won’t. I feel a feeling Dixon’s have a way of surprising you.’

Daryl finally meets Paul’s eye. He laughs softly, feeling the blush burn on his cheeks and neck but he laughs. He leans a little bit into the man’s frame, pressing their shoulders together. His fingers creep towards Paul’s.

The other man turns his hand over in invitation.

Daryl’s hand trembles when he puts his palm against Paul’s, lets their fingers intertwine, holding on tightly. The scout’s hand is rougher than he thought it would be, stronger, and he grins a little when the man’s thumb strokes the back of his hand.

Paul slowly brings the hand to his lips, kissing Daryl’s softly. Then he lets go and glides off the railing, landing on his feet with easy grace. ‘Thank you for the drawing, Daryl. Will I see you in the morning?’

‘Ain’t going to run,’ Daryl promises.

‘Good. See you tomorrow then.’

Daryl nods. He looks out into the dark night. ‘You won’t tell nobody, right?’ he asks before Paul reaches the staircase.

‘No. But if anyone asks what happened up here, I’m not going to lie.’

Daryl frowns and turns on the railing so he can look at the man.

Paul cocks his head to the side, ‘A fifteen year old boy and a thirty year old man? Rick’s not going to take kindly if I dodge questions, Daryl.’

‘He doesn’t know that I’m up here with you.’

‘There’s only one spot you can be alone in at this place. And we are two people who like to hide. He’ll know.’

Daryl scratches at his cheek. ‘Yeah, okay. I’m sorry if he… if he gives you trouble.’

‘I’d like to see him try, again,’ Paul winks. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

The teenager nods. ‘Okay. Hey,’ he calls out when Paul starts to head down the stairs. ‘You said that – you know – my first kiss, like, for real? That it should be with someone special, right? I just – I think you’re pretty special.’

Paul leans on the banister and smiles at him. ‘Thank you, Daryl.’

 

 

He sits there for a very long time, staring out into the darkness. He looks at the stars, tries to figure out how far away he is from that trailer park he started in.

He draws. Fingers dirty from the shading, smudges on the edge of the sheet when he shifts and grabs the notebook too tightly. He draws the angel wings his father had worn and now decorate his own back. Glenn’s pocket watch. Shane’s necklace looping around Rick’s python. The crossbow he misses, the bike he’s lost. The rings his parents had worn. The RPG his brother had used to blast himself back into his life. The house he grew up in, Hershel’s farm, both burning. The prison cell he’d called home for so many months. Carl’s hat. The demons he’d tattooed onto his father’s back, the scars they’d both shared plastered on the back of a boy without a face. The machete with the red handle. The church he’d lost himself in. The doll he’d found and the girl he hadn’t. The belt he’d been so afraid of. Paul’s knife.

He thinks about his dad. How’d always made fun of his feminine looks when he’d been younger, how he’d once accused him of liking boys and he’d approved when he had argued back, saying he wasn’t like that, saying how he’d raised him right.

He thinks about Shane. How they’d started out as reluctant allies and had grown into something safe enough for him to admit that he’d loved the man. How he had loved him for his easy smiles and stern but loving guidance, the gentle touches and endless patience when dealing with Dixon stubbornness and backwards thinking. How they had fought like cats and dogs and had always made up at the end of the day. How Shane had trusted him enough to let him be on his own outside the gates, how he’d trusted him to call for help and how easy he had made it for the boy to actually use that walkie-talkie and do it.

He thinks about Glenn. How it had been his first friend in the new world, how he’d always muddled the line between brother and parent when Shane had been around until firmly asserting himself as a guardian when all else fell away. How he’d been so tentative around him at first, never knowing what to do with a Dixon boy made of glares and cutting remarks, but had managed to push past all that until he finally saw him clearly.

He thinks about Maggie. How she’d never made him feel like he was intruding on something so sacred as family, from their first meeting where he’d awkwardly hid behind Glenn to trying to protect him from his own blood, even when it wasn’t necessary. How she’d treated him as a given, never doubting his place in the group, or his worth.

He draws the gates of Alexandria.

The gates of Hilltop.

The new world.

 

 

‘Can I talk to you real quick?’

Rick’s eyebrows shoot up for a second, his hand stilling on the belt he’s fastening. He glances at the rest of their group, who are hovering near the door, waiting for their leader to finish getting ready so they can get breakfast.

‘Of course,’ he says, trying to hide his surprise. ‘You go ahead,’ he tells the rest. ‘We’ll find you.’

‘We’ll be outside,’ Glenn nods. He places a hand on his wife’s lower back, urging her out of the door when she casts a concerned look at the teenager.

Daryl sits down on the bed and fiddles with his knife, turning it over and over in his hands until he hears the door close. He’s thankful that Rick waits for him to collect his thoughts. The cop sits down in one of the armchairs, messing with the edge of his jeans, pushing it deeper into his boots. Then he leans back, body language relaxed and open. He waits.

Daryl works his jaw. ‘I – Last night? I went up to the watchtower here to draw, I couldn’t sleep after – you know, so… Paul was there.’

Rick cocks his head to the side to show that he’s listening.

‘I – uh – I kissed him,’ Daryl mutters, the words a bit muffled as he rubs his knuckles over his cheek nervously. ‘On his cheek,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘I didn’t – I chickened out, so I just… So… you know,’ he gnaws on a knuckle, ‘just – I just thought you should, like, know, or… I don’t know.’

Rick nods but doesn’t say anything.

‘I still like girls,’ Daryl says because he thinks that’s very important, ‘so I’m, like, bisexual.’ He winces. ‘I think. No – I _know_. I’m… I’m that.’

Rick makes an understanding humming sound.

This is the most uncomfortable conversation he’s ever had. He feels ready to jump out of his own skin. Or the window.

‘Right, so,’ he propels himself off the bed, slamming his knife back into the sheath, ‘let’s go catch up with-‘

‘Sit back down.’

Rick’s voice is made of steel. It’s cold and forbidding.

Daryl sits back down immediately, hunching his shoulders so he can curl into himself. He doesn’t dare to look at the man and looks at the floor instead. He hates that there are tears burning in his eyes, fear manifesting itself. He hides his shaking hands by wedging them between his knees.

‘How did Paul react?’

‘He was nice about it, I guess,’ the teenager mutters.

Rick shifts, leaning onto his knees with his elbows.

When Daryl glances at him quickly, he’s shocked to see how dark the blue eyes are. ‘He didn’t do nothing,’ the boy says. ‘He turned me down, but, like, he was nice about it.’ He bites on his nail, ‘didn’t laugh at me. Well, he laughed, but not _at_ me, just… Said he were flattered.’

A small smile tucks the corner of Rick’s mouth up.

Daryl catches it. ‘You knew he was going to shoot me down.’

The cop leans back in his seat and laughs softly. ‘Well, no. I certainly hoped he would and I’m glad he did it so gently.’ He looks at the boy, ‘that may sound mean but Jesus is…’

‘Old?’ Daryl offers when Rick searches for the right word. He huffs a little. ‘He said it weren’t _I could have been your dad_ territory, but, you know…. He’s a lot older.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick smiles. ‘I hoped you’d find the courage to do something and I hoped he’d let you down gently. The first time I made a move on a girl – asking her on a date -  she laughed and called me ugly, I mean, if your heart needs to be broken, I’d rather have Jesus letting you down gently than some girl laugh in your face because that’s… that’s rough, let me tell you,’ he laughs. ‘But Jesus seems like a good person.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘My heart ain’t _broken_ …’

‘I’m glad. It’s one of your best characteristics, I’d hate to see it in pieces again.’ Rick plucks at the seam of his jeans. ‘Why did you decide to do it? Kiss him?’

‘Time to stop runnin’, right?’ He rubs at his nose. ‘Paul said, like… if you keep it with you, like a secret? It’s gonna eat you up. That it’s gonna be this big thing you worry about and… It doesn’t have to be. It’s not me. Like, it doesn’t really matter that I like…’ he swallows thickly, ‘guys, too, right?’

‘No,’ Rick says. ‘That doesn’t matter to us.’

Daryl breathes a sigh of relief. His shoulders sag and it feels like his spine collapses as he slumps in his seat. He lets the palms of his hands dig into his eyes so Rick won’t see his expression. It doesn’t matter that the cop knows exactly what he’s thinking and feeling.

‘Are you going to tell Glenn and Maggie?’

‘Yeah, I don’t want them finding out some other way. I kind of owe them that, right?’

‘You don’t owe anyone this,’ Rick states. ‘You don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to.’

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘I want to not care that anyone knows, but… no, I’m going to tell them. Carl, too, but… is it okay if I don’t tell Michonne? I don’t care if she knows, but I just… I don’t want to go to everyone and make this a weird announcement thing, okay?’

‘Sure. Do you mind if I talk about it with her? If it comes up, I mean…’

‘No. But after I’ve talked to Glenn.’

‘Of course.’ Rick stands up. ‘Ready to go get some breakfast now?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl breathes as he gets to his feet as well, grateful for the conversation to be finally over. He feels a little lighter when he walks to the door. Rick holds it open for him and they make their way downstairs together. A warm hand lands on the back of Daryl’s neck as the cop steers him towards the large door, the thumb rubbing soothing circles into his skin.

‘Proud of you, you know that, right?’ Rick murmurs as they step into the sunshine. ‘It’s easier to hide, to conform, but you don’t have to.’

‘I know,’ Daryl grins as he slings his arm around Rick’s waist, leaning into his wiry frame. ‘I wished I weren’t, you know? Like, yesterday I wished I weren’t like that, but… It’s going to be okay. And if Merle… If he don’t want me no more, it’s… we’re still going to be… We are still a’right, right?’

Rick stops walking, forcing the boy to look up at him. ‘We’re always going to be okay, Dare. I’ve told you a million times; you were Shane’s boy. His kid,’ Rick smiles as he cups the boy’s face, ‘that means you’re mine now. I think the group has got that joint custody down. We’re very good at sharing.’

Daryl snorts and shoves the man’s shoulder a bit so he lets go of his face.

 

 

It’s late in the afternoon when Daryl wonders whether it’s actually possible to die of embarrassment. He spends his time by keeping Abraham company, inspecting the wall and joining the guys on top of the gate for a guard shift before helping one of the women of Hilltop with feeding the animals.

Maggie is inside Barrington trying to make the deal with Gregory, while Glenn Rick and Michonne wait inside the hall nervously.

Sometimes he catches flashes of Paul. When he is talking to one of the guys near the trailers, when he’s walking slow circles around the community with Michonne, when he’s eating an apple on the steps of Barrington house on his own.

Daryl feels heat rise to his cheeks every time he catches a glimpse of the other man.

Paul doesn’t seem to be fazed, however. He’d only smiled knowingly when Daryl had fumbled with his plate and water bottle at breakfast before greeting Rick with a nod and getting a wink from the cop before Rick had pushed Daryl towards the picnic table.

‘Hey, Daryl! _Daryl_!’

The teenager looks up from his sketchbook. He’s sitting on top of one of the tables right now and is drawing one of the cows. He frowns a little when he sees that the blacksmith is calling him over.

‘’s up?’ he asks once he’s stuffed the paper and pencil in his pack.

‘Those crates need to be moved into Barrington house, you up for it? They’re heavy.’

Daryl hums and leans against the pole again. ‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Good karma,’ the man tells him with a roll of his eyes. ‘Come on, you wanna give me a hand or not?’

‘For a cigarette,’ Daryl grins as he spots a package on a table nearby.

‘Rick’s going to kill me, so no.’

‘He don’t care. Promise.’

The man hesitates for a moment. ‘Fine, but don’t tell him I gave it to you.’

Daryl grins as he holds his hand out.

When the payment is made, he helps the man carry the crates inside the house, stacking them in one of the rooms they use for storage. It’s hard work, there’s sweat running down his back within a couple of minutes but he doesn’t mind doing it. The man is called Leon. He used to work in IT. He used to have a brother and sister, a mother who’d fallen just before the outbreak and had been in the hospital when it all went down. When he’d tried to get to her, he’d been blocked at every turn by the army until the city had been overrun. He’s not sure what happened to his family. Nothing good, he guesses.

The fact that he knows how to work with metal is due to a hobby and lots of practice. He’s gotten pretty good at it.

Daryl asks a million questions about it, eager to learn more, and Leon doesn’t seem to mind.

They pass Paul a couple of times because he’s sitting on the steps of the large staircase with Rick, talking about their communities, the road they’ve traveled to get to where they are. He’s a bit jealous that Rick now knows more about the guy than he does, but shrugs it off.

Whenever Paul’s gaze flickers to him, he makes sure to walk a little taller. He cringes a bit when he realizes that Paul must think he always walks around red-faced, but that can’t be helped.

After half an hour, he finally falls onto one of the couches in the hall. With a groan, he wipes the sweat from his face, drying his hands on his clammy jeans.

Leon gives him a water bottle and sneaks him another cigarette.

Just when he’s guzzling down the water, Maggie comes down the staircase with a smile on her face. She turns to Paul first. ‘Gregory wants to talk to you.’

‘You closed the deal?’

‘I closed it,’ Maggie nods.

‘All right,’ Paul smiles as he ducks past her to head up to the second floor where Gregory’s bedroom is. The man is still recovering from his stab wound.

When the door closes, Maggie turns towards Rick. ‘Half of everything they have, right now. Food, supplies, everything, in exchange for their man and taking care of Negan and his men.’

Rick’s shoulder’s slump in relief. He wipes his face with his hands, nodding. ‘Good. Well done.’

‘He’s going to discuss it with Jesus so he can help us load up.’

‘That’s great,’ Rick gets to his feet. ‘I’ll get Abraham, we can start loading up as soon as possible. Get the hell out of here. Go home.’

‘Yeah,’ she tucks a strand of brown hair behind her ear. ‘Let’s get ready.’

Daryl gets up, drags himself off the couch and then slinks over to her. ‘Before we leave, can I talk to you? And Glenn? Like, just, ya know... us?’

She looks down at him with a smile, ‘if you’re so in love with that cow that you wanna stay here, I’m gonna tie you to the RV and make you run back.’

He blinks. Then snorts and shoves her arm gently, ‘nah, it ain’t the cow.’

 

 

An hour later, he finally gets to smoke his cigarette. He’s sitting against one of the wheels of the RV, enjoying his smoke and the sunshine. The nicotine is making him feel a little light-headed but he likes the rush; the way his blood starts to pound in his ears as soon as the smoke swirls in his lungs. The smell doesn’t make him nauseas, he likes the way it lingers on his fingertips and in his clothes because it reminds him of his dad and Merle. The only thing he hates about it is the taste it leaves on his tongue. Something bitter that turns sour as he swallows it down.

It’s warm today but not too hot. He pushes his hair out of his face and tilts his head back, closing his eyes as he soaks up the warmth.

Hilltop is bustling around him.

Paul and Rick are taking care of the provisions while Abraham and Michonne have been send to find Andy, a guy from Hilltop who has been taking supplies to Negan since the beginning.

He watches the community. The people seem less wary of him now, though they still stay out of Rick’s way and don’t dare to meet Michonne’s eye. The girl who is feeding the chickens gives him a small wave when he glances at her and Leon shakes his head fondly when he spots him smoking his cigarette.

It’s strange, Daryl thinks, but he feels different.

He’s exactly the person who he was yesterday and every day before that and he still feels different. Lighter, somehow. There’s more room inside his chest, it’s easier to breathe and his skin doesn’t feel so tight all the time. He’s not so nervous whether someone sees when he glances at Paul, doesn’t care what people think when his gaze lingers on the man’s smile.

He takes another drag from his cigarette and plays with his necklaces, letting the metal warm in the sunshine.

It doesn’t matter what his dad would have thought of this, he thinks. It doesn’t matter that he wouldn’t have liked it, that he would have taught him better, that he would have kicked him out if he had known. He’s dead.

And Will had loved him until the very end. His little king of the apocalypse.

Daryl drops the rings. They thud against his breastbone.

It doesn’t matter what Will would have thought of him now, he supposes. He can’t even be sure, Will was nothing if not unpredictable in who and how he loved, so he’s just going to hold on to that last moment. The last time his dad his kissed his forehead, had told him he’d loved him.

He’s going to hold on to that and he’s not going to be scared by shadows of the past. Ghosts.

‘What are you smiling about?’

Daryl opens one eye and squints up at Abraham. ‘Nothin’.’

‘Where did you get that?’ the man asks with a frown when he sees the cigarette.

‘Worked for it.’

‘Right.’ The ginger leans against the RV and watches how Rick talks to Andy about Negan’s compound. It’s been decided that Andy needs to come with them to Alexandria to help them with the plans for the raid. He’s been to Negan’s compound before and probably knows a couple of things about the lay-out that could help them.

Everyone has been silent about Merle’s part in all of it. Daryl knows that his brother was part of Negan’s group, but his brother hasn’t said anything about it since they’d gotten back to Alexandria. Daryl knows that Rick plans to interrogate him as soon as they come back, press him for details about this Negan guy and he wonders whether Rick knows what he’s getting himself into. Merle doesn’t like to have his motives and actions questioned, especially not by a cop.

Paul is coming back to Alexandria as well. He’s going with them on the raid. Daryl isn’t sure why, maybe just to be able to confirm that they’ve held up their end of the bargain, but he’s also one of the few fighters Hilltop has, so he might come in handy.

While he thinks about the man, his gaze is automatically drawn to him. He’s helping Michonne with loading the crates onto the RV. He talks animatedly with her, waving his gloved hands and laughing every couple of minutes. He’s wearing his trench coat and beanie again, the padded vest and his belts.

‘Hey,’ Abraham clips him across the back of his head, causing him to almost lose his balance. ‘He’s not going to sneak out of a third floor window again. Why are you watching him now?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘’cause he’s fuckin’ hot.’

Abraham bursts out into laughter.

Daryl takes another drag from his cigarette.

‘ _Dare_!’ Glenn is leaning out of one of the trailers at the very end. He waves the teenager over.

‘Comin’,’ the boy calls back as he quickly takes the last hit from his smoke before dropping it onto the dirt, putting it out with the heel of his boot. He glances at Abraham who grins back at him. ‘Weren’t jokin’, ya know?’

The ginger blinks at him.

Daryl shrugs and pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

‘What – you – _no_.’

Daryl narrows his eyes.

‘Mother dick!’ Abraham laughs, slapping a hand down on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You _dog_! It all makes sense now. Oh no,’ he stops laughing again and looks very grave all of a sudden. ‘You didn’t really think that giving him that cornbread or whatever it was Denise crapped out was a good way of showing your damn affections, right? Because that was… something else.’

The teenager glares at him, ‘I was just tryin’ to be nice!’

‘That’s what I thought when I told you to bring him chocolate next time, I didn’t mean for you to actually bring him chocolate! Hot damn.’

‘Yeah, well, shut up about it, okay? You’ve been fuckin’ killin’ my game,’ Daryl grins as he walks away, heading over towards the trailer. When he sees that Glenn is still waiting for him, he starts to run.

‘ _Killing my game_ ,’ Abraham roars behind him with laughter. ‘You tried poisoning him with oatcake! You don’t have any game! Holy hell, Michonne, did you hear what that little shit said just now?’

He’s laughing by the time he gets to Glenn, who is grinning back at him. ‘’s up, man?’

‘We’ve got someone we want you to meet.’

 

 

Five minutes later, he’s sitting on the edge of Maggie’s bed, leaning a little over her so he can see the small screen clearly. It’s a mess of black’s and gray’s and white’s but when Dr. Carson explains what he’s looking at, the teenager sees it.

A tiny blob.

‘Right there?’ he asks to be sure, pointing at the screen.

Glenn laughs, ‘yeah, right there.’

‘Awesome,’ Daryl breathes.

‘It’s going to be a while still,’ Maggie says as she reaches out to brush his hair out of his face. ‘But are you ready to be a big brother?’

‘Hell yeah,’ he grins back. ‘Promise I’ll never tell them the monsters are hidin’ under their bed.’

Glenn lifts an eyebrow. ‘Merle did that?’

‘Yeah.’ He sits up straight again, ‘but Merle ain’t goin’ to be their big brother. I am.’

‘Thank God,’ Maggie laughs, reaching out to take his hand, squeezing his fingers tightly.

 

 

He spend the ride back to Alexandria playing cards with Paul. It feels a little weird and he still can’t stop blushing whenever the man looks at him, but he’s just glad that Paul isn’t avoiding him. Their knees sometimes bump into each other under the table which causes Daryl to quickly shift and curls up on his seat again, but Paul just ignores it.

After an hour, Daryl stops blushing whenever their eyes meet.

It starts again when he finds out Paul’s been cheating the entire time and he’d been too busy sitting straight and not making a fool out of himself while talking to notice.

‘Asshole,’ Daryl grouses as he throws his cards on the table and shifts on the bench so he can lie down. ‘I’m done playin’.’

‘Yeah?’ Paul shifts too and lies down, the tops of their heads almost touching as they both gaze at the ceiling. ‘Okay. Let’s do something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘We bet stories.’

Daryl frowns, ‘what kind of stories? And _bet_ stories?’

‘Yeah! You never played this game? The stories have to be true but whoever has the most ridiculous one has to tell it. But it has to be true, okay? You can’t just make stuff up.’

‘How’d ya know?’

Paul reaches up and swats blindly at the teenager’s head. ‘I trust you. Come on, it’s easy. I have – uh – I have a story about the time I saw a bear. You ever seen something more exciting than a bear?’

Daryl turns around to his belly so he can look at the man. ‘What if I still want to hear the bear story even if I’ve got a better one?’

‘I can tell it after. Do you have a better one? Can you up seeing a bear, Daryl Dixon?’ Paul asks as he wiggles his eyebrows and grins up at the teenager.

‘I saw a chupacabra once.’

‘Get out of here,’ Paul laughs, ‘I told you; it has to be real! A real thing that happened.’

 ‘It did!’

The man laughs again, rubbing at his eyes with his gloved fingers, ‘fine. Okay, you win. So now you tell the story.’

He tells the story.

Paul tells the story about the time he saw a bear. It turns out it was in a zoo when he was ten years old and Daryl calls him a cheater again even though Paul insists that a little bit of trickery is just part of the fun.

After three stories, Daryl stops stumbling over his words whenever Paul glances up at him.

He stops blushing, too.

But his hand still creeps towards the folded over edge of Paul’s beanie, fingertip ghosting over the fabric because he’s too nervous to touch the dark blonde hair.

 

 

Rick calls a meeting as soon as they arrive in Alexandria. They park the RV in front of the pantry so Olivia can inventory what they have brought back. The work is tedious so Daryl is grateful when Maggie tells him that he can go back to the house to find Merle.

He’d hoped to see his brother at the gate as usual, but he wasn’t there.

It turns out that he’s not at the house either. He tells Carl that they made it back fine and where Rick is, so the other boy tears out the house quickly with Judith on his hip, eager to see the rest of his family again.

Daryl checks out the house Merle had been talking about when they left for Hilltop but that’s empty, too.

He frowns and runs off to check the watchtower, the south side of the wall, he even checks the gardens but still can’t find his brother. In the end, he figures that Merle will come to the meeting Rick has called, so he’ll just see him there. When he wanders towards the church, he’s surprised to see that his brother is sitting by the lake.

One leg stretched out before him, the other one pulled up so he can rest his elbow on his knee. He’s smoking a cigarette.

‘Thought you ran out of those?’ Daryl asks by way of greeting, bounding up to his brother and falling into the grass beside him.

‘You did,’ Merle says. ‘Never said shit about my stash.’

‘Well, fuckin’ share then,’ the teenager grins, digging his elbow into the man’s ribs.

‘No.’

‘Come on, don’t be a dick!’

‘I said fuckin’ _no_ , Dare,’ Merle snaps, ‘keep your paws off of me.’

‘Jesus,’ Daryl frowns. ‘ _Sorry_.’ He plucks at the grass beside his boots. ‘You know we got a shitload of food from Paul’s place, right? ‘s good stuff.’

‘Yeah, I helped unload it just now.’

‘Ah,’ Daryl nods, ‘I couldn’t find you earlier, but that… yeah, explains it, I guess. They said I didn’t need to help.’

‘Hmm.’

‘So,’ Daryl draws out the word, glancing at his brother who won’t look at him. ‘What’s up, you don’t… you don’t look too happy to see me or nothing.’

‘Oh, don’t I?’ Merle asks. ‘Now I’m gonna give you three tries to guess why the fuck that would be, okay? See if you can figure this out all by your lonesome, hmm?’

Daryl freezes. ‘What happened?’ he asks.

‘ _What happened_?’ Merle sneers. ‘I’ll tell you what happened since you’re too fuckin’ stupid to figure it out yourself.’ He finally turns to Daryl and there’s so much anger in his eyes that Daryl hardly recognizes them. ‘What happened is that old Merle went to help your sorry friends because they’re a bunch of pansies who can’t lift no box by themselves, right? So I’m doin’ some heavy liftin’ there and I spot your chink doin’ nothing and Abe just lazin’ about so I go over, right? I think; I’ll teach ‘em some. So I stroll up, of course they don’t notice shit because they’re dumb as fuck, and guess what. What does old Merle hear, huh?’

Daryl swallows thickly. ‘What?’ he whispers.

Merle grits his teeth for a second. ‘That my little brother, my fuckin’ _blood_ , wants to suck some guy’s dick. Ain’t that right, little brother? You some kind of fag now?’

‘They didn’t-‘

‘Pssh,’ Merle scoffs, ‘they were talkin’ about damn cake and chocolates, how they’d thought it’d just been a stupid joke but it turned out to be the real deal and my, my, weren’t they all kinds of surprised, hmm? Said you’d been following the guy around and-‘

‘Weren’t,’ Daryl protests weakly. His heart is pounding in his throat.

‘So they’re lyin’ about you?’ Merle demands. ‘’cause if that’s true, I’ll fuck them up for makin’ it sound like my bro is some kind of faggot.’

‘No! I just – I weren’t _following him around_ , I just...’

‘You just want his dick down your throat, right?’

‘ _No_!’ Daryl says quickly, flustered by the mere idea, ‘I mean – I…’

Merle stares at him. ‘Oh my God,’ he breathes. ‘You fuckin’ do.’

‘Merle, I – I can’t help that I-‘

‘ _Don’t_ talk to me,’ his brother grinds out. The cigarette in his hand is just ashes now. He squashes the filter between his fingertips. ‘Get the fuck away from me.’

‘Merle, no, please, I can explain, I just-‘

The man gets to his feet with angry, jerky movements. ‘You better start runnin’ boy, because I swear to God, if you’re still here in five seconds, I’m going to fuck you up.’

Daryl stares up at his big brother. He sees how his trembling hands curl into fists.

 

 


	71. hate/love

 

* * *

 

 

Daryl stares at his destroyed room with a heaving chest. There’s sweat dripping down the side of his face. It mingles with the tears on his cheeks. Every muscle in his body aches. His knuckles are bleeding from where he’d punched holes in his closet doors, his fingers hurt from when he’d torn his bedding apart. Every inch of the floor is covered in splinters, ripped-out pages of his comics, clothes that he has shredded in his fit of anger.

He stares at it now. The anger still boils in his veins but there’s nothing left to destroy but himself. Fingernails dig into the palms of his hands, so hard that he will pierce the skin soon. It hurts, but it doesn’t drown out the hurt he’s feeling inside his chest.

He vaguely remembers running home. Flying through the streets of Alexandria, casting looks over his shoulder because he feared his brother might chase him. He hadn’t. At home, he’d ducked past Carol, who’d looked surprised to see him in such a state, torn up the stairs and then destroyed his room in a fit of rage.

It’s not enough. Not _nearly_ enough.

The door behind him opens. He knows it’s Rick by the sound his boots make on the wooden floorboards. When he turns around, teeth clenched hard enough to give him a headache, he sees the shocked look on the cop’s face as he looks around the room.

The gaze flickers up at the teenager, at his bleeding knuckles, at the tears on his face. ‘Daryl,’ he says, so soft that it only makes the boy angrier.

‘ _You said it’d be okay_!’ Daryl shouts, pointing a finger at the man’s chest. ‘You said it was okay! I told you and now he knows and – and - _This is all on you_!’

Rick closes the door behind him and just stands there.

‘This is what you wanted, right? You’re fuckin’ right now, ain’t ya? Ain’t a Dixon no more. Ain’t _nothing_ no more! Fuck!’ He grabs a book from a shelf and hurls it against the wall. ‘ _He hates me_!’

‘He doesn’t hate you, Dare.’

‘He threatened to fuck me up! And he always says shit like that but he don’t ever mean it but… he meant it, he – he hates me and it’s all your fault!’ Daryl screams as he grabs another book and throws it into a corner.

‘Please stop.’

But the teenager grabs hold of the shelf and then jumps, letting his whole weight hang from the plank of wood until it breaks free from the wall. He hurls it across the room, feeling only mildly satisfied when it crashes into his closet, taking down a couple of his hangers and some shirts.

His chest still heaves. His knuckles still bleed.

It still hurts _everywhere_.

‘Daryl, I promise he won’t hurt you.’

Too late, Daryl thinks bitterly. ‘Words,’ he says with a sneer. ‘ _Bull_!’

His own voice echoes through the room. When he turns his head, he expects Will to be there.

‘It’s not bull. Abraham is with Merle right now. He tried to leave, but… he’s in no state to be out there on his own,’ Rick says. ‘He’s upset.’

‘ _Upset_?’ Daryl shouts, kicking at the remains of his bed. ‘You’re fuckin’ acting like he ain’t going to cut me to bits when he sees me. You don’t know us. You don’t _know_ us! I told you this would happen. I fuckin’ told you and you said it would be okay and _he hates me_!’

The door opens and Glenn steps into the room as well. He closes the door and walks over to the teenager. He needs to step over the shattered pieces of furniture to do it but he doesn’t even seem to notice. As soon as they’re in each other’s orbit again, he reaches for the boy, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and drawing him into a fierce hug.

Daryl fights him. Tries to shove at his chest, palms scraping over his sides but Glenn’s too close to get a good grip on him, he tries to wriggle away, ducking out of the embrace but the Korean won’t let him.

He just holds on until Daryl stops fighting him.

The anger morphs into sadness in one fell swoop, fast and strong enough to knock the wind out of him, to cause his knees to buckle as he sobs into Glenn’s chest, trembling hands reaching around to tug the man closer, burying himself in his warmth.

Glenn just holds him tightly, one hand in his mop of hair and the other around his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into the boy’s ear. ‘We didn’t see him and he was gone before I could…’

‘He hates me,’ Daryl cries.

Glenn hums and lets him cry.

It’s ugly. His nose is running and he has to breathe through his mouth in between sobs, making it difficult to swallow but the Korean doesn’t seem to mind. He runs his hand through the teenager’s longer hair, allowing him to let it all out.

When he calms down, it doesn’t feel like it helped at all. His head hurts worse now, there are tears on his cheeks and even some dripping from his jaw, and snot dribbles onto his upper lip until he wipes his nose on the back of his hand. He feels a little bad for Glenn, who always has to deal with his sorry ass these days but he also doesn’t care because that’s his _brother_ sending him away.

‘Deep breath for me.’

Daryl takes a deep breath.

‘Okay. Merle is angry and he’s lashing out,’ Glenn says with his hands on Daryl’s shoulders, pushing him back a little so they can look each other in the eye. ‘I’m sorry he picked you as a target, Dare, but if there’s one thing I know, one thing I learned in this new world, it’s this; never listen to a Dixon when he’s too angry to think about what he’s saying. You guys are like cats. Unpredictable. And you lash out when you feel cornered.’

‘He meant it.’

‘It’s a defense mechanism you two use,’ Glenn says softly. ‘You have to push through it.’

‘No – this is _real_ ,’ Daryl insists.

‘All of this looks real, too,’ Glenn says as he looks around the room. ‘It looks like you’re angry.’

‘I am!’

‘No. You’re scared and you’re sad. I heard you screaming from outside, but you’re not mad at Rick. You know it’s not his fault and you know he means what he told you before. Abraham is talking to Merle right now to at least make him stay.’

Daryl feels his breath halt in his throat. He chokes on the emptiness he suddenly feels inside his chest.

‘Hey,’ Glenn shakes him a little, ‘he’s not leaving. Abe won’t let him, okay? And if he does, he’ll come back. Just like you did.’

‘I’m going to talk to him,’ Rick says. ‘About the saviors first, get him to focus on something else for now. And we need answers. Everything he knows about them. He said he wasn’t with them for very long but he must know something. Anything.’ The cop puts his hands on his hips, fingers brushing over his python. ‘I’ll talk to him about this, too.’

‘He won’t talk.’

‘No, he will,’ Rick says with decisive nod as he steps forward. ‘He will.’ He glances at Glenn, ‘postpone the meeting at the church. We need to talk to him first. I wanted to do it quick, before, but…’

Glenn nods. ‘Abraham is with him now. They’re by the gate.’

The cop dips his head before disappearing. His boot scrunch on shattered glass as he leaves.

‘Are you okay?’

Daryl sets his jaw and scowls at his boots.

‘Are you _going to be_ okay?’

He shrugs. ‘Gotta be, right?’

‘Yes, but not right away. I’m going to postpone the meeting,’ Glenn says. ‘Get some rest.’

Daryl huffs and stalks over to the window, leaning against the frame. ‘Ain’t no baby who gotta nap.’

‘Then don’t start sounding like one now.’ The Korean flashes him a small smile when the teenager glares at him. The door opens and closes again and Daryl listens how his friend walk down the stairs and then out of the house to head to the church. He can see him walking down the street, head held high and shoulders relaxed.

Daryl turns back to his destroyed room. He slowly starts to pick things back up, putting them back into their respective places. He changes shirts, opting for a black tank top while using the one he’d previous been wearing as a towel to mop up the sweat from the back of his neck and the side of his face. He rubs it over his cheeks and upper lip, too, trying to get a bit cleaned up, before throwing it into a corner. He grabs his black bandana out of a drawer and ties it around his neck. Small eyes scan the room again.

There’s not a whole lot he can save. The bed is completely ruined and he just leaves it like this, figuring that he can sleep on the floor because he had the good sense not to destroy his matrass at least. His nightstand is in pieces, there’s glass everywhere and all his books have been destroyed. He picks some of his clothes up, kicks the glass into a corner and dumps the remains of the nightstand in a heap next to the door. It doesn’t do much. The room is still a mess, of course.

With a sigh, he sits down in the window sill. He cracks the window open and lights the cigarette Leon had given him in secret. A cool breeze ghosts past him, causing the ends of his long hair to tickle his cheeks.

After a couple of drags, he spots Glenn again, who’s already on his way back. Maggie is with him, Carol and Rosita, Aaron and Eric, Eugene, too. Everyone. His blood runs cold at the thought of having to face them.

Now they know.

And it’s not even that they know, because it’s Aaron and Eric and his _family_ , but… it’s that they know that his own blood _hates_ him.

He doesn’t want to see the pity in their eyes. The sudden understanding or even that tiny glimmer of pride in Eric’s eyes. He doesn't want halted conversations of people stumbling around while trying to figure out whether he wants them to push or pull or leave him be. He doesn't even want the sympathetic silence Carol would surely provide.

So he slides the window open further, bites on the filter of his cigarette and then hops out onto the roof. He makes sure to slide down a bit on the left side so nobody on the streets of Alexandria can spot him. Climbing down is easy enough. His boots scrape over the drain while he lowers himself, leaving black marks on the gray, but he doesn't suppose anyone will notice. Or care.

He lands with a grunt. A puff of smoke clouds his vision for a moment but he sucks the nicotine in greedily while he waits for his family to enter the house. Soon, the door opens and he can hear their voices in the living room. He waits until he can hear the door closing again before making a run for it.

Ducking into the garden of the second house, keeping low as he passes all the windows, before running across the street to hide behind the second row of houses there. He throws his cigarette on the ground, stomping it out when he can taste that he's burning the filter. Then he starts to walk.

Some people spot him.

He watches their reactions like a hawk.

Tobin is walking back to his own house and smiles at him. The guy is hanging out a lot with Carol now, slowly integrating into their inner circle. He's always a bit wary of the teenager, like every original member of Alexandria is, but he smiles and raises his hand to wave.

'Hey, Daryl!'

Daryl waves back, 'hey, Tobin. A'right?'

'Yeah,' the man nods, slowing his step a bit. 'Meeting was postponed, in case you're heading there now.'

'Yeah, I heard. Thanks, though.'

'Okay. See you around.'

'See ya,' Daryl answers, saluting the man before ducking between two houses again. The tightness in his chest eases a bit. The man hadn't treated him any differently than normal, hadn't looked at him with pity or disgust, so he probably doesn't know the reason why the meeting was postponed in the first place. Glenn mustn't have made a general announcement then.

When he rounds the corner, he's glad to see that Enid is sitting on the small steps at the back of Denise's house. The girl is reading a book, her long hair shielding most of her expressions as she's bowed over the pages. She looks up when Daryl appears beside her, a little startled because no-one can hear the young hunter's footsteps when he doesn't want them to.

'Daryl!' Her eyes go a little wide before she gives him a hesitant smile. 'Hi.'

'Hi. I need your help.'

'Oh.' She closes the book after marking the page. 'Okay.'

'Come with me, bring your pack,' he aims a kick at her backpack and then heads North. Scrambling footsteps tell him that the girl is following him while she grabs the heavy backpack she's always carrying around. She doesn't ask him anything as they make their way to the wall.

There's no one around.

Daryl looks up at the wall. 'Show me how to scale it. I've seen you do it. Show me how.'

'Why?'

Daryl bites on the inside of his cheek. 'Because I need to scale the wall.’

Enid folds her arms in front of her chest and stares him down. ‘ _Why_?’

‘Because – ‘ The boy starts and then stops.

‘Why not go out through the gates?’ Enid asks. ‘You go out all the time to check your snares and Rick didn’t mention that-‘

‘Look,’ Daryl cuts in, ‘I can’t go out through the gate and I need to scale the wall. The rest can’t know I’m gone. Not right away.’

‘Because you need time to cover your tracks?’

‘Pssh! I don’t leave no tracks, girl.’ He scowls at his boots again. ‘And even if I did… I taught Rick but he ain’t no real tracker. Can find some trails and set some snares, but he ain’t no tracker.’

Enid lifts an eyebrow. ‘Maybe not, but he’s got your brother here. He’s a tracker, right?’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘He won’t be lookin’. Are you gonna help me or not?’

‘I am,’ Enid says as she puts the backpack between her feet to dig around in it. She pulls a couple of metal pins out. Before she hands them over, she says; ‘but only if you promise me you will come back.’

‘Yeah.’

‘No, promise me.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Daryl hisses as he grabs the pins out of her hand, ‘I fuckin’ promise, okay?’ He walks to the closest pillar and looks up at the wall. ‘So just shove them in there and climb?’

‘Yeah, but be careful; they can slide out if you put your foot wrong.’ She watches how he puts the first pins in and starts to climb. ‘Glenn is going to kill me.’

‘Nah,’ Daryl grunts as he moves up. ‘He’s goin’ to give you that look he has. The one that’s all _I’m disappointed_ and _think about what ya did_.’

‘That sounds worse.’

‘Well, I don’t know what dyin’ is like, but I’ve been on the wrong side of that look a couple of times, and ya know… ain’t pretty,’ Daryl laughs as he pulls himself onto the wall.‘ He shifts so his legs are on the other side, leaning down to put the first pin in for his way down.

‘You only need three, then you can jump,’ Enid says as she takes a step towards the wall, ‘I’ll get the ones on this side, make sure you bring the rest back with you.’

‘Hey,’ the boy calls out to her. He waits until she looks up before saying, ‘thanks.’

‘Just come back. You promised.’

 

 

_‘Right there?’_

_Daryl shifts so he can look up at the sky and past Shane’s outstretched hand, following his finger. He’s lying next to the cop on the roof of the prison, staring up at the night sky. His shoulders are pressed against the man’s ribs, his head is resting on his chest._

_‘Yeah,’ the boy nods, ‘right there.’_

_‘Gemini, huh?’_

_‘Yeah.’_

_Shane looks down at him and laughs, causing the boy to shake too. The cop folds his arm around him, ‘go on, I know you’re dying to tell me more.’_

_‘Ain’t,’ Daryl scoffs, half-heartedly trying to shove the arm away but ending up just holding on instead. ‘You don’t know the story?’_

_‘Nope. But I know someone who does and is dying to tell me.’_

_‘Stop,’ the boy laughs as he rolls to his side so he can press his ear against Shane’s chest, listening to that steady heartbeat. ‘Fine, I’ll tell it. Don’t laugh.’_

_‘I won’t,’ Shane murmurs as he strokes the boy’s hair while gazing up at the constellations._

_‘So the Gemini, it’s – like, they’re twins, right? Castor and Pollux. They had the same mom, but different dads. Pollux was the son of Zeus, which meant that he was immortal, right? But Castor, his dad was the king of Sparta, Tyndarus, and he was just a guy.’_

_‘So Castor was mortal and his brother immortal?’_

_‘Yeah! But they were still best friends. Brothers. They fought in the Trojan War together and all these other adventures. But one day Castor dies, ‘cause he’s mortal, right? So he dies and his brother is – like – really sad.’_

_Shane smiles and nods._

_Daryl nods, too. ‘So Pollux goes to his dad, and he asks for help because his brother is dead and he misses him a lot. Zeus doesn’t want to make Pollux mortal so he can die as well, so he makes Castor immortal and they live together forever as the constellation Gemini.’_

_Shane frowns. ‘I thought Castor was dead?’_

_‘Yeah, but then he wasn’t because he was immortal.’ Daryl thinks for a moment. ‘It’s just a story, good lord, it doesn’t have to make sense,’ he huffs as he looks up at the stars again, turning in the man’s embrace but being careful not to shove the arm away from his chest._

 

 

‘-so I’m chasing him up and down that field, right? It was crazy. You would have laughed your ass off,’ Daryl says as he ducks past a tree, heading towards the small river just South of Alexandria. ‘Asshole made us lose the stuff though. Or I did. One of us, at least. Someone hit the brakes and the thing just started rollin’, ya know? Crazy shit, man.’

It’s quiet all around him. He’s swinging a big, sturdy stick, hitting the bushes with it to make the leaves rustle. The end of it is coated with blood and brain-matter where he’d swung it like a bat and had pulverizes the skull of a walker. The sun is filtering through the trees. It’s not particularly hot out, it’s way past noon already and everything is beginning to settle down for the night. The woods are quiet. The temperature is dropping slowly.

He doesn’t bother to make snares along the way. He hasn’t even brought his pack so most of them would be too weak anyway, made out of stuff he can find in the woods themselves, but he’d rather just head out tomorrow again to make some sturdy ones.

If Glenn will let him out tomorrow, that is.

Probably not.

‘He’s gonna have a baby, you know? Glenn? And, you know, Maggie of course. I’ve seen the baby on a little screen, like, a picture of it. A movie, or something. Know what I mean? It looked really small but they’re very happy.’ He swings the stick again. ‘Said I could be a big brother. Kinda cool, huh? You were a big brother, too, right? So that’s kinda cool, too.’

When he reaches the small river, he falls down in the grass and listens to the water rushing by. There are faint growls in the distance but not enough to worry him or even make him get up. He does pull his gun out of his holster, keeping it at the ready.

He thinks about the last time he’d gone down to the river, way before they’d even found Aaron or Alexandria. Back when they were at the small church, when he took Carl out there so they could talk about Abraham, that ginger asshole, and Carl’s crush on Beth. That had been on one of the last of his dark days, the day he’d finally washed Gareth’s blood off of his hands and had partly repaid his debt.

Not fully, of course, because they’d made a deal to never be split up again and it still happened, but partly.

The closest he can get in this world, he guesses.

‘The new place seems good. They have this really small farm going on but they’re not just growing garden stuff like we do. There’s this blacksmith, too. His name is Leon. Gave me cigarettes. And they got a doctor, one who deliver baby, so that’s even better. We saved his butt, Glenn and I, so he owes us. It’s gonna be fine.’

He plucks at the grass.

‘There’s this guy. The same one who stole our truck and everything, but he’s not really an asshole, I suppose. Well, he is, sometimes – like, he’s sneaky. Clever. So… Like… I kinda, ya know,’ Daryl rubs at his nose and stares up at the blue sky. He pretends he can see the constellations. ‘I kinda like him. Not, like, as a friend or nothing, just – I like him. He’s… I don’t know. Different. Kinda sucks you never got to meet him. I’m not sure whether you’d like him. Rick does, I think, so, maybe you would have liked him, too. I don’t know. Don’t matter.’

He sighs and closes his eyes. ‘What’re you doin’, little king?’ he asks himself, ‘talking to a dead man now? Ain’t gonna answer, dumbass.’

But that’s not why he tells the stories. He doesn’t need an answer.

And Shane’s always been good at listening.

There’s no grave. They hadn’t had the time to bury or burn him. They just left him behind so Daryl likes to pretend that he’s _everywhere_ , but usually close to him. That he ghosts in the breeze, in the shadows Daryl likes to take breaks in when he’s out hunting, in the river that soothes him with it’s quiet sounds.

So he talks, sometimes. To the breeze, to the woods, to the shadows and the river.

To Shane.

 

 

_‘Okay,’ Shane says softly, tugging at the boy’s shirt and jacket. He’s kneeling down in front of him, brow knitted with worry. ‘You have your knife, your gun, you’ve got the walkie, right?’_

_‘Yeah.’_

_‘And you have food and water. The machete is in your pack?’_

_‘Hmm-hmm.’_

_‘You know, I don’t think this is a good idea anymore. You look tired, you were up late with Glenn and I just think that-‘_

_‘I’m going,’ the boy says. ‘Open up the gate already. Good lord, you’re worse than my dad was on my first day of school.’_

_Shane blinks. ‘You’re comparing this to going to_ school _?’_

_Daryl shrugs and clutches the band of his crossbow, ‘kinda? That was scarier though.’_

_‘You thought school was scarier than going out hunting on your own during the apocalypse?’_

_‘Well, I’d never been to school before,’ Daryl points out as he wrinkles his nose, ‘so it was kinda scary, I guess. I’ve been huntin’ before on my own. And I got all this stuff and my bow now, so… It’ll be fine.’_

_Ten minutes later, he’s sitting in a tree at the edge of the woods. His legs swing as he kicks his feet. ‘He losin’ his shit?’_

_The walkie-talkie crackles a bit, ‘yeah,’ Rick answers. ‘He’s still at the gate. Pacing.’_

_‘Want me to come back?’_

_‘No. Go hunt. Two hours, then come back.’_

_Daryl signs off and hops out of the tree again. He can vaguely see Shane pacing in front of the gate. He laughs softly, hitching the bow higher onto his shoulder. It reminds him of his dad, who’d been waiting in the parking lot of the school an hour earlier, chain smoking his cigarettes until his youngest son came running out of the school with a big grin on his face and his first drawing in his hand._

The gate opens and they’re already there, waiting for him. Glenn and Rick. He’s surprised to see Merle, too.

All three of them are scowling.

Daryl carefully steps forward, hating that they’re blocking the road that leads to his home, even though he could just turn right and make a run for it – going to long way ‘round. Before he can even think about running, Merle starts to make his way over. His movements are jerky, the shoulders tense with anger.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he barks at the boy. ‘Are you out of your goddamn mind?’

‘The hell do you care?’ Daryl snaps back, ‘you weren’t even supposed to be here no more. I waited until your shift was over before comin’ back!’

‘Oh, so now you’re being a spineless little shit who can’t even-‘

‘Merle,’ Rick cuts in sharply. ‘Leave him be.’

‘Yeah, fuck off,’ Daryl says as he slips past his brother when the man turns to look at Rick with an outraged look on his face. He quickly darts behind Glenn and then starts to walk back home.

‘Wait up, you little shit,’ Merle shouts. ‘Hey! I’m talking to you! Get back here!’

‘Merle, leave him be,’ Glenn says with a shake of his head. He steps forward to block the man’s way. ‘Just leave him for now. He’s back. He’s fine.’

The older brother glares at the Korean.

Daryl turns around, walking backwards. He regrets that when Merle suddenly ducks past Glenn and runs towards him. Rick screams something, Glenn is too late with recovering but Daryl is already turning around and running for his life.

Down the street with Merle’s heavy footfalls hot on his heels. He can feel his brother’s breath in his neck, can almost feel those fingers curl around his shoulder or neck. He runs and runs and runs as fast as he can, flying down the road, preparing to turn the corner and scream for Carol and Abraham but he never gets the chance.

He bumps into someone.

A grunt, hands on his shoulders to prevent him from falling over, ‘Daryl! God, are you okay?’

Daryl shakes his head and manages to get behind Paul just as Merle comes flying around the corner.

The older Dixon stumbles but stops before he barrels into the stranger. His chest is heaving slightly and his blue eyes narrow when he spots his little brother hiding behind the other man. A sudden look of understanding flashes over his features and he sneers. ‘So that’s the guy you went gay for, huh? Good lord. Of course you’d pick the biggest fairy of them all.’

‘You’re the brother,’ Paul says calmly just as Rick and Glenn come to a halt behind Merle. He raises his hand to signal them to stand down. ‘Daryl is going home now. I suggest you do the same.’

Merle barks out some laughter, ‘you think some damn hippie can tell me to go home? Who the hell do you think I am. I want to talk to my brother.’

‘And he doesn’t want to talk to you. Go home.’

‘I ain’t talkin’ to you. Daryl, stop bein’ such a pussy and get your ass over here. Now. Right now.’

Daryl can’t seem to find his own voice. He takes a step backwards, away from his brother.

‘He doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Paul says again. ‘Please go home.’

Merle sucks on his teeth and grins as he saunters closer to the man, ‘two seconds into a conversation and you’re already beggin’ old Mere for it, hmm? You’re pathetic. And you’re disgustin’ goin’ after my little brother like that. He’s just a goddamn kid and you make him gay? You’re _sick_.’

Paul cocks his head to the side. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that, you know?’

‘So how does it work?’ Merle asks softly now, his tone more dangerous now that they’re almost nose to nose. ‘You think there’s a new world and there ain’t no rules no more? You think you can just _take_ what ya want?’

‘No. And I don’t want Daryl.’

‘He not pretty enough for your faggot ass?’

Paul lifts an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘Go home. I really don’t want to hurt you.’

‘ _Hurt_ me?’ Merle laughs, ‘I’m army, you idiot. What do you got? Twenty degrees in pottery? Your damn yoga classes at fuckin’ sunrise?’

‘You will find out if you keep pushing like this,’ Paul answers. ‘Rick and Glenn are standing behind you. You’re outnumbered, for starters.’

Merle seems to think about that for a second. He glares at Daryl before focusing on Paul again. He spits him in his face.

Rick darts forward to grab his arm but Paul raises a pacifying hand.

He wipes the spit off his cheek, ‘leave it, Rick. He’s done now.’ Something cold has crept into his voice. ‘He’s going home.’

Merle sneers at him one final time before actually turning around and heading for his own home.

Paul wipes his hand on his jeans and turns to look at Daryl.

‘I’m sorry,’ the boy whispers. ‘I just didn’t know what to do and you were right there and –‘

‘You ran.’

Daryl stares up at him.

‘You ran and you said you wouldn’t.’

‘I came back,’ Daryl says.

‘You promised me. Glenn, Maggie and Rick were sick with worry. ‘

‘It weren’t like that, I just wanted to talk to –‘

‘I don’t care,’ Paul cuts in. ‘Go home and apologize to Maggie. I need to talk to Glenn and Rick.’

 

 

His room is still a mess.

He stares at the glass covering his sheets and sighs, thinking that he could crash on the couch downstairs.

‘Yo,’ Carl leans into his room, ‘I’ve been waiting for you all night. Come on.’

Daryl frowns and follows his brother to his room.

There, Carl puts his hat on the nightstand next to his gun before starting to undo his laces. He glances up at the other boy. ‘You’re waiting for a formal invitation or something?’ he kicks his boots off and throws his socks into the hamper before shrugging out of his shirt.

Daryl just stands there.

Carl undoes the buttons on his jeans and steps out of them, hunting around the room to find a pair of shorts and another shirt before slipping into bed. ‘Well, consider yourself formally invited, asshole. Come on, before dad kills us for staying up late.’ Carl reaches out and pulls the corner of his blanket back in invitation.

‘You’re gonna let me sleep in your bed?’ Daryl asks doubtfully.

‘Yeah?’ The Grimes boy draws the word out, both of his eyebrows raised.

The Dixon boy works his jaw before letting his shoulders sag with relief. He quickly kicks his boots off and throws the shirt down next to the bed. The belt clanks on the floor as he kicks his jeans aside and searches through Carl’s closet to find another pair of shorts and a shirt to sleep in.

Then he climbs into the bed, just like how they’re done a hundred times before.

‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ Carl says in the dark.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl sighs.

‘Is it true you kissed him though? Jesus?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl rolls to his side so he won’t have to look at his brother. ‘On his cheek.’

‘That doesn’t really count, right?’

‘No. I guess not.’

‘Good,’ Carl grins as he turns around, too, so they’re back to back, ‘means I can still be the first to kiss someone.’

 

 

A warm hand on his shoulder wakes him gently.

When he opens his eyes, moaning sleepily, he stares right into his brother’s eyes. Merle clasps his hand over his mouth. ‘Ssh, little brother. Your guard dog is still asleep. Rest of ‘em, too. Meet me out front on the porch.’

 

 

He’s riddled with nerves when he steps out on the porch and sits down next to his big brother. Their shoulders are almost touching: there’s not much room on the steps. Merle is leaning forward on his knees and smokes a cigarette.

It’s still early in the morning. Dawn is breaking over the wall.

‘Here,’ Merle holds the cigarette out to him.

Daryl takes it warily.

‘I’m sorry about what I said,’ Merle mutters as he stares out over the street of Alexandria. ‘Was stupid. Shouldn’t have done it but… we just get mad, right? Bunch of bulls and a whole lot of flags in this world. ‘s what mom used to say. That we Dixon men were like bulls. Can’t stop once they started. Dad was like that, too. You remember how he used to scream and shout in the trailer?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Nah,’ Merle says after a glance at his little brother. ‘You were pretty young. Weren’t around long enough to get to know the real him, I suppose. Hell, you even loved him till the end,’ he takes the cigarette back. ‘I just got mad, okay?’

‘Why?’

Merle fiddles with the cigarette, turning it over and over and pinching the filter with his fingers, ‘don’t matter now, I didn’t mean the shit I said so – ‘

‘Because I… because I like – because of Paul?’

‘I don’t give a fuck whether you want to suck his dick or not as long as you’re not doing it right in front of me,’ Merle grunts.

‘But you said-‘

‘Of course I did,’ Merle snaps, ‘because that got you all riled up and it hurt, right? That’s what I wanted. I wanted it to hurt and I’m sorry about that.’

Daryl frowns and plucks at his lip. ‘I don’t understand.’

The older Dixon drops his head with a sigh. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘listen; I don’t give a fuck whether you’re straight or a fairy or whatever else is the middle, okay? I just – fuck, monster, you could have told me.’

‘I didn’t know myself until-‘

‘But you knew long enough to tell Glenn, right? And Maggie, hell, you got around to telling Rick all about it, no problem. Michonne and Abe knew, too.  And poor old Merle? Huh? Your goddamn blood, he needs to hear it from some goddamn gossip session,’ the man scowls. ‘Were you ever gonna tell me?’

‘Probably.’

‘ _Probably_?’

‘Like, eventually.’

‘Well,’ Merle says as he throws the cigarette away. ‘That got me all riled up, so I guess we’re even now. I’m your blood, man,’ he says when he sees Daryl’s confused frown. ‘I don’t give a shit about how many times they saved your sorry ass or that they fed you. You’re mine. You got shit you’re thinkin’ about, you come to me. Not Korea, not the pig, _me_. You got that?’

‘Yeah…’

The older Dixon nods. He brings his hand to his mouth and gnaws on his fingernails. Then he glances at his brother and Daryl already knows he’s going to hate the next question. Merle grins at him, wiggles his eyebrows. ‘So you wanna suck Jesus’ dick, huh?’

‘Oh my God,’ Daryl moans. ‘Stop.’

‘Seriously. Out of all the guys, you have to pick the one who looks like he’s gonna make some sort of bullshit coffee with hearts in the goddamn milk, some hipster bullshitter. I mean, I ain’t surprised. With hair like that, hell, he could pass for a girl easy.’

‘He ain’t no girl,’ Daryl rolls his eyes, ‘and he ain’t like that. Like, he ain’t no bullshitter. He’s got moves.’

Merle looks at him sharply. ‘How the hell do you know?’

‘I meant – like – _fightin’_ moves. He got us with the truck, remember?’

Merle snorts. ‘Right. Yeah, well, was probably because you were too busy trying to get into his pants to pay attention. If you’d been keepin’ your head in the game instead of tryin’ to figure out how he’s gonna hammer you then yo-

‘ _Stop_ , oh my god,’ Daryl shoves his shoulder.

Merle laughs. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Get one of your faggot friends to explain all of that for ya.’

The youngest Dixon rolls his eyes. Then he fidgets with the laces of his boots. ‘I ain’t really gay, ya know. I’m bisexual, I think. So.. I still like girls.’

‘Yeah,’ Merle hooks a hand around the back of his neck and draws him in, kissing his temple. ‘I don’t give a fuck, baby bro. Gotta learn to not pay so much attention what comes out of my mouth, okay? Hell, even Korea knew that.’

 

 


	72. Midnight

 

* * *

 

 

‘He doesn’t mean it.’

Daryl stops on the second step of the stairs and turns his head to look at Carol, who is standing in the kitchen. She’s drying her hands on one of the towels and then leans on the counter. Her short hair is silver, with lighter and darker patches, and it makes her eyes bluer. She’s still wearing some stupid cardigan with tiny flowers on it even though the sad charade of being a housewife had been shattered by the wolves. Maybe she just really likes these kinds of clothes, the teenager thinks vaguely.

‘Whatever your brother told you to make you smile like that,’ Carol says, ‘he doesn’t mean it. I know men like Merle. They make a mistake and they say they’re sorry but they’ll do it again tomorrow.’

‘He ain’t like that,’ Daryl answers because he knows what kind of men she’s talking about.

‘No?’ she raises her eyebrows. ‘If he’d been a good man he wouldn’t have done it at all. And if it’d really been a mistake, he wouldn’t have needed to sleep on it before deciding to apologize. He wouldn’t have needed Abraham, Glenn and Rick all over him for the past day and night to know that he’d made a mistake.’

‘So he’s fakin’ it?’ Daryl frowns and sits down on the stairs. ‘He said he didn’t care about… you know. That he loved me anyway,’ he rubs at his nose. ‘You think he’s lyin’?’

Carol sighs. ‘It would be easy if he was, but I know that man loves you. That doesn’t mean he’s okay with you being bisexual. Of course he has to say that now; he knows he’s outnumbered. He knows we would kick him out if he ever raised a hand to you. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.’ She gives him a sad smile. ‘He’s your brother but he’s not good for you. Don’t let him bring you down. After all, look how far you’ve come.’

The teenager snorts and looks around the room. ‘What, ‘cause I’m livin’ in a mansion now and not some damn trailer?’

‘Because you’ve got more friends and family members than you thought possible. I remember you,’ she smiles. ‘The little boy who stole Sophia’s marker so he could draw tattoos on his dad’s back.’ The smile falters. She takes a deep breath, ‘I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m glad Will died. I’m glad you got to grow up without him.’

Daryl grits his teeth and glares at her. His fingers curls into fists, nails digging into the palms of his hands. ‘Why?’

‘Men like Will?’ She looks away, ‘they burn everything they touch. Everything you are just gets scorched. In the beginning you just think it was a mistake, an accident, but then it just gets worse and you get these blisters and scars and then you’ll forget who you were and you’re just…’ She shakes her head a little, lips tight and eyes cold. ‘They consume you,’ she says softly. ‘Men like Will, they consume you.’

Daryl plucks at his fingernails and then looks up through his fringe. ‘Hey,’ he says to make her look at him. ‘We ain’t ashes.’

The rest of the house is silent. Their family is asleep upstairs. Merle’s footsteps have faded away into the early morning light as the temperature starts to rise again.

‘We haven’t seen each other in three years,’ Daryl says as he bites on his fingernails. ‘Me ‘n Merle. He were gone before this all started. Jail, somewhere. I don’t know why or where, or anything. Just knew that he were gone. He’d call sometimes but dad weren’t too happy with him so he’d never let me talk to him.’ He sighs, ‘and then all this happened. And dad died, and… I’ve told him about it, ya know? About what happened, but it’s not the same.’

Carol slowly walks over and sits down next to him.

‘Like, he knows some people were important, right? But he don’t know them, so… so he doesn’t _know_. And it’s weird because it used to be us, always. The Dixon boy’s, right?’ He laughs a little shyly. ‘But now we’re back together again and… it’s not the same. You know what I mean?’

‘You’ve changed a lot.’

‘So has he,’ Daryl says as he rubs at his chin. ‘’s why he got mad. Like, everyone knows all this stuff about me and he don’t.’

‘You think he got jealous?’

‘Yeah,’ he plucks at his jeans now. ‘Hell, I’m jealous of who the hell he were in jail with and then survived all of this with, and I don’t even know who they are. It’s just weird, not knowing everything.’

Carol frowns, ‘you don’t know everything about Carl,’ she points out.

The teenager snorts. ‘’course I do. Grew up some rich-pricks son who sucked at little league. Hell, I know all about him,’ he laughs and knocks their shoulders together. ‘Nah. It’s just, if I don’t know, I can ask, right? And I know Carl won’t lie.’

‘But Merle will?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I will.’ He has trouble maintaining eye contact. His gaze keeps flickering away, darting to his knees and fingers and the ground, but he forces himself to focus on her eyes. ‘He don’t know about dad. Like, the stuff he did? He don’t know about that and I don’t want him to know.’

The woman presses her lips together. She reaches out to tuck some strands of the dark hair behind the boy’s ear. ‘Why not?’

‘Don’t wanna start nothing that’s already finished. Ain’t nothing he can do about it now. Dad’s gone and I don’t care, so it don’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything.’

‘What if he finds out later?’

‘Then he finds out later.’ He cracks his knuckles. ‘I don’t want to talk about my dad or Merle anymore. Please stop.’

She strokes his back, recognizing Shane’s lessons in the boy’s words. ‘Okay, we don’t have to talk about them anymore.’

He nods, a grateful little smile tugging at the corner of his lips. ‘Think Glenn ‘nd Maggie are still mad at me?’

‘For running away yesterday?’ Carol asks, putting her arm around him. ‘No. They were just upset that you hadn’t told them you’d be outside of the walls. Why did you go?’

Daryl ducks his head a little. ‘Just wanted to be alone for a bit. It’s weird that everyone now knows. I should have gone and checked the snares and everything, do something useful, but I just wandered around for a bit. Sat by the river.’ He scrapes some dirt from his boot. ‘I talk to Shane sometimes, when I’m out there. Just tell him stuff about what’s goin’ on. Crazy, right?’

‘I don’t know,’ Carol muses. ‘Shane was the kind of guy who liked to be up-to-date about what was going on in the group.’ She looks down at him, ‘ _always stickin’ his nose in_ ,’ she growls in his accent.

The boy snorts. He bites on his nails again. ‘Paul was pretty mad, that I’d gone out… I think.’

‘Yes, he was,’ Carol smiles, playing with the long hair at the nape of his neck. ‘I don’t think he knows you very well.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was mad because you went beyond the walls alone. Glenn was mad because you hadn’t told him you would go.’

‘Oh.’ Daryl’s shoulders curl inwards. ‘He said he saw me as a _kid_.’

‘You are,’ Carol laughs softly, dragging him close and kissing his temple. ‘The bravest and fiercest fifteen year old I have ever met.’

‘Pssh! I didn’t want him thinkin’ of me like I’m some damn kid!’

‘Then stop being so adorable,’ she teases.

He scowls but still leans into her frame, sulking a bit. ‘’s stupid. I ain’t no kid.’ He glances at her, looking up through his lashes, ‘he’s pretty cool. Like, he knows martial arts and stuff? He said he came without the special effects, but, you know – ‘ he grins shyly, ‘still pretty cool.’

Carol laughs and ruffles his hair as she stands up. ‘Well, I can’t wait to be formally introduced to whoever managed to sweep a Dixon right off their feet. I’m going to shower. Grab some breakfast, Pookie.’

He listens to how she tracks back up the stairs, stopping at one of the first rooms to check on Judith before heading towards the bathroom.

It doesn’t take long for the rest of his family to wake up. A couple of minutes later, Michonne lobes down the stairs, yawning a good morning to the teenager before starting on making breakfast for the family. Rick joins her seconds later, running his fingers through Daryl’s hair as he passes him on the stairs.

‘Made up with Merle,’ Daryl murmurs at the cop. ‘We’re cool now.’

Rick lifts an eyebrow. ‘You are?’

‘Yeah.’

The man shares a suspicious look with Michonne.

‘He said sorry and everything,’ Daryl adds.

‘Right,’ the man drawls but he doesn’t sound too convinced.

Daryl lets it slide only because Carl comes running down the stairs now. He clips the other boy over the back of the head before eagerly checking what Michonne and Rick are making. He leans against the kitchen island with his hip and hums something under his breath.

The tune is vaguely familiar.

Daryl looks up with a frown.

Carl meets his eye and grins. ‘Daryl and Jesus, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-‘

The Dixon boy launches himself off the stairs and chases his brother around the house.

 

 

Daryl sits at the back of the church with Merle beside him. The older Dixon has draped his arm over the back of the pew, one hand curling possessively around the boy’s right shoulder as they listen to how Rick addresses the community.

‘Maggie hammered out a deal,’ the cop says as he stands on the altar. ‘We’re getting food; eggs, butter, fresh vegetables, but they’re not just giving it away. These Saviors, they almost killed Sasha, Daryl and Abraham on the road. Now, sooner or later, they would’ve found us. Just like those Wolves did, just like Jesus did.’

Paul is sitting next to him on the altar, looking at the cop with a calculated expression.

‘They would have killed someone, or some of us, and then they would try to own us. And we would try to stop them but by then, in that kind of fight, low on food? We could lose. This is the only way to be sure, as sure as we can get, that we win. And we have to win. We do this for the Hilltop. It’s how we keep this place. It’s how we feed this place. This needs to be a group decision. If anybody objects, here’s your chance to say your piece.’

Merle sighs and shifts, jiggling one leg impatiently. ‘Your boy can talk,’ he says under his breath and right in Daryl’s ear. ‘Talkin’ about a group decision when he’s already taken payment. We ain’t givin’ that back. This ain’t gonna be no group decision. We’re doin’ this.’

Daryl nods.

Morgan stands up and almost everyone shifts in their seat so they can look at him. ‘You’re sure we can do this?’ the man asks. ‘We can beat them?’

‘What this group has done, what we’ve learned, what we’ve become, all of us… _Yes_ , I’m sure.’

‘So what have you become?’ Merle breathes in Daryl’s ear.

‘Tough as nails,’ Daryl whispers back without taking his eyes off of Rick and Morgan.

‘Already were that,’ the older Dixon huffs.

‘Then all we have to do is just tell them that,’ Morgan says now.

‘They – they don’t compromise,’ Rick answers.

‘This isn’t a compromise! It’s a _choice_ you give them. It’s a way out, for them _and_ for us.’

Merle chuckles under his breath. ‘Nigger ain’t on the same page as your boy. He’s gonna try and fuck this up for all of y’all.’

‘All of _us_ ,’ Daryl says with a frown.

‘All of us,’ his brother agrees easily.

‘We try and talk to the Saviors, we give up our advantage,’ Rick argues. ‘Our safety. No. We have to come for them before they come for us. We can’t leave them alive.’

‘Where there’s life, there’s possibility.’

‘Of them hitting us!’

‘Hey,’ Morgan says sharply, ‘we’re not trapped in this. None of you are trapped in this,’ he tells the rest of the people.

‘Morgan,’ Rick says, softer now. ‘They always come back.’

‘Come back when they’re dead, too,’ Morgan nods.

‘Yeah, we’ll stop them. We have before.’

‘I’m not talking about the walkers.’

Merle groans softly, ‘we took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in some damn philosophical book club or something? Pig already made his mind up, what’re we yappin’ on about?’’

‘Shut the fuck up, Merle. ‘s how we do things.’

The older Dixon scoffs. ‘Since when? It’s always been Rick pullin’ the trigger on anything with you guys, ‘s what you told me at least. Rick and that other guy. What was his name again? The guy who got butchered in that – ‘

 _‘Shane_ ,’ Daryl hisses. ‘For real, man, shut the fuck up, I wanna hear.’

‘Morgan wants to talk to them first,’ Rick tilts his head to the side, ‘I think that would be a mistake but it’s not up to me. I’ll talk to the people still at home. I’ll discuss it with the people on guard now, too, but who else wants to approach the Saviors, talk to them first?’

Aaron stands up. ‘What happened here,’ he says, ‘we won’t let that happen again. _I_ won’t.’ He nods at Rick.

‘Well,’ Rick puts his hands on his hips. ‘Looks like it’s settled.’

‘Thought he was gonna talk to the rest of them?’ Merle whispers. ‘Is he always full of crap?’

Daryl punches his brother.

‘We know _exactly_ what this is,’ Rick says. ‘We don’t shy from it, we live. We kill them all.’

‘Booyah,’ Merle mouths.

Daryl punches him again.

 

 

Merle is up in a flash, snarling and jabbing the marker into Rick’s chest, ‘will you just fuckin’ let me draw it for ya? I don’t need your dumb ass questions every two fuckin’ seconds in order to know that I have to draw the goddamn windows, okay?’

Daryl bites his tongue to stop himself from laughing. He’s sitting cross-legged on the table, studying the plans Merle has drawn up for the upcoming attack on the Savior’s compound. ‘Ease up, Mer, what’s with this building right here?’ He points at one of the side buildings.

‘Yeah, that ain’t in use but there’s a backdoor and a corridor to the main building,’ his brother says with a frown as he sits back down again, drawing the corridor.

Rick shoots the boy a grateful look.

Daryl grins back and leans with his elbow on his knee, chin in the palm of his hand. ‘Tell me about Negan again.’

Merle rolls his eyes. ‘Told you; don’t know what the fucker looks like. It’s a guy, though. I was only there for a couple of days, before we ran into you on the road, so… They wouldn’t let greens inside their operations, said Negan needed to approve first before anyone could join for real.’

‘So where was he for a week, if he weren’t around to approve ya?’

Merle shrugs, ‘they said he would be by later. That he’d be back in a week or something.’

‘That he would be by or that he would be back,’ Rick says, stepping towards the man. ‘What did they say?’

‘The fuck, man? Think I were keepin’ notes? That he’d be back, what the fuck does it matter?’

‘If he would be _by_ then it isn’t his main base. If he’d be _back_ , he could just have been out on a run.’

Merle groans, ‘what are ya, the grammar police? He’d be back, okay? Jesus. _Not you_ ,’ Merle snarls at Paul, who is leaning against one of the walls, as far away from the oldest Dixon as possible. ‘Fuck you.’

Paul rolls his eyes.

‘Stick to the story, man,’ Daryl murmurs to distract his brother.

‘Offending your fairy fucker, am I? Fine. They kept us in a different place, here on the south side,’ Merle draws another small building. ‘One room, bathrooms, a living room. Was there with two others they’d found. I don’t know how many people there were in total, chocolate kiss,’ he says when Michonne opens her mouth to ask something, ‘but forty, at least.’

‘Forty,’ Rick says slowly.

‘Yeah, what, you think you could just waltz in there, man? Ain’t that why we’re plannin’ this shit. This ain’t gonna be no walk in the park, you understand.’

‘I understand,’ Rick says with narrowed eyes as he regains his composure. ‘Keep drawing.’

‘Say please,’ Merle leers back.

‘Mer,’ Daryl sighs.

‘ _Fine_ ,’ the oldest Dixon turns back to the plans. ‘We do it at night, an hour before shift change when everyone is either tired or asleep. We kill the two up front, go in, kill them in their sleep... As many as we can. Someone is going to fuck it up, someone always does, okay?’ Merle says. ‘We need to get to the armory before that happens. That’s how we end it. It’s somewhere here, I’m not sure which room exactly,’ he draws a circle inside the building. ‘It’s down this corridor, at least. Second door, I think. _I think_.’

‘Think the trick with the heads will work?’

‘Yeah, man, they’re dumb as fuck,’ Merle says as he studies to plans to see if he’s forgotten something.

‘Windows,’ Daryl reminds him.

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Merle mutters before quickly drawing them. ‘Boarded up though. Won’t be no good. We’re going in through the front door. Teams of two. Rick and sugar tits are going in, branch off to the right. Abe takes spitfire to find the armory.’

‘Rosita,’ Daryl supplies when Rick frowns. ‘He means Rosita.’

‘Korea and the nigger, too, find the armory, go door to door down the right with ya.’

‘Heath,’ Daryl sighs. ‘Learn their names, man.’

‘They might be dead next week, I ain’t learnin’ no names no more,' Merle answers. ‘Waste of time, baby bro. Speakin’ of which, Dare and I bust left, clear that hallway together.’

Rick nods.

‘Excuse me?’ Paul pushes himself away from the wall. ‘Did you say Dare? He’s coming with us?’

‘Of course he’s comin’ with us,’ both Merle and Rick say.

Merle sneers, ‘and he ain’t gonna be guarding no _perimeter_ like your faggoty ass. Christ.’

‘Rick,’ Paul says, ‘do you really think that-‘

‘My people are _my_ people,’ Rick cuts in sharply. ‘Stay out of it.’

Paul seems to work his jaw for a moment before he glances at Michonne.

The woman shakes her head. ‘He’s coming with us.’

‘You want this done, or not?’ Merle demands with a frown. ‘We’ll get this done. Thought you said ya didn’t want him,’ he rises slowly, hands still on the table. ‘I’m warnin’ ya.’

‘Stop,’ Daryl moans quietly, burying his face in his cupped hands.

‘Think you’re the first man to lust after my baby bro? Oh he’s pretty, all right. He’s _sweet_ ,’ Merle leers with an ugly sneer on his rugged face. ‘Last one who tried pissed blood for _weeks_. I’m warnin’ ya!’

‘Jesus Christ, Merle,’ the younger Dixon snarls as he reaches out to shove his brother’s shoulder. ‘It ain’t like that!

Paul crosses his arms and leans back against the wall again. ‘I can assure you that it is, indeed, not like that. I’ve made my feelings for Daryl perfectly clear to him.’

‘Your feelings, huh? And what are those like?’

‘That’s between me and your brother.’

Merle narrows his eyes at the stranger.

Paul meets his gaze.

Merle frowns and falls down into his seat. ‘Faggot,’ he mutters under his breath because he just can’t seem to help himself.

An hour later, Rick finally ends the meeting. The plans have been made. They’ll do it tomorrow night. Merle is gone the second it’s clear that the meeting is officially over, claiming to need a smoke. The rest breathes a little easier once he’s gone.

‘Thanks for your help, Dare,’ Rick smiles as he puts a warm hand on the boy’s neck, squeezing gently.

‘Sorry he’s such a douchebag sometimes,’ Daryl laughs as he slides off the table.

‘Sometimes?’ Michonne asks but there’s laughter in her voice and she’s just teasing him.

‘Screw you,’ the boys grins back. The grin fades when he sees that Paul is heading for the door, too. ‘Paul!’ he calls out, darting forward, past Rick and Glenn. ‘I just – I…’ he blushes fiercely when the man turns to look at him impassively. ‘Sorry about him. He don’t mean it.’

‘That’s okay,’ Paul says but Daryl gets the feeling that he’s just being horribly polite and fake.

‘I’ll make him cut it out.’

‘I’ve been called worse. Don’t worry about it.’

Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘That’s not what I wanted to say though… I – yesterday? You were – like, you were mad or, I don’t know, I – ‘ He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders, standing a little taller. ‘I didn’t run, yesterday when I went over the wall. I go outside all the time. I like it there, in the woods. It’s quiet.’

Paul’s gaze softens a bit.

‘Two people who like to hide, right? That’s what you said we were. But I weren’t runnin’, and I wasn’t hidin’. Someone I knew, he died somewhere ugly. In this concrete place with these people and… He died there and we had to leave him behind but I like to think he ain’t there no more, right? That he’s somewhere nice. Better. Like the woods.’ Daryl looks at Paul’s shoulder instead of meeting his gaze. He’s very aware that Glenn and Rick are right behind him. That they know who he is talking about. ‘So I go out there sometimes and I talk to him because… you know. I just liked talking to him.’

‘Your dad?’ Paul asks softly.

‘Yeah.’ Daryl looks up through his fringe. ‘He weren’t my blood though, but.. yeah.’

 

 

The teenager is sitting on the hood of the truck. He’d stayed behind to guard the vehicles with Paul, Gabriel and Carol, spending most of the afternoon resting on Rick’s orders. He’d slept for a little while, curled up under Carol’s jacket and using his pack as a pillow but he’s wide awake now.

It’s slowly getting dark.

‘We’re gonna take a look around,’ Rick says when Rosita joins them, the last of their group, ‘try to get a feel for how many people are in there. We like how it looks, we go in. A couple of hours before dawn. The guards outside will be tired. Everyone inside will be sleeping. We don’t like what we see, we head back, make a new plan. They don’t know who we are. We’ll keep Jesus in the shadows.’

Daryl’s gaze flickers to the man standing next to the RV with Andy. Arms crossed in front of his chest, shoulders hunched and head down. He doesn’t like the fact that he’s not going with them, has argued with Rick for over half an hour before finally slinking away into the shadows. He looks up suddenly, meeting the boy’s gaze.

Daryl tilts his head a little to the side, not looking away.

Paul gives him a small smile and tilts his head the other way.

Daryl smiles back and focusses on Rick again.

‘This is how we eat.’ Rick nods and works his jaw.  ‘This is how we eat,’ he repeats, a little softer now. ‘We roll out at midnight.’

A sharp whistle has got Daryl’s gaze snapping back up again. Merle had been leaning against the front of the truck but now he gets ready to guard the perimeter. He snaps his fingers.

The teenager uncurls from his spot on the truck and stands up, hands reaching for the sky as he stretches. Then he jumps down, gathering his things. He passes Carol’s jacket back to her with a shy smile and a soft thank you before he puts his pack in Glenn’s vehicle, stuffing it under one of the seats.

He jogs to catch up with his big brother. An automatic rifle bobs on his back while his hand curls around his sidearm. He’s carrying a small handgun Carl had selected for him. The boy had taken great care to clean his weapons for him, making sure nothing would jam while he was out there since he couldn’t back him up himself.

‘Gonna check the perimeter, do a slow round,’ Merle tells Rick. ‘Monster’s comin’ with.’

Rick’s gaze lands on the teenager for a second. ‘Okay. Stick together.’

‘Always,’ the older Dixon nods. He checks the stars before heading out.

They walk side by side for a long time. Darkness slowly creeps into the woods, shifting their world to black and white. It doesn’t matter to them. Leaves rustle overhead while bushes shake but neither pay it more attention than a lazy side-eye, recognizing it for nature coming back to life around them after a hot day.

When they’re half-way, Merle gives a sharp whistle again and Daryl quickens his step until he’s the one leading them around in a wide circle.

‘Ya know,’ Merle pushes his hands into the pockets of his ragged jeans as they step out onto the concrete again and make their way back to the cars. It’s almost been an hour since they left the group behind and Daryl flinches a bit at the sound of his brother’s voice after all that quiet. ‘It’s okay if you turn back. I’ve been thinkin’ and – maybe the little faggot was right, you know? It’s dangerous. You should head back to Alexandria.’

Daryl stops walking. ‘Think I can’t do it?’

Merle stops too. ‘Think I want you to?’

The teenager shakes his hair out of his eyes. ‘If it means I’ll be watchin’ your six, then yeah, I think you want me there.’

Merle looks pained for a moment. ‘It’s going to be ugly.’

‘The whole world is ugly,’ Daryl laughs as he shrugs his automatic gun higher onto his shoulder, ‘including your face but I ain’t bein’ a little bitch about it.’

‘I’m just tryin’ to watch out for ya. Bein’ a decent big brother. I know I weren’t any good at it before, but… I’m tryin’.’

‘What’re you talkin’ about,’ Daryl scoffs, kicking his boots together, ‘you were awesome before.’

‘I just suck now, right?’

Daryl shuts one eye and pretends to wince, ‘called me a faggot, man.’

‘Said I were sorry,’ Merle laughs, swatting at his brother playfully. ‘Don’t be such a princess about it.’

Daryl grins but lets it fade as he looks away. ‘Thought it were for real. That you were gonna fuck me up good when ya chased me.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Merle shrugs, ‘I wouldn’t have done it for real, just – just wanted to scare ya straight, I guess.’ He laughs but it sounds a little forced. ‘I wouldn’t have done it, monster.’

‘Okay.’

Merle gives him a tight smile before he slings his arm around his shoulders. They walk together back to the group like that. Daryl sneaks his arm around Merle’s waist, leaning into his body warmth.

They settle down on the hood of the truck together. Merle leaning back against the windshield while Daryl sits cross-legged besides him. The youngest Dixon talks to Maggie in a soft voice while Merle is turned to the other side to talk to Rick about the plan, going through it one more time just to be sure.

 

 

Rick is kneeling on the group before him. He’s checking the guns his son has cleaned.

Daryl waits patiently.

‘We can still change the plan,’ the cop says quietly. ‘Carol can go with Merle and you can stay with Maggie on-‘

‘Don’t.’

Rick sighs and looks up at the teenager. ‘Dare…’

‘Stop.’

‘I’m just – ‘

‘I know.’

They look at each other.

‘I know,’ Daryl repeats as he holds his hand out for his rifle. ‘But no more kid’s stuff. I’ve been thinking about this all day and night, okay? I know I can just go back to Alexandria and you wouldn’t look at me differently in the morning. And I know y’all would get it done, but I’m a part of this group. And not just the cute little kid who sometimes catches a rabbit, okay? I can pull my weight.’

‘It’s not about-‘

‘I _know_ , but… Let me do this. Let me help.’

Rick rubs his hands over his face, trying to buy some time before coming up with an answer.

‘You let me go to Woodbury because it was for Glenn and Maggie. This is the same thing. I know I lost my way for a while, first because I wasn’t right after Shane and then because I tried to be someone I’m not, setting off the flares and nearly fuckin’ it all up with Aaron, but… I ain’t like that no more, okay? I’m here now. Right here with you.’

Rick sighs and shakes his head a little.

‘Told you before back in the church; sometimes you need to be a little messed up in this world. And the good Lord knows we Dixon are just that,’ Daryl grins. ‘And you got two now. Thought me ‘nd Carl were Double Trouble? You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

The cop laughs softly. ‘Okay. Just… stay focused, okay? Stick close to Merle. If shit hits the fan, I want you to run back to Carol and Maggie, no matter what happens, no matter who you have to leave behind. You run and get yourself to safety.’

‘Yup,’ Daryl pops the P on the word and knows he’ll never leave Merle, Glenn, Tara, Michonne, Rosita, Abe or Rick behind.

‘Promise.’

‘Pinky promise.’ He rolls his eyes and wobbles on his feet. ‘Can I go now, sir?’ he pretends to whine. ‘ _Please_?’

Rick snorts and shakes his head again as he stands up. ‘Stick to Merle.’

‘Like glue,’ Daryl promises.

 

 

It’s midnight.

 

 

Daryl hugs Maggie and Carol.

He hugs Glenn tightly.

He bumps his fist against Tara’s and lets Rosita kiss his cheek.

He lets Abe ruffle his hair.

He looks up so Michonne can kiss his forehead.

He claps his hand together with Rick’s, feeling all grown up when the cop nods sternly at him.

A sharp whistle tells him he’s taking too long. Merle has already left, his footsteps have faded into the darkness of the night.

He whistles back to let his brother that he’s on his way and starts to head North.

‘Daryl,’ Paul pushes himself away from the RV he’d been leaning against. ‘I just – be careful.’

‘See you at dawn, Paul,’ Daryl nods, proud when only the tips of his ears burn.

 

The heat of it fades quickly as he joins his brother and they make their way to the outpost.

 

 


	73. The outpost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for missing an update. Personal stuff, but I'm back and all is well.  
> Thanks to everyone who was really nice about it.
> 
> Let's get back to the story.
> 
> Additional chapter warning; explicit gore, Merle, explicit violence by a badass minor.

 

* * *

 

 

Even though the outpost is exactly like how Merle had described it, Daryl still stares at the building with a vague sense of awe. There are big satellites on the roof, pointed towards the sky and its stars. Last night, Glenn had explained that people used to use satellites for all kinds of things, from monitoring the airspace to learning more about the stars. He hadn’t been sure how it worked, exactly, something to do with signals or sound waves.

It makes Daryl feel a little sad, knowing that so much information about the world has been lost since the outbreak. That there are barely any people left who know how to operate such satellites and what to do with the information they can gather. That there were people who knew more about the stars than just myths and legends and that they took their knowledge with them to the grave.

The fact that Glenn promised to keep an eye out for any books about satellites and space only helps a little.

The walk through the cool night air does him some good. His nerves settle with every step he takes, relishing being out here again. It’s easy enough to sneak close to the buildings, watching out of the corner of his eye how the rest of the group follows Rick’s lead and hangs back while he and Merle creep past the windows, staying low to the ground and silent.

They sit against the cold concrete and wait for Andy to pull up in the car.

The lights flood the surrounding area when he does, just how Merle said they would. Red lights, the man had leered, for the pussies inside.

Daryl puts the automatic gun on the ground next to him and draws his knife.

The plan is simple. Andy holds a walker’s head up to the guys who come out to greet him, claims that it’s Gregory’s and that he wants to trade it for the Hilltop member who is being held captive inside. That was the deal.

The plan seems to work.

Daryl tilts his head back  so he can see the faint outlines of the guys in front of the building. They’re still talking to Andy. One of them is big, the other smaller. Of course the smaller one goes back inside to get the prisoner.

Silent as a shadow, Daryl walks over to the big man. He has to stand on his tiptoes to put one hand on the man’s forehead from behind, forcing him to expose his neck. He slices it open with one quick move.

Andy looks horrified as the body falls between them.

Daryl lifts his hunting knife high and jabs it into the skull. He steps back neatly and returns to his spot in the shadows, watching idly how the rest of the group rushes forward to move the body out of sight.

‘One down,’ Merle murmurs.

‘Thirty nine to go,’ Daryl nods.

‘Ya did good.’

‘Yup.’

The door opens again. Daryl stands up just as the prisoner is dragged out of the building. It surprises him that the Savior doesn’t even notice that his friend has gone missing. That it’s just Andy, waiting there with a nervous look on his face, sweating bullets in the cold air.

Maybe he just doesn’t have enough time to notice.

Daryl ghosts behind him, grabs his forehead and slices his throat open, too.

The body crumples, he kneels and forces the blade through the skull with a grunt. Merle is beside him immediately, covering the entrance and his back. Automatic gun raised, stance strong but cautious, clearly well trained by the army.

Rick’s low whistle causes Daryl to look up and catch his own automatic rifle. He puts his knife away and takes his position beside his brother, not bothering to watch how Andy leads the prisoner away towards the car where Paul is waiting for them both.

Merle moves forward, hand on the bar of the door. He stops.

Rick whistles again.

Merle moves in.

 

 

The lay-out of the building is very simple. There are basically three corridors and many rooms. Merle hadn’t been sure what’s behind every single one of them but they have a rough idea and that will have to be enough.

The plan is as simple as the lay-out.

Three steps.

Infiltrate.

Find the arsenal.

Kill them all.

And they’re already inside. Silent footsteps in the corridor, crouched figures creeping through the semi-darkness with gleaming rifles and murderous eyes. Measures steps and whispered commands in an accent that is from beyond the woods and hills and tracks.

They split up. Abraham leads a small group into the right corridor where Merle thought the storage areas were. The arsenal is supposed to be there somewhere, though no one knows behind which door it hides, exactly.

Rick takes the middle one with his group. The longest corridor, the one of which Merle was least sure what was behind which door. Some bedrooms belonging to higher ranked Saviors but also some spaces that were used as living rooms.

Merle leads Daryl down the left hallway. He knows the way here.

He knows they’re all bedrooms.

The first doorknob is the hardest to turn. Merle is waiting for it, gripping his rifle tightly, but not too tightly, bouncing a little on his heels with his eyes training on his little brother’s hand on the knob.

Daryl presses himself against the side of the wall, just how Shane had taught him, and turns the knob, swinging the door open for the first man to enter the room on a raid.

Merle slinks forward. It’s clear that he hasn’t forgotten Will’s hunting lessons forest even after all those years. He doesn’t make a sound when he moves.

Daryl follows him.

There are two beds, one on each side.

Two men are sleeping. The soft light from the hallway illuminates their faces.

Merle takes the one on the left. Daryl walks over to the one on the right.

It’s a big guy with a round face. His mouth is a little open and he snores softly.

The two brothers put their guns onto their backs. They grab their knives tightly, think for a second about the best approach.

Merle has the strength to just slide the knife through the skull with little effort.

Daryl aims for the closed eye and finds the brain that way instead.

They pull their knives out and let the blood drip onto the floor.

‘And that’s three and four,’ Merle whispers.

‘Thirty six to go,’ Daryl answers even though they’re not sure how many people there are inside the building.

‘Then let’s get to it.’

 

 

A man with a scar on his forehead, sleeping curled up on his side with one hand gripping his pillow tightly like he’s having a bad dream.

A man wearing a dirty tank top and some kind of overalls.

A man who sleeps on his back, one hand dipped under the drawstring of his sweatpants and the other covering his heart.

A man who slept with his gun sticking out from under the matrass.

A man wearing a black shirt.

A man with blond hair.

A man with…

A man…

A man…

Daryl breathes in through his nose, fingers sticky from all the blood. He stares down at his next victim.

A woman. Blond short hair curling around her ears, cut unevenly. Her shirt has ridden up, the blankets have been kicked aside. Her expression is so relaxed that it causes Daryl’s shoulders to sag slightly. He wonder what color her eyes are.

His fingers make a disgusting squelching noise as he adjusts his grip.

He closes his eyes just as the blade slides into the woman’s skull.

A strange hand on his own forehead now, exposing his throat. His eyes fly open but it’s just Merle who kisses his temple soundlessly.

‘Eyes up, baby bro,’ he whispers.

 

 

Somebody fucks up when they’re clearing the last room. Alarms go off and lights flash. The man in the bed opens his eyes and stares right at Daryl for a moment, mouth opening in a scream before the boy brings his knife down.

Gunshots erupt in Rick’s corridor. People are screaming, trying to get coordinated but Alexandria has the jump on them. They’re already inside and half of the people the Saviors are shouting for are already dead because of the Dixon brothers.

‘Fall back to Rick’s position, let’s back them up,’ Merle says as he shoves his little brother behind him before running down the corridor. They slide around the corner and head towards the gunfire, their own rifles raised and ready.

The bare walls do nothing to mute the sound. It’s deafening.

People are screaming, dying all around him. His hands are wet with blood.

‘Door,’ Merle warns and Daryl slips to the side, bracing himself before nodding at his brother, throwing the door open for him.

Merle fires shot after shot as he steps forward, taking two men down who’d been trying to pin Rick and Michonne in place.

There’s no time to check in properly. They’re still moving so Daryl hopes they’re okay.

He hears Heath scream.

And Heath is with Glenn.

‘Go,’ Merle nods as Daryl looks at him anxiously.

He runs off into the direction he knows Glenn is supposed to be in and then follows the trail of bodies to a corridor. The gunfire is so loud that he doesn’t dare to look around the corner. Then it’s silent for a little while.

He crouches and looks.

A door, blast to pieces. A heap of bodies right in front of it. Saviors.

Daryl breathes a sigh of relief that it must have been Glenn and Heath inside the room, shooting through the door. Then he sees a man reach for his gun in the middle of all those bodies, all that blood. He’s sitting up against the wall, taking aim and waiting until Glenn or Heath walks out of that room.

Daryl stands and takes aim, too.

The door opens and Glenn walks out.

Two bullets are fired, almost at the same time.

The Savior’s skull explodes against the wall.

Daryl whirls around, looking down the other end of the corridor to find who fired the other shot.

Paul.

He’s not wearing his coat anymore, just the padded vest and white shirt. The sleeves have been rolled up past his elbows and he’s still wearing his gloves. A dark bandana covers most of his face. Wary, dark eyes scan the bodies on the ground.

He pulls the bandana down. ‘So this is the next world,’ he says softly.

Daryl ignores him. He jumps over the bodies to get to Glenn, launching himself into the man’s arms. The Korean leans on him heavily. He looks so tired that it breaks Daryl’s heart. There’s sweat running down his pale cheeks, the black hair drenched.

‘Dare,’ Glenn murmurs, hugging him tightly before letting go.

‘I know, I got it,’ the boy nods as he throws his rifle onto his back and grabs his knife, making sure to get every single one of the Saviors in the head. He has to kneel in the puddle of blood to do it but he doesn’t care. It soaks his jeans, but it’s already on his hands and he’s pretty sure he’s smeared some on his forehead when he’d wiped his hair out of his eyes earlier, so it doesn’t matter.

When he looks up, he’s looking right at Paul.

The man meets his eye but his expression is unreadable.

The gunfire has died down in every part of the complex now. There are footsteps going up and down the stairs but Daryl knows them. It’s Abraham’s heavy tread, followed by Sasha’s quick feet. It’s Aaron backing Rosita up as they clear the upper level.

‘ _Monster_?’

Paul winces, either at the nickname or Merle’s booming voice.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl shouts back, getting to his feet again. ‘I’m fine!’

There’s a beat of silence.

‘ _And Korea_?’

Daryl smirks as he wipes his blade clean on his thigh. ‘Glenn’s fine, too. Everyone is.’

Glenn sighs as he leans again the doorpost again, eyes closed and head tilted back. ‘The racists redneck asked after me. I’m touched.’

‘See?’ Daryl asks with a soft laugh. ‘He ain’t so bad.’ The smile fades when he takes a small step back to the man. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

Glenn nods. ‘It’s just – ‘ he opens his eyes and looks at the boy. ‘I’m _tired_ , Dare.’

It’s not the exhaustion of fading adrenaline or hard work that’s pulling the man down. It’s the new world.

‘I know,’ Daryl nods, lowering his voice a little. ‘Just a bit longer and we can get out of here.’

‘I should be the one telling you that.’

‘True either way so it don’t matter who says it,’ the teenager answers with a smile. ‘Let me carry it for a while,’ he reaches out and puts his hand on Glenn’s shoulder, squeezing it. ‘Let me carry all this for now.’

Glenn looks torn. He closes his eyes and nods.

Daryl whirls around and grabs his automatic rifle again. ‘Paul, cover our six, Heath, stick to Glenn.’ He jumps over the bodies and makes his way down the hallway. He pauses next to every body, checking whether something got them in the brain, occasionally drawing his knife and ending it before the corpses can come back to life.

 

 

An hour later, Daryl is sitting on the hood of one of the cars. The sun warms his cold skin while the wind plays with his hair. There’s sweat running down his neck still, dripping from the ends of his drenched hair, but he doesn’t mind that. Sharp blue eyes track the various members of his family.

They all made it out. Only Abraham has a nasty cut on his arm from where one guy got the jump on him, but Rosita has bandaged him up and he’s good to go again. There’s a clear divide in the group, however. Rick’s people are walking around, talking to each other, checking in, gripping each other’s hands in the passing, but the ones from Alexandria are standing still.

They’re staring at the ground, at their guns, at their hands.

Only Aaron managed to drag himself over to where Rosita is standing to talk to her briefly, the rest of them are lost in thought.

Daryl leans back against the windshield. He turns his head slightly to look at Paul, who is leaning against another car, a little way down the car park.

The man looks away quickly to avoid the teenager’s gaze.

The last inch of the outside area is cleared by Rick, Merle and Michonne. The oldest Dixon throws his automatic rifle back onto his shoulder as he starts to walk back to his brother. His gait is relaxed, shoulders slumped and an easy smile on his face. Here, in the early morning light, he's the spitting image of Will. Strong and broad, strength oozing out of his very pores, slim hips swinging as he walks. He's not graceful in the way Daryl is, less used to sneaking around, but he's confident and comfortable in his own skin.

There's an ease about him that always makes Daryl jealous. Especially when Rosita's gaze travels to his older brother's form, checking him out for a second before huffing a little and rolling her eyes.

She hates him, but still can't help but sneak a peek.

Merle doesn't seem to notice, at least. He walks up to the car his brother is sitting on and leans against the side, elbows on the hood. 'You good?'

Daryl nods.

'You turnin' into a fairy didn't do nothing to how that all went down. You did real good, monster. Real proud of you.'

The teenager rolls his eyes and flips his brother off.

Merle grins at him. 'I'm serious, brother. That Shane guy? He taught ya good.'

'He wouldn't have wanted this,' Daryl murmurs as he looks out over the fields, to the sun rising on their right. 'Not for me, or any of them. This would have fuckin' killed him.'

He'd been thinking about that all day yesterday. All night, too. Every time he plunged the knife in, every time he pulled the trigger. And now he's coated in other people's blood and numb to the heartache he should be feeling over all those lives lost, and Shane wouldn't have been _proud_.

This isn't like Woodbury. They didn't go in to save two of their own, they didn't protect what was theirs to begin with, they didn't do it to serve and protect anyone. It was a quick way to an easy meal and they took it.

He's not sorry either because it's always going to be them in the end, no matter what they have to do to make that happen. That lesson had started out with Dixon-blood only, but it has slowly expanded to encompass the rest of his family. He won't ever kick their heels like Will had told him to. He's not sorry because what he did is the reason his family is still breathing, still alive.

He's glad that Shane isn't here to see him like this, though.

'Do what needs to be done, right?' Merle sounds oddly cautious as he eyes his little brother.

'Do what needs to be done,' Daryl nods. He worries his bottom lip. 'Did ya recognize any of the people in there?'

'Not really. The guys who plucked me off the road, but other than that... Could have been anyone, I don't know. Didn't stop to look up close after.'

'Right. Share a cigarette?'

Merle digs a crumpled package out of his pocket and Daryl still has their dad's lighter. Together, they pass the cigarette back and forth between them. The filter gets smudged with the blood from their hands but neither one of them cares.

'Hey,' Merle reaches out and touches his brother's thigh, a gentle tap. He ducks his head a little, looking away before meeting the strikingly similar blue eyes. 'You know this ain't... This don't change anything about you. Fucked up world, is all.'

'Right.'

His brother drums his fingers on the hood of the car. 'I know we don't, usually, but we can talk about shit. If you wanna.'

'We talk all the time.'

Merle looks away. 'I know. Just tryin' to be a good brother, man. I've been trained to do this shit, but you ain't. I know that.'

'You ever done it?' Daryl asks as he takes another drag from the cigarette. 'Kill someone before today?'

'Couple,' Merle murmurs as he runs his finger over his lower lip, muffling the word some. 'Not before it all went to shit though. They pulled some of us from the prisons when it went to hell out here, put us right back on active duty. Shit. Made us sign some bullshit paper that we'd return to jail once this was all contained. Assholes. Went back to our base, never made it there so just joined another platoon. Everyone lost their minds. Was gonna do a runner once I had my equipment.'

'Why?' the teenager asks as he passes the cigarette back.

'Was gonna find you.'

'And dad.'

Merle works his jaw. 'Sure. And the old man.'

'He never let me visit you,' Daryl says, leaning back against the windscreen and looking at his big brother. 'And when ya called, he wouldn't let me talk to you.'

'Crazy fool,' Merle smiles, reaching out again and scratching at the seam of Daryl's jeans. 'He thought I were a bad influence.'

'You weren't.'

'No I was,' the brother laughs. 'Draggin' your tiny ass everywhere, lettin' ya see things ya had no business seein'. Was selfish, I just – _you_ were the good influence. You kept me straight.’

‘So why did you leave?’ Daryl asks.

‘Went to join the army. You know that.’

‘But why? I just – I came home one day and you were gone.’

Merle ends the cigarette on the hood of the car. ‘Had to make some decent money. Didn’t want it to be all dramatic.’ He refuses to meet Daryl’s eye. ‘You always were a little bitch about me leavin’ anywhere, so…’

Daryl scoffs. ‘Ya say ya wanna talk and all, but you can’t even tell me the damn truth. Ya can’t even _look_ at me.’

‘Just hate seein’ my blood bein’ a pussy. It’s done, monster. Ain’t no point in bitchin’ about it now. Want me to say I’m sorry for leavin’ your scrawny ass behind? Fine.’ Merle rolls his eyes and raises the pitch of his voice, trying to sound like a whining schoolgirl, ‘ _I’m sorry_ , _Dare._ ’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re one to talk,’ Merle says. ‘Tellin’ the damn truth, huh? What about-‘

‘Stop,’ Daryl shakes his head and closes his eyes again. ‘Just stop. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t want to fight with you. Not now.’

‘Yeah,’ Merle bows his head. ‘A’right.’

‘Let’s just get the fuck out of here,’ the teenager murmurs as he gets up and walks over the hood of the car to jump off it.

 

 

He’d recognize that sound anywhere.

He’s standing beside Rick when it growls, swirls into something loud and angry, and he whirls around to see his bike shoot out of one of the garages. ‘Son of a bitch!’

Rosita takes the guy out with a couple of shots.

The bike crashes.

Daryl darts across the field, beating everyone else to the scene, and pounces on the man. His fist collides with a jaw, blood platters onto the grass around them. He straddles the man so he can’t get up, grabs him by the leather jacket to draw him closer for another punch.

‘Dare.’ Rick appears besides him with his gun drawn.

‘ _Where did you get the bike_?’ Daryl snarls at the man, jostling him. There’s blood pouring from his nose, dripping down his lips.

‘Just do it!’ the man says, teeth coated with blood. ‘Like you did everyone else, right?’

A walkie-talkie suddenly crackles to life in the tall grass. A woman’s voice breaks through the static. ‘Lower your gun, prick. You with the Colt Python. All of you lower your weapons right now.’

Daryl lets go off the man and pushes himself back to his feet, drawing the handgun Carl had given him. He looks around the area, trying to spot whoever is watching them In turn, but there are far too many places for them to hide. They could be anywhere. A rough hand is placed on his shoulder. Merle drags him behind his back, shielding him from the forest which is the most obvious hiding place.

Rick picks the radio up. ‘Come on out,’ he says, not lowering his gun. ‘Let’s talk.’

‘We’re not coming out but we will talk,’ the woman says. ‘We’ve got a Carol and a Maggie. I’m thinking that’s something you want to chat about.’

Daryl whimpers softly, grabbing his brother’s hips and pressing his face between his shoulder blades.

 

 

It doesn’t take him long at all to find the tracks. He zigzags between the trees, running a circle around the compound until he happens upon sunken marks in the wet earth; the place where the Saviors had watched them from. A sharp whistle summons Rick, Glenn and his brother.

‘Gotta start callin’ ya bloodhound instead, monster,’ Merle remarks as he inspects the tracks and starts to follow them. ‘Good job.’

Glenn gives him a grateful nod in the passing.

‘Gun up,’ Rick warns before he brushes past the boy.

‘Ahw, hell,’ Merle groans when they hit a concrete road. ‘Monster? Take point. I think they got into a car. You can still track ‘em, right?’

‘Won’t know until we know,’ Daryl shrugs, ‘they went that way though,’ he nods east.  

They decide not to take a car themselves because they’re scared they’ll miss some tracks and won’t be able to track Maggie and Carol back to where the Saviors took them. The road is long. It has started to rain a while ago. The blood slowly washes off Daryl’s hands every time he pushes his wet hair back.

After an hour, Merle falls back to talk to Rick, arguing under their breaths and trying to figure this situation out.

It surprises Daryl a little when Paul takes his brother’s spot. The man’s footsteps are as silent as the hunter’s. He’s wearing his long coat again and most of his face is still covered by the bandana. Light eyes flash at Daryl whenever the man thinks he’s not looking.

‘Will you just fuckin’ spit it out or quit watchin’ me?’ Daryl asks as he walks a slow circle over an intersection before turning right, picking the trail back up. ‘It’s annoyin’ as fuck, lemme tell ya.’

‘Now you know how I feel sometimes.’

Daryl stops walking abruptly. ‘You seriously gonna be a dick about that _now_? Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man. Sorry that I thought you were hot as fuck, okay, but I’m a little busy at the moment so I swear I weren’t checking out your ass while we were wastin’ those people.’

Paul folds one of his gloved hands over his eyes and holds the other one up, ‘stop, I wasn’t – God. I tried to make a joke, I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, ‘cause this is a _great_ time to be jokin’ around,’ Daryl grouses as he continues his tracking.

Paul falls into step beside him. He pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat, looking at his own feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says after a couple of steps. ‘I just wanted to talk to you. Sometimes I don’t really know how to… start, I guess.’

‘Then don’t,’ Daryl snaps back, ‘why does everyone want to talk to me? Leave me alone!’

He expects Paul to say something, another apology, another reason, another wrongly timed joke that hits his sore spot too hard, but instead the man slows his step until he vanishes from Daryl’s sight.

Of course he’s not left alone completely.

Michonne steps up to the plate next. She gives him a steady look, unafraid of how he’ll lash out this time. ‘He was just trying to make sure you’re okay. Later,’ she says when  the teenager looks at her sharply. ‘You will think about what you’ve said to him and then you’ll decide whether you need to apologize, but later. Maggie and Carol need you.’

The rest of the road, she doesn’t say anything to him.

He’s grateful for it.

 

 

They’re too late to intercept the back-up. When they finally arrive at the building, there are multiple cars parked out front.

Merle orders him to the back of the group and Daryl doesn’t hesitate. The older Dixon and Rick have the most experience, but Glenn won’t back down now that his wife is inside the building, so he’s the first to open the heavy door.

Gun raised and suddenly pointed at Maggie, who is sticking her own gun into her husband’s face.

Eyes widen, shoulders slump.

She staggers into his waiting arms.

Daryl pushes past Merle, shoving him out of the way and grabbing hold of Carol’s shoulder, forcing her to look at him instead of the older Dixon. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘You start a fire?’ he can smell the ashes and gasoline.

Carol stares at the ground.

‘Hey,’ he puts two careful fingers on her chin, dragging her gaze down until she’s looking at him. ‘You good?’

‘No,’ she breathes as she shake her head.

Daryl surges forward to engulf her in a tight hug. ‘Come here,’ he mutters into her shoulder, feeling grateful when she buries one hand into his dark hair to tug him even closer.

‘They’re dead, they’re all dead,’ Maggie stammers behind them, ‘the ones who took us, they’re all dead.’ There’s blood splattered all over her face. ‘Where’s Dare? Glenn, where is-‘

‘He’s fine, he’s with Carol,’ Glenn shushes. ‘Are _you_ okay?’

‘I – I can’t anymore,’ she says.

‘Your friends are dead,’ Rick tells the Savior they’ve captured. ‘No-one is coming for you, so you might as well talk.’

‘Let him burn,’ Merle scoffs as he leans against the wall with one shoulder.

Rick shoots him a warning look before he leans into the space of their prisoner again. ‘I’m gonna ask you one last time. How did you get the bike?’

‘We found it.’

‘Like hell ya did,’ Daryl growls.

‘We found it!’ the man insists.

‘Was Negan in that building last night or was he here?’ Rick demands to know.

‘Both,’ the man says with what sounds like a huff of laughter. ‘I’m Negan, shithead. Now, there’s a whole world of fun we can talk about so let’s have a chat.’

Rick takes a step back. ‘I’m sorry it had to come to this,’ he says as he raises his Colt Python and blows the man’s brains out.

 

 

‘Amazing,’ Merle mutters as he inspects the bike. He’s just helped Daryl drag it upright and is just checking all the components to make sure it’s safe to drive. ‘You really build it yourself?’

‘Yeah. Well, people taught me how, but… yeah.’

‘Fuckin’ hell, it’s a beauty, bro. Need some tools to adjust the suspension when we’re back at Alexandria, but it’s good to go for now.’ Merle grins at him. ‘Let me see you ride that beast, monster.’

Daryl laughs and swings his leg over the seat, sliding into place. He pulls his bandana over his nose and mouth. ‘You gonna ride back with Rick, or…’

‘Or what?’

Daryl shrugs, ‘could ride with me.’

‘Ride bitch on my little brother’s Frankenstein bike?’ Merle asks while arching an eyebrow.

‘Never mind,’ Daryl mutters as he kick starts the engine.

‘You’re so easy, baby brother,’ the older Dixon laughs as he grabs hold of Daryl’s shoulder. ‘Keep it steady now,’ he warns as his fingers dig into his brother’s skin. He throws his leg over the back and falls into the seat behind him. ‘You ever rode with anyone else?’

‘Carl rode with me all the time,’ Daryl nods.

‘I’m a lot heavier than that kid,’ Merle warns. ‘Watch out in the corners. Slow and steady until you’re used to my heavy ass ridin’ yours. Jesus Christ,’ he grabs his brother by the hips and pushes himself a little bit backwards, ‘you had to make this seat so small? My ass is already bleedin’, man.’

‘Stop bein’ such a bitch,’ Daryl laughs. ‘Get ready, I’m gonna drive over to Glenn at the gate.’

‘This is gonna be the death of me. Careful,’ Merle shouts over the roar of the engine. ‘Watch that – careful, monster, look at the – okay, you got it.’

With a shake of his head, Daryl avoids all the rocks and branches on the path leading up to the road, where Glenn is waiting next to the RV with Paul. Their heads bend close together as they talk.

‘Yo, Glenn,’ Daryl calls out as he rolls to a stop beside them. ‘Merle’s ridin’ with me, okay?’

Glenn glances at Merle, ‘yeah. That’s fine, Dare. Just stay within our sight.’

‘Goodbye Daryl.’ Paul offers him a small smile.

Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘What?’

‘I’m going to grab one of their vehicles, head back to my own community. Let them know the deal is done,’ Paul says as he jabs a thumb in the direction of the car park, where Gabriel and Rick are loading up the last guns. ‘So this is goodbye.’

‘Forever?’

Paul looks at him fondly. ‘No, not forever, but for now. Our communities will continue to trade goods. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’ Daryl licks his thumb and rubs at a mark on the engine between his thighs. He glances up at the man, ‘I weren’t really mad, ya know, when I – I was just worried about Mags and Carol, so… Kinda… Kinda lash out, sometimes, when things annoy me.’

‘I understand,’ Paul nods.

 ‘I’m okay,’ Daryl says as he shakes his hair out of his eyes. ‘Thanks for checkin’, I guess.’

‘Yeah,’ Paul pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat again. ‘You’re a good kid, Daryl.’

The teenager winces.

‘You are. And still a kid,’ he says pointedly, the corner of his mouth twisting into a teasing smirk. ‘But what you said to me, just before I left you that night? Same goes for you. Goodbye.’

‘Bye,’ Daryl murmurs as he wrecks his brain over what he’d said back at Hilltop. His head snaps back to look at the man when he remembers.

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ, stop your droolin’, it’s fuckin’ disgustin’,’ Merle complains while clipping him over the back of his head.

‘He thinks I’m pretty special,’ Daryl says with a breath of amazed laughter.

‘Pussy,’ Merle grins as he loops one arm around his brother’s chest, hugging him from behind and nuzzling his dark hair fondly. ‘At least the faggot isn’t a complete idiot.’

 

 


	74. Denise

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s dark.

Daryl sneaks out of his bedroom and down the stairs, putting his boots on near the front door before slipping out of the house. He breathes in the cool night air and tries to clear his mind. He can’t sleep. The blood might have been washed away by Rosita’s gentle hands, a cool wet cloth against the heated skin of his hands and face, but the gunshots still echo in his mind.

They’re joined by Maggie’s soft sobs. He can’t quite forget how she’d clung to Glenn after it was all over, covered in blood but safe, crying because she, too, was so tired of it all. It doesn’t matter that she’d given him a broken smile when they’d met again at Rick’s house, Daryl sitting on his bike and her walking next to Glenn, holding onto his hand tightly. She’d kissed his cheek, stroked his hair, before disappearing into the house and her room upstairs.

No matter what Rick says, Daryl still feels like he’s failed her, somehow.

 So he walks down the street, through a garden, past the watchtower to get to Merle’s house.

He’d said he had many rooms.

He’d said there’d always be a room and a bed just for him.

And maybe Daryl can steal another cigarette to steady his shaking hands.

Just as he wants to hop the low fence and melt out of the shadows, he hears Michonne’s voice. With a frown, he steers left, walking along the fence to the back of the house, jumping it there before creeping towards the front again, close to the bricks warmed by the sun.

Merle’s voice startles him. It shouldn’t, it’s his house and his porch, after all, but it’s still surprising to hear his brother answer Michonne.

‘He always liked to draw,’ Merle says. He’s smoking. Daryl can tell from the way his voice rasps. ‘Don’t know where he got it from.’

‘He drew on Will’s back with black marker.’

‘Hmm. Wanted to be a tattoo artist or something, I don’t know. Some bullshit like that. I always thought it was stupid, but dad let him think he could ever become that. Like he wouldn’t join the army or disappear into the gutter like everyone else.’

Michonne’s boots scrape over the porch steps. ‘Is that what you think of him?’

‘No. Just weren’t many options for people like us. It was that or jail. Drugs. Theft, something like that. Don’t matter none. He was a good kid, right? Good, but not very clever. I mean, not free-ride-to-college clever. Ain’t no shame in that. We’re good with our hands. Takes a while for our brains to catch up, sometimes.’

Daryl sits down in the tall grass, listing to the voices in the night. It’s been a while since he’s heard Merle talk so freely. He doesn’t want to break the moment.

‘You got out,’ Michonne remarks.

‘Army.’

Michonne hums and there’s silence for a long while.

‘He’s mad at me for leavin’.’ Merle seems to blurt the words out.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. He told me so this morning. Well, he was just tryin’ to start something, but – yeah. He’s mad.’

‘It’s hard to tell with him whether he’s really mad or just trying to get into a fight because he’s not sure what he’s feeling. He used to rile everyone up. Rick says it was worse before the prison, that Shane managed to calm him down some, but he was still impossible sometimes.’

‘ _Shane_ ,’ Merle breathes but doesn’t elaborate.

‘They were good together,’ Michonne says lightly. ‘Did Dare tell you about him?’

‘Just that he was some guy. Looked after him a while.’

The woman laughs. ‘ _Some guy_. Two sides of the same coin, those two. I only met them after they were two peas in a pod, but from the stories the others tell? Water and fire, in the beginning, but Daryl hated Rick and Glenn was too easily scared by the Dixon temper, so Shane stepped up.’

Merle grunts.

‘He talked a lot about you,’ Michonne muses. ‘His big brother and your crazy adventures at the bars of their small town,’ she’s smiling, Daryl can tell from the tone of her voice.

‘Dumpin’ his ass in the back of my truck when he fell asleep ain’t much of an adventure,’ Merle grouses.

‘He thought it was.’

‘Pssh. A seven year old tuckered out in the back of a nasty bar, sleepin’ on top of some cheap booze. That’s all it were.’

‘Spending time with his big brother, is what it was to him. It’s where he learned to draw, play poker, cheat at cards. He’s really good at that, by the way.’

‘It’s the pretty face,’ Merle laughs, ‘fools everyone into thinkin’ he’s playin’ nice.’

‘That must be it,’ Michonne agrees. ‘You’re choosing to stay on the outside, with him. I see how you look at Glenn and Rick. It’s not a competition. He needs you. You didn’t see him when you pushed him away. And the truth is; this is your last shot. Most of us don’t get second chances in this world. You did. With your skills? This could be a whole new beginning.’

‘For him,’ Merle says. ‘It’s a new beginning for him.’

‘ _Both_ of you.’

Merle grunts again. ‘Ya say you see how I look at Glenn ‘nd Rick? Hmm. I see how Daryl looks at ‘em. Both of ‘em. And I tried, right? I tried talkin’ to him, get him to talk to me about… stuff, ya know? Damn, we killed people last night and that boy barely even flinched, I just wanted – it ain’t enough.’

‘You mean _you_ are not enough.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you think Glenn is? Rick?’

‘They’re good for him. Better.’

Daryl gets up and makes sure he makes noise as he walks around the corner.

The two adults are sitting on the porch, illuminated by the porch light. Michonne is leaning back on her elbows, long legs stretched out before her and head titled up so she can look at the stars above them. The oldest Dixon is leaning forward on his knees with his elbows, shoulders hunched as if trying to make himself smaller than he is. He’s fidgeting with something, probably the laces of his boots. His head snaps up first.

‘Monster, the fuck are you doin’ here? You should have been in bed hours ago!’

Daryl scoffs as he leans against the banister of the porch. ‘ _Sorry, dad_.’ He wipes his nose on the back of his head, eyes darting away, ‘can I stay with you tonight? Just – Can I?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Merle gets up right away, taking a step towards him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

Michonne gets up, too. ‘Things getting a little crowded at the house?’ she asks as she strokes Daryl’s cheek.

‘Nah. Just felt like crashing at Merle’s. He said I could.’

‘Of course,’ she leans in and kisses his forehead. ‘Stay with your brother tonight. We’ll see you in the morning, Dare. Goodnight.’

‘Night, Mich,’ he says, reaching out to squeeze her hand briefly.

‘Michonne!’

The woman turns to look at Merle with slightly raised eyebrows, not sure what to expect.

‘Goodnight,’ Merle says with a nod.

‘Goodnight, Dixon,’ she smiles.

Daryl brushes past his brother and walks into the house. It’s smaller than Rick’s but the lay-out is the same. Living room leading to an open kitchen, a staircase going up to the second floor. The walls have been painted a soft gray, all the personal items have been removed except for the artwork and books. It’s not that easy to figure out who used to live here. A young family, maybe, or a couple who needed enough bedrooms to host their family should they ever return home.

There are no traces of his brother anywhere. No ashtrays, no magazines, no items of clothing carelessly discarded like they had been inside the trailer. He’s not sure what that means. Maybe Merle is trying to keep up appearances, maybe that’s why he’d been smoking outside, or maybe this just isn’t his home. Yet, or ever.

‘Guestrooms are upstairs but I’m not sure there are, like, sheets on the bed or anything.’

Daryl nods and starts up the staircase. The first guestroom is eerily empty. Just a bare bed. There aren’t any sheets. Daryl doesn’t really care because he‘s not going to stay in the guestroom. He walks into his brother’s bedroom, the biggest of them all, and throws his vest over the back of a chair.

 Merle watches him from the door.

‘What?’ Daryl asks as he sits on the edge of the big bed and starts to unlace his boots. ‘Goin’ to freak out if I share with ya?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

Merle frowns. ‘Why the fuck would it freak me out? Ain’t the first time we shared a damn bed.’

‘Yeah, well, that was before, so…’

‘Ain’t goin’ to mistake ya for a walker, even if you smell just as bad,’ Merle scoffs as he pushes himself away from the door. He bends down to unlace his boots as well.

‘I meant before you knew I was…. different,’ Daryl mutters as he kicks his boots away and puts his gun on the nightstand. The belt slithers out of the loops and drops to the floor with a loud clang. ‘Don’t change nothing. Share with Carl all the time. Makes it better, sometimes. Sharin’, ya know? Knowin’ someone else is there.’ He rubs at his forehead to hide most of his expression.

Merle scoffs again. ‘ _Christ_ , bro. I didn’t even think of that. Might be red-neck trash but that’s a goddamn new low, okay? Ain’t worried you been wantin’ to jump my bones, even though they’re pretty fine.’ He picks one of his boots up and hurls it at his brother. ‘Ya pest.’

The boot misses by a long shot and thuds onto the floor near the window.

Daryl throws a smirk over his shoulder. ‘Just don’t want it to be weird.’

‘You’re makin’ it weird, little brother, cut it out.,’ Merle grouses as he unbuttons his jeans and steps out of them, throwing them onto the chair where they’re soon joined by Daryl’s. They both shrugs out of their shirts, keeping their wife beaters on. Merle lets himself fall onto his side of the bed, groaning when his spine straightens out.

Daryl crawls in on the other side, under the covers, sighing contently when his head hits the cool pillow. His hand finds his necklaces automatically. They jingle when he pulls them out from under his shirt, allowing his fingers to twist around the metal.  

Merle turns his head to look at him when the sound registers. His gaze lands on the two rings in the palm of his brother’s hand. ‘Mom and dad’s?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl sighs. ‘Took them from him after… you know.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I’ve got mom’s picture in my pack. I took it with me when we left the trailer and it survived somehow. Lost my shit so many times, but someone always returned it to me. Thought I’d lost it at Terminus, they took all of our stuff, but Carol brought my pack back with her. And my bow.’

‘That mouse,’ Merle grins, ‘always surprisin’ me.’

‘Yeah. She’s tough,’ Daryl grins back. He lets the rings fall back against his breastbone. They clink against the number 22 there. Merle looks at it but doesn’t say anything. ‘I dreamt about you a couple of times. Like – hallucinated.’

Merle’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Did ya now?’

‘Hmm-hmm. When I were lookin’ for Sophia, I fell down this cliff and had to climb back up.  Had fallen into my own damn bolt, so it was kinda hard, right?’

‘ _Kinda_ hard,’ Merle echoes with disbelief.

‘Yeah, well, ya told me to pull it out so I could bind the wound better so that helped. Called me a dummy.’

‘Now that don’t sound like me at all, callin’ ya names like that,’ his brother teases.

Daryl laughs softly, shifting a little closer to him. ‘Asshole. Ya told me the story about the boy and the skeleton.’

‘I’ve told ya that story a million times already, damn, ya couldn’t think of me sayin’ something clever for once?’

‘Nah,’ the teenager grins, kicking his brother’s shin. ‘I like that story, you know that.’

‘’s why I told it it a million times,’ Merle nods, ‘and not because old Merle couldn’t think of a better damn story okay? It’s a Dixon classic.’

‘Ya still fucked it up.’

‘ _You_ fucked it up, I weren’t even there, bro,’ Merle points out.

‘Fine. I fucked it up, but don’t act like you ever told that story right. It was always done fucked up because ya always forgot important bits. And you’d be all; _ooh right, there was a skeleton, ya know?_ Half-way through the story!’

‘It’s in the damn title, I wouldn’t have to tell ya there were one if ya had half a brain!’

‘Just admit you sucked at tellin’ me stories, man!’

‘Pssh. Then what had ya crawlin’ into my bed at all hours of the night, demandin’ me to do just that, huh?’

Daryl looks at him in the dark.

The smile fades from Merle’s face as he looks back.

‘Just liked it,’ Daryl murmurs, pulling the blanket higher over his shoulder

‘Right,’ Merle says slowly.

‘Going to get some sleep now. I should have been asleep hours ago, ya know? Growin’  boy and all.’

‘You’re terrible.’

‘Shut up.’

‘What?’ Merle asks as he loops an arm around his brother’s shoulder, pulling him close. ‘You don’t want me tellin’ ya a story tonight?’

‘No, ‘cause you’ll fuck it up again, dumb ass,’ Daryl giggles as he turns around in his brother’s embrace. ‘Shut the fuck up, I’m serious.’

When his brother starts to pull back and out of the embrace, he grabs hold of Merle’s arm to keep it in place.

 

 

Daryl jumps over the Bo and rolls out of the way when it comes down in the soft grass beside him. There’s sweat streaming down his body, causing his shirt to cling to his chest and back while his rough jeans chafes his thighs. He ignores it, gets to his feet only to drop low and sweep his own leg over the grass.

Morgan jumps out of the way, laughing a little. There’s sweat dripping down the side of his face, too. He whirls the Bo around, striking again when Daryl stands up.

He hits the boy on the shoulder, hard enough to bruise.

Daryl curses and stumbles.

‘I’m sorry,’ Morgan says immediately, lowering the weapon and taking a step towards him. ‘Are you okay? I didn’t mean to hurt you, I thought you saw that one coming.’

‘I did,’ Daryl grins because Morgan is now within reach with a lowered Bo. One boot hooking around the back of the man’s legs, a shove at a shoulder and pull at an arm and Morgan goes down with a barely disguised yelp. Daryl kicks the Bo out of his hand. ‘Bruises ain’t lethal but you’d be fuckin’ dead if this were real, man,’ he puts his boot down next to the man’s neck to show that he could have stomped down on it.

Morgan closes his eyes and laughs. He nods. ‘You’re a good student.’

‘’s good practice for when some asshole comes swingin’ a stick at me,’ Daryl laughs back, holding out his hand so he can haul the man back to his feet.

‘Again,’ Morgan says, shaking some tension out of his shoulders before taking a couple of steps back and raising his Bo.

‘Get him, monster!’

‘Good job, Dare. Watch your feet next time, you almost fell over dodging that first strike.’

Daryl glances to the side. Merle and Glenn are sitting in the shade of the solar panels. They’re passing a water bottle back and forth. It’s been a couple of days since the attack on the outpost and life in Alexandria has returned to normal. There’s food in the pantry, the automatic systems still take care of the filtering of their water, and the electricity grid holds because of Eugene’s tinkering.

‘You two shouldn’t be hangin’ out no more!’ Daryl shouts back. ‘’s freakin’ me out, y’all bein’ so chummy.’

‘ _Chummy_ ,’ Merle scoffs while Glenn just laughs.

‘Again, Daryl,’ Morgan says sternly, drawing his attention back to the training session. ‘Try to stay focused.’

‘Pssh,’ Daryl wipes his hair out of his eyes and takes his stance. ‘I weren’t the one on my ass just now.’

Five seconds later, he is.

 

 

‘I’m tellin’ ya, friendly,’ Merle snarls, ‘I ain’t ever seen those cars before, so where the fuck did they come from, huh? The ones they called for back-up?’

‘You were there a _week_ ,’ Rick says, sounding exasperated. ‘You said it yourself; you didn’t know everything about that place. Maybe they’d been out on a long run.’

‘And back just in time? Nah, that don’t fly with me. There ain’t no such thing as luck anymore.’

‘It’s over,’ Rick says decidedly as he rolls up  map of the area. ‘Are you going with Aaron on this run or not?’

‘Yeah, fine, I’ll take the faggot for a walk,’ Merle dismisses with a wave of his hand. ‘But what about Dare’s bike, huh? They just _found_ it?’

‘They’re the Saviors,’ Rick sighs. ‘You heard Jesus. They _take_ things. They took the bike. It’s over, Merle. Let it go.’ He sits down on top of the kitchen table and looks at his knees before glancing up at the oldest Dixon. ‘Did you talk to Dare yet?’

Merle is leaning against the wall. Judith is in his arms. The little girl is sleeping against one broad shoulder, small hand twisted into the fabric of his dirty wife beater. ‘He’s fine.’

‘But did you _talk_ to him?’

‘Mind your own damn business, friendly.’

‘He _is_ my business. You are, too.’

‘I ain’t your nothing,’ Merle scoffs as he adjusts the little girl in his arms, shushing her whimpers expertly. ‘Think I’m your bitch just because you whistle and I shoot? Nah. I ain’t here for you or your damn family. I’m here for my brother.’

‘And he is here for us.’

‘So be it,’ Merle says while tilting his chin higher.

Rick shoots him a tiny smirk. ‘So be it,’ he nods.

Daryl slams his bedroom door behind him and runs down the hall, jumping down the staircase to crash into the kitchen, waking Judith with a start. It’s an easy way to cause enough chaos to distract them from the fact that they hadn’t realized he’d been home all this time.

‘Hey, lil’ Asskicker,’ Daryl grins while scooping Judith out of his brother’s arm. ‘Wakey, wakey, yeah!’ He laughs when she reaches for him, ‘it’s your big bro, savin’ ya from mine, huh? We gonna hang out or what, girly? Yeah, yeah we are!’ He kisses her cheek and shifts her to his hip. He plucks an apple from the bowl and looks at Rick, ‘what? You wanted me to take her this afternoon, right?’

‘Please,’ Rick nods.

‘Cool.’

‘Stay out of the garage today,’ the cop says. ‘Keep an eye on her.’

‘Watch her all the damn time, man. I got it.’

‘Language.’

The boy rolls his eyes. ‘She survived Merle and her ears ain’t bleedin’. What the fuck are you doing here anyway, bro?’

‘ _Language_.’

‘Listen to Rick, monster,’ Merle says with a stern look. ‘Not around his kid. Do as I say, not as I do,’ he adds when Daryl opens his mouth to objects.

Daryl takes Judith’s tiny hand in his and waves at the two men with it. ‘Say _bye daddy_. _Bye hypocrite_!’

 

 

‘I don’t want to alarm you guys,’ Enid says as she plops down between Daryl and Carl on the couch. ‘But something _weird_ is going on.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Daryl murmurs as he flips a page of his book.

‘What?’ Carl asks, eyebrows shooting up.

‘I just saw Merle helping Maggie out in the garden.’

‘Told ya,’ Daryl says, ‘he’s tryin’.’

‘He’s up to something,’ Enid counters.

‘Leave him alone,’ Daryl frowns. ‘He’s been hangin’ out with Glenn, Rick and Michonne, too.’

Carl snorts.

Both his brother and his girlfriend look at him.

The teenager shrugs, ‘sounds like he’s meeting the parents.’

 

 

Carol comes to see him when he’s working on his bike at the side of their own house. She’s been staying with Tobin for a couple of days now and he doubts that she’s ever coming back to Rick’s unless things go bad between them.

‘Didn’t even notice,’ she says lightly, ‘you got your bike back.’

‘Yeah,’ he looks up at her from where he’s crouching next to the machine. ‘Merle checked it out before but I’m just… tinkerin’, I guess.’

‘Drooling over your beautiful bike, you mean.’ She sits down on the small step. There’s a cigarette between her pale fingers.

‘You got another one of those?’

She reaches into her pocket and pulls one out for him. He lights it with his silver zippo.

‘Those people you met, the ones in the burnt forest, they took it from you?’ Carol asks.

Daryl nods.

‘You saved them, right?’

He licks his lips and blows the smoke high into the air.

‘Sorry,’ the woman says softly. ‘It’s who you are. We’re still stuck with that.’

The teenager frowns. ‘No, we ain’t. I should have killed ‘em.’

There are tears in her eyes. She puts the package of cigarettes down next to him and walks away.

‘Hey,’ he calls out. ’The ones that took you and Maggie, what’d they do to you?’

‘To us?’ she says with a little shake of her head like she doesn’t understand his question. ‘They didn’t do anything, pookie.’

He lets her walk away this time. Even when he knows she’s lying to his face.

 

 

Daryl is sitting on the exact same step when Rosita and Denise find him the next morning. There’s a sketchbook on his knees, the pencil Jesus had found him between his teeth. With his finger, he smudges some shadows onto the paper before glancing back at the large tree in their neighbor’s yard. He sketches another branch, the leaves and the wall stretching behind it.

He puts the pencil behind his ear when the two women approach, hunching over his sketchbook protectively. ‘’s’up?’

Rosita folds her arms in front of her chest and looks away impatiently. ‘Denise got something to ask us.’

Daryl narrows his eyes and glances at the blonde woman.

‘After I got out of DC, I just drove,’ Denise says as she pulls a map out of the pockets of her hoodie. ‘I remember seeing it right when I realized I had no idea where I was going. Edison’s Apothecary and Boutique. It’s just this little gift shop in a strip mall, but if it’s really an apothecary; they had drugs.’

He can feel the question coming from a mile away. ‘How do you know they still got ‘em?’ he asks.

‘It isn’t that far,’ Denise says as she glances back at Rosita. ‘I just wanna check. And you and Rosita aren’t out scavenging or pulling shifts.’

Daryl nods and reaches up for the map, ‘we’ll go.’

‘ _I_ wanted to check,’ Denise says. ‘I just wanted to help.’

Slowly, the teenager gets to his feet, clutching his sketchbook to his chest to prevent someone from looking at it. ‘How much time have you spent out there?’

‘None.’

He scoffs, ‘forget it.’

‘I can ID the meds. I know how to use a machete now. I’ve seen roamers up close. I’m ready!’

Daryl looks at Rosita. ‘You good with this?’

She looks at him like he’s crazy. ‘No!’

‘I’ll go alone if I have to,’ Denise insists.

‘You’ll die alone,’ Daryl says dismissively.

‘I’m asking you to make sure I don’t.’

Daryl glances at Rosita again.

‘I am not babysitting her by myself,’ the woman says.

Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘Fine,’ he grunts, one corner of his mouth tilting up in a shy grin. ‘We can babysit you. But I want something in return.’

 

 

It’s harder to drive than he’d anticipated. The gears grind whenever he shifts and the truck they took feels way too big for the tiny back roads. He tries to be nonchalant about it, one wrist on the steering wheel while he fights with the clutch, but it all feels less cool when the car almost stalls every time he shifts gears. The engine growls loudly and Rosita sighs from the other side of the car.

‘You’re disengaging it too soon,’ Denise says. ‘Let the clutch come up slowly.’

‘Find the sweet spot, right?’ Daryl grunts as he looks down at his feet.

‘Eyes on the road!’ Denise laughs as she tugs at the steering wheel. ‘Yes, find the sweet spot.’

‘Shit, sorry, it’s hard! How the hell can you do all this stuff at the same damn time? Steering and the gas and clutch and checkin’ my damn mirrors!’

Rosita giggles and looks out of the window.

‘I’ve been driving stick since I was fifteen,’ Denise tells him, ’usually beat-up trucks like this. I mean, before I left home. My brother taught me, so I just know.’

‘’s fuckin’ bullshit, is what it is. I hate drivin’ stick!’

‘You have to shift on your bike too, and that thing is a thousand times harder to drive,’ Rosita laughs. ‘You’re just getting frustrated. Calm down and try again.’

‘Yeah, you’re doing great!’ Denise says cheerfully just as Daryl tries to shift again and the car dies on him.

‘Fuckin’ piece of shit!’ The teenager shouts, slamming his hand on the steering wheel, ‘fuck you! Piece of garbage, fuckin’ hell, I fuckin’ hate you!’

Denise looks at Rosita.

Rosita rolls her eyes. ‘Dixon temper. You get used to it. He’s sweet, really. Move over and let me drive, Dare, we’ve been going five miles an hour and I want to be home before dark.’

The drive is a lot smoother once the woman slides behind the wheel and the boy sulks in the passenger’s seat. He’s just glad that he never asked Rick or Glenn for driving lessons, or god forbid Merle, because he’d never hear the end of it.

‘Rose,’ he mutters when he spots a tree that is blocking the road. He grabs his rifle and gets ready to hop out of the truck. ‘Hey,’ he says when Denise looks at her knees. ‘When we go back, can you give me another lesson? Kinda fucked it up, but I can try again, right? You still gonna teach me?’

‘Sure,’ Denise says slowly. ‘I’ll give you another lesson when we go back.’

‘Fuckin’ A,’ Daryl grins back.

‘Told you he could be sweet,’ Rosita grins. ‘Come on, Dare. Have my back?’

‘Yup!’ The boy slides out of the seat and slams the car door behind him. He easily falls into Rosita’s step, following her lead as they slowly make their way towards the fallen tree. There are a couple of walkers trapped beneath it. They make short work of them, knives dripping with blood as they go through their pockets. Rosita finds a bag with bottles of booze but there’s nothing they can really use.

When the area is cleared, they let Denise out of the car. She doesn’t seem to like the idea of having a drink when this is all over and Daryl doesn’t either. The last time he’d had a drink was with Beth at the cabin and that had ended in flames and a burned down cabin. Cathartic, sure, but not something he wants to experience again any time soon.

They decide to leave the car and go on foot the rest of the way. Rosita is claiming that walking along the tracks just behind the fallen tree is faster, but Daryl gets nauseous by the very idea of following any tracks. When he looks at the metal bars, snaking away into the woods beyond, he’s reminded of the road to Terminus.

Of Joe and his gang. Of the blood swirling down the drain, of the explosions, of Shane.

‘I ain’t takin’ no tracks!’ Daryl shouts as he heads into the woods, leaving Rosita behind. He doesn’t want to explain himself, doesn’t feel like he needs to when Denise follows him. He just stomps away, shouldering his rifle and ignoring the slight twinge of fear he feels when he realizes that Rosita isn’t following him.

He’s glad that Denise doesn’t try to talk to him.

They meet up again just before they reach the small town where their destination is at. Rosita is sitting cross-legged on the side of the road, waiting for them. She’d been right, of course. The tracks had been faster.

Daryl just stomps past the woman and leaves Denise in her care.

The gift shop isn’t hard to locate even though the sign above the doors has almost faded. The teenager grabs a crowbar from his pack and breaks the lock after a sharp nod from Rosita. The woman moves in first while the boy grabs his rifle and follows her smoothly.

There are corpses rotting on the ground but no walkers in sight. The stench of decay doesn’t bother Daryl or Rosita anymore but Denise gags behind them.

‘We gonna find out what you had for breakfast?’ the boy asks as he pulls a face.

‘Oatmeal,’ Denise croaks. ‘Just so you know.’

Both Rosita and Daryl ignore her.

The main area of the store is useless to them. There are shelves with little trinkets from the local area, plates with Virginia written in loopy handwriting and dusty shirts with local landmarks. Daryl thinks about snagging a particularly ugly shirt for Carl as a joke but dismisses the idea for later.

Instead, he jumps onto a counter and uses the crowbar again to open up the other area of the store; the apothecary. It’s a good sign that the metal shutters are still down.

‘Hey,’ Denise pipes up behind them. ‘Do you want me to hold your bags, or… ‘

Daryl and Rosita ignore her again.

‘Yeah,’ she murmurs, taking a step back to not get in the way.

With a grunt, Daryl cracks the shutters open and pushes them up to reveal stocked shelves. Bottles and bottles filled with medicine. He shoots a quick grin at Rosita before sliding over the counter and dropping into the room with a dull thud. A quick glance tells him the area is clear and he whistles softly.

Rosita slides over the counter, too.

‘If you set 'em on the counter, I can tell you which,’ Denise says as she steps forward again.

‘Nah,’ Daryl puts his rifle down to open his bag. ‘We’re taking them all.’

‘Are you sure? Because I can-‘

‘No,’ Rosita cuts in with a smile, ‘it’s fine.’

Together, they start to clear the shelves. They pause when they hear a thudding sound. Daryl looks at Rosita, one hand resting on a bottle of pills and the other reaching for his knife.

‘It’s just one,’ Rosita says after a short while. The thudding doesn’t get any closer and there are no footsteps.

‘Sounds like it’s stuck.’ Daryl adds as he returns to raiding the shelves.

Rosita ducks into the second aisle to do the same there.

Neither one of them notice when Denise slips away.

About five minutes later, a crashing sound jerks their heads up, eyes wide with fear until they see that it’s just Denise who’d knocked something over in the store. She looks sick, stumbling away from a door.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Rosita asks.

‘Nothing,’ the blonde woman mutters before she rushes out of the building.

Rosita sighs. ‘Keep going, Dare,’ she tells the boy. ‘We’ll check on her in a second. Let’s just get this done.’

 

 

Daryl stands in the room Denise had gone into.

There’s a walker on the floor. It makes the thudding noise.

There are words written on the wall.

_hush hush hush hush hush hush_

There’s a sink. It’s filled with murky water. A little shoe sticks out of it.

A child’s shoe.

The water is too dark to see if there’s actual-

Daryl turns away and closes the door behind him.

 

 

The doctor is sitting against the wall outside of the gift shop. She looks so defeated that it makes Daryl’s chest hurt.

‘Hey,’ he calls out softly, getting her attention. ‘You did good findin’ this place.’

‘Tried to tell you you weren’t ready,’ Rosita says while she looks at her boots and then at the doctor. ‘We both did.’

‘I know,’ Denise nods.

She gets to her feet and follows them meekly.

While he’d enjoyed the silence on their way to the small town, it feels different when they make their way back towards the car. Denise is fiddling with something she’d snagged from the shop, a keychain with the name Dennis on it.

Daryl gnaws on the nail of his thumb while slinking over to walk beside her. ‘Couldn’t find Denise?’

She glances at him before looking back at the keychain again. ‘No. It’s – It was my brother’s name.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ He drops his hand and pushes it into the pocket of his jeans. ‘The one who taught ya how to drive stick?’

‘Yeah.’

The boy skips a couple of paces and aims a kick at a rock. ‘So was he older or younger?’

‘Older. By six minutes,’ she shoots him a small smile when his face lights up with amazement. He’s never met twins before and the notion always makes him a little giddy with excitement even though he’s not sure why. Childlike wonder, maybe. ‘My parents came up with the Dennis-Denise thing on one of their benders. Hilarious, right?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Nothing scared him,’ Denise muses. ‘He was brave. He was angry, too. It’s kind of a dangerous combination.’

They’re nearing the end of the small town.

‘Sounds like we had the same brother,’ Daryl says as he jumps onto the tracks, wobbling a bit as he tries to balance. ‘Hey,’ he calls out to Rosita, who is walking ahead. ‘This way’s faster, right?’

He points down the tracks.

 

 

It still feels strange to walk down the tracks. Daryl isn’t really sure why he changed his mind about them. Maybe it’s because of Denise, who is very scared but still out here with them. Who’s been trying to get used to the new world and get stronger for all of them and herself too. He guesses he should follow her lead. There’s no point in being scared of _tracks_.

So he walks over them, wobbling along and occasionally grabbing hold of Rosita’s shoulder to stay upright. The woman laughs and tries to duck away every time, trying to make him fall down, but he just curses and stretches out his arms before dancing along on the metal.

They talk about Alexandria, about Daryl’s bike, about everyone back home.

Daryl is very careful not to bring Abraham up because he knows they’ve broken up and the woman is sad about it, but he jokes about Eugene and that makes her laugh, so he guesses she’s okay.

‘- glad I don’t have to go to school anymore,’ Daryl grins as he shakes his hair out of his face. ‘That was dumb.’

‘Got you a working bike,’ Rosita points out.

‘Yeah, well – okay, it wasn’t _that_ bad, but still.’

‘And you’re still going to school now,’ the woman continues. ‘Learning how to drive, Morgan is teaching you martial arts, right?’

‘I guess. Beth’s been teachin’ me about what kind of plants she can use for medicine but I haven’t found the right ones yet. Haven’t had much time with the attack and all.’

Rosita hums. ‘You’re drawing again, too.’

‘Yeah. I like doin’ it and nobody had given me a job to do today so I was just-‘

‘It’s fine to relax sometimes, Dare,’ Rosita cuts in. ‘You’re doing enough.’

‘Hey! There’s a cooler in there!’ Denise shouts from where she’s standing next to a car that has a walker trapped inside of it. ‘Might be something we can use inside.’

Both Daryl and Rosita turn back to her. ‘We got what we came for,’ the woman calls back.

‘Nah,’ Daryl agrees, ‘ain’t worth the trouble, come on.’

They continue to walk, Daryl balancing on the tracks while Rosita scans the woods for any sign of trouble. It’s only when there’s the sound of a car door being opened and Denise’s frantic yelp that they turn back again. A walker drags itself out of the car and lands on top of the doctor, knocking her down.

The boy races back first, drawing his knife.

‘No. _Don’t_ ,’ Denise objects as she struggles with the corpse, forcing it onto its back before driving her own knife into the skull.  When she gets up again, she staggers forward, stops and then promptly throws up.

Daryl pulls a face and jumps back while Rosita just lifts an unimpressed eyebrow.

The doctor groans. ‘Oh, man. I threw up on my glasses.’

‘What the hell was that?’ Daryl demands angrily. ‘You could have died right there, ya know that?’

‘Yeah I do,’ Denise says as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘Are you hearin’ me?’

‘Who gives a shit?’ the doctor asks as she climbs back to her feet. ‘You could have died killing those Saviors, both of you, but you didn’t. You wanna live, you take chances. That’s how it works. That’s what I did.’

‘For a couple of damn soda’s?’ Daryl scoffs as he sees what’s inside the cooler.

‘Nope,’ she takes one out. It’s the same one he’d been trying to get for her when he’d ran into Paul at the gas station. The one she thinks Tara likes. ‘Just this one.’

‘Are you seriously that stupid?’ Rosita asks as she follows her.

‘Are _you_?’ She turns to Daryl and Rosita, standing on the tracks. ‘I mean it. _Are you?_ Do you have any clue what that was to me, what this whole thing is to me? See, I have training in this shit. I’m not making it up as I go along, like with the stiches and the surgery and the –‘ She takes a deep breath and points at Daryl. ‘I asked you to come with me because you’re brave like my brother and sometimes you actually make me feel safe!’

He stares at her.

‘And I wanted you here because you’re alone,’ Denise says to Rosita. ‘Probably for the first time in your life. And because you’re stronger than you think you are, which gives me hope that maybe I can be, too. I could’ve gone with Tara. I could’ve told her I loved her, but I didn’t because I was afraid. _That_ _’s_ what’s stupid. Not coming out here, not facing my shit. And it makes me sick that you guys aren’t even trying because you’re strong and you’re smart and you’re both _really_ good people, and if you don’t wake -’

A bolt pierces the back of her head and comes out of her eye.

‘- up and face your –‘

Blood drips down her cheek.

Daryl watches in horror as she falls.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End note; I really appreciate all your support. Thank you, so much.
> 
> Teaser? Next chapter is called 'Negan'.
> 
> Let's meet the man.


	75. Negan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings; gore. Character deaths.

 

* * *

 

 

He catches Denise as she falls. Guides her body down to lie on the cold tracks he hates so much.

Next to him, Rosita swings her gun up but he can hear the footsteps of men breaking the tree line behind them and knows that there are too many. It doesn’t stop him from whirling around and grabbing his own rifle, taking aim at the first guy he spots. There are thirteen of them, probably more hidden away in the greenery.

‘You drop ‘em, now!’

Another man steps out of the shadows. He’s holding on to Eugene, who looks terrified.

Daryl lowers his rifle and stares. It’s Dwight. The man from the burned forest, with the blond hair and the two girls. One of which Daryl helped bury. The one who’d stolen his bike, his bow – and he’s holding it right now. The heavy black bow in his right hand, almost touching the ground.

The side of his face is horribly burned.

He makes Eugene kneel before him.

‘Well, hell. You got something to say to me?’ Dwight demands when he looks at the scowling teenager. Rosita’s gaze snaps to Daryl, surprised that the two seem to know each other. ‘You gonna clear the air, boy? Step up on that high horse? No,’ Dwight says with a breath of laughter. ‘You don’t talk much.’

He nods his head and two men walk over to search both Daryl and Rosita.

Dwight motions with the bow. ‘Still getting the hang of her. Kicks like a bitch, but-‘

‘I should’ve done it,’ Daryl says as he stares at the man.

‘What was that? Seriously, I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘I should’ve killed you.’

‘Yeah,’ the smile fades from Dwight’s scarred face. ‘You probably should have. So, here we are. Kinda begs the question, right? Who brought this on who? I mean, I get that you’ll just have to take my word for this, but she wasn’t even the one I was aiming for. Like I said;’ he looks down at the bow again, ‘kicks like a bitch. It’s nothing personal.’

He turns to Rosita, ‘look, this isn’t how we like to start new business arrangements but you pricks kinda set the tone, didn’t you?’

‘What do you want?’ the woman asks.

‘I’m sorry Darling, I didn’t catch your name. I’m D. Or Dwight, you can call me either. So? What’s your name?’

‘Rosita. What do you want?’

‘Well, Rosita,’ Dwight says, rolling the R on the name, ‘it’s not what I want, it’s what you and Daryl are going to do. You’re going to let us into your little complex. It looks like it’s just beautiful in there. And then you’re going to let us take whatever and whoever we want. Or we blow Eugene’s brains out. And then yours. And then his,’ he says with a nod at Daryl. ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that. Really. Nobody else has to die. Just trying to start with one. You know, maximum impact to get our point across. So what’s it gonna be? You tell me.’

The words barely register.

It’s just a buzzing sound to Daryl. His heart is stuttering in his chest, hurting so bad that he feels sick and slowing down enough to make his fingertips tingle, skipping beats while still thumping in his ears. There’s rage in his veins while grief and sadness coats his blood. He stares at Dwight and has never hated someone so much in his life.

Except himself, maybe. This is his fault, he thinks hazily. That’s his bow, his bolt, and he’d tried to help this guy. He’d even tried to make friends with him, telling him about their community and inviting him to join them.

This is _his_ fault.

Eugene is saying something now. About a guy hiding behind a couple of oil barrels, one of them, and Daryl isn’t sure whether he’s lying. He looks at the barrels but can’t see anyone.

Dwight sends two guys over to check it out. He’s still eyeing the barrels, too, and he never sees Eugene turn towards him to bite at his dick through the denim of his jeans.

Dwight screams and someone starts shooting from the bushes. One of the Saviors goes down immediately while the others duck away to find some cover. Daryl grabs his knife and whirls around, grabbing the head of the man beside him and slitting his throat. He doesn’t have time to marvel at the fact that the guy had taken his rifle but not his knife.

He grabs his automatic gun off the ground and runs towards the car while Rosita covers him. Now he spots Abraham in the bushes on the other side of the tracks. Bullets whistle past him, shattering the windows of the car. The gun feels cold in his numb hands but he shoulders it and fires back. He can’t be sure whether he’s actually hitting someone.

Walkers are drawn in by the gunfire. They stumble onto the scene just as Dwight manages to rip himself away from Eugene. Daryl watches how the man falls to the ground and brings his gun up to take care of the walkers that are coming too close for comfort.

Daryl takes aim and fires at Dwight.

He doesn’t hit him.

‘Fall back!’ Dwight screams as he scrambles away to safety. ‘Fall back!’

Daryl fires until he hears his gun click. He ran out of bullets. In a haze, he watches how Dwight throws one last look over his shoulder at him and then disappears between the trees.

He throws the rifle to the side and runs after the man, picking his trusting bow up as he runs past it.

‘Daryl, _stop_!’

He stops. Sways on the spot, halted by Rosita’s stern command, and he watches how Dwight and the rest of the Saviors run through a field. The gravel beneath his booth crunches, the wind whistles through the trees but all Daryl hears is the echoes of the gunshots.

Slowly, he turns around.

Rosita is kneeling beside Eugene, pressing two hands into a wound on the man’s side. Apparently, Dwight did manage to shoot him. There’s blood seeping into his shirt, blooming across the fabric.

Abraham comes running over and Daryl throws his bow onto his back to help carry their friend to safety.

‘Come on,’ he says, grabbing hold of Eugene’s shoulder while glancing at Abraham.

 

 

He doesn’t remember much from the rest of the trip home.

They get Eugene back to the car.

He and Abraham run back to retrieve Denise’s body.

He can’t look at her face. Can’t stomach the idea that it’s _his_ bolt that’s sticking out of her eye.

Rosita drives.

 

 

The gates open and Rosita parks in front of the infirmary. Their speed and reluctance to stop at the gates has alarmed the rest of their family. When Daryl stumbles out of the car, too dazed now to help carry Eugene inside, he sees that Rick, Merle and Glenn are walking over to them.

Daryl starts running.

Merle looks confused, ‘hey, bro, what the fuck-‘

But Daryl pushes past him and launches himself into Glenn’s arms, hiding his face in the man’s chest. He feels how Glenn catches him easily, arms looping around his shoulders and one hand gliding into the dark hair.

‘We lost Denise,’ Daryl says with a shudder. ‘It was Dwight! That fucker, he got the jump on us and he just – he killed her! He shot her with my bow and she –‘

‘Breathe,’ Glenn murmurs.

Daryl pushes himself away from the Korean. ‘Didn’t ya hear me?’ he growls, ‘he _killed_ her!’

‘You got him?’ Rick asks with a hand on Glenn’s shoulder.

‘Yeah, I got him,’ Glenn nods, ‘go check on the others.’

Rick runs towards the car.

‘There ain’t nothing to check, _she’s fucking dead_!’

‘What the hell are you talkin’ about,’ Merle snarls as he steps forward, ‘what the hell happened out there?’

‘Are you fuckin’ deaf?’ Daryl screams back at him. ‘ _He shot her and she’s dead_!’

‘Daryl,’ Glenn says softly. ‘Focus on me. Hey,’ he reaches out to touch the boy’s cheek, forcing him to meet his eye. ‘Focus on me. Breathe. I need you to tell me what happened.’

Daryl frowns and looks up at him, ‘he had my bow and-‘

‘No, from the start.’

Daryl searches for the right words, opening and closing his mouth while his mind races.

Glenn kneels down before him. ‘Deep breath and then from the start.’

‘Denise asked us to come to this shop with her to get medicine. And we did, found a whole stash but we took the tracks back. There – there was a car and Denise – look, he came out of nowhere. She was talkin’ to us and suddenly… He hit her from behind and got her in the eye and I just – I couldn’t do nothing, she was already… And he had Eugene.’

‘Who had Eugene?’

‘Dwight!’

‘Who’s Dwight, Dare?’

‘The guy from the forest, the asshole who took my bow and bike!’

‘Okay, okay,’ Glenn shushes, putting a hand on the boy’s hip to draw him closer. ‘He killed Denise and had Eugene.’

‘Said he weren’t aimin’ for her, he tryin’ to kill _me_ but he just missed and got her instead. He got lucky!’ Daryl shudders. ‘It should have been me,’ he breathes. ‘He was aimin’ for me but he – he missed and…’

‘Stop,’ Glenn says forcefully, shaking him a little by his hip. ‘Don’t go there. It shouldn’t have been anyone.’

‘But it’s her and she were – she were tryin’, right? She killed a walker on her own, she wouldn’t let me do it for her and now she’s –‘

‘Stop,’ Glenn whispers. ‘Please stop. Come here.’

Daryl lets himself fall into the embrace, closing his eyes to prevent any tears from escaping. He’s shaking, his head hurts, his chest hurts, all of it _hurts_. When Glenn strokes his back, he can’t keep the tears in anymore. They coat his cheeks, forcing him to hide his face in the man’s warm neck while he gasps for breath.

He misses the days when Glenn could carry him. He’s grown a lot since the prison even though he’s still small for his age. Smaller than Carl and Beth, something they love to tease him with. Now Merle and Abraham are the only ones who would be able to hoist him up but he’s never been that physically close to Abraham and he doesn’t want his brother right now. He doesn’t want that second of hesitation, the awkwardness. He just wants Glenn, warm and always comforting now that he can read the boy like a book.

‘I love you,’ Glenn whispers into his ear.

Daryl whimpers and tightens his hold on the man because he doesn’t feel like he deserves that but he also doesn’t want to let go of it.

‘It’s going to be okay.’

‘It’s not,’ Daryl sobs. ‘Ain’t ever goin’ to be okay.’

Glenn makes a shushing noise and strokes his hair. ‘This isn’t it,’ he whispers when he pushes Daryl a couple of inches back so they can look at each other. ‘This is not the end. We’re still here. And whatever this is? We’ll figure it out, together. We’ll make it through, together, like we always have. We’ve survived so much, Dare. We’ll make it through this, too. I know it’s hard to lose your friend like that, _our_ friend like that, but we’ll set things right. We will make this right.’

Daryl looks down so their foreheads touch. He lets out a shaky breath. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We’ll make this right, because we’re still here. And It’s gonna be us, always.’

‘It’s going to be us,’ Glenn agrees softly, ‘at the end of all of this.’

 

 

It’s late at night when there’s a soft knock on his door.

The sound has him sitting up in his bed with a pounding heart. His hands shake when he pushes the covers back, he shivers when his bare feet touch the cold floor. The window is still open from when he’d smoked a cigarette earlier and the night air ghosts around him.

The light in the hallway is on. He has to blink a couple of times when he opens the door, wincing at the artificial brightness.

Beth is standing there with two steaming cups in her hand. ‘Hey,’ she says softly. The rest of their family is already asleep. ‘I made you some tea.’

‘In the middle of the goddamn night?’ Daryl rasps as he leans against his bedroom door. He rubs some sleep out of the corner of his eye.

‘I just figured that you wouldn’t hear if you really were asleep.’

‘Yeah? Well, I really were asleep and I still heard, so… thanks for wakin’ my ass up with your damn tea.’

Beth lifts an eyebrow, ‘so you don’t want it?’

‘Of course I fuckin’ want it,’ Daryl grouses as he takes one of the cups and walks back into his bedroom, leaving the door open for the girl. He flicks the small light on his bedside table on and crawls back into bed, sitting against the headrest. Steam rises from his cup. He wraps his hands around it.

‘It’s cold in here,’ Beth remarks as she closes the door behind her and walks over to the window to close it. She crawls onto the bed, too. She sits at the end, legs stretched out so she can bury her feet beneath his pillow.

‘Nasty,’ Daryl grumbles, snatching the pillow away. ‘My face sleeps there, girl. Don’t need your stinky feet all over it.’ With a grunt, he pulls the blanket higher so he can wrap it around the girl’s feet to keep them warm.

‘Thank you,’ Beth smiles as she blows into her cup.

Daryl grunts. He yawns and rubs at his naked chest. Fingernails rake over his necklaces for a second, always making sure that they’re still there, before scratching at one of his scars. Even in the dim light, they’re still visible. He knows that Beth can see them, at least.

He doesn’t care. She’s seen them a million times already.

‘Are you okay?’

‘No.’ He traces the rim of his cup. ‘Was real fucked up, ya know, but I’ve already talked to Glenn about it. I don’t need the whole Greene clan up my asshole about it, too.’

‘So classy,’ Beth murmurs as she blows into her cup to cool the liquid. ‘Fine. Do you want me to leave?’

‘Don’t care.’

‘Okay,’ the girl says with a careless shrug. She twirls a strand of blonde hair around a finger. A mischievous smile lights up her face when she wriggles around so she can poke him in the side with her toe. ‘Truth or dare. You can start.’

‘Stakes?’ Daryl asks because they’ve played this game so many times now that he knows her stupid rules. There’s always something on the line with the youngest Greene girl.

‘The first to dodge three times on truth will have to watch Judith for a week.’

Daryl snorts, ‘ya can’t use Rick’s kid as a punishment.’

‘Fine,’ Beth grins back. ‘Walker duty then. For a week.’

The boy thinks about it. Walker duty means that they have to clear the walkers from the traps, removing them from the spikes so they don’t clog it up too much. It’s one of the nastier jobs in Alexandria though Daryl doesn’t usually mind doing it. Sometimes Michonne will even finish the walkers off before he gets near them, using her katana to stab them through the brains so he doesn’t have to climb the bloody spikes.

He’s never seen Beth do it. The girl is nothing if not cunning, a faked frightened look will get Aaron to do it for her usually, and sometimes it still fools Abraham so he’ll drag the bodies for her. He’s only ever seen her light the matches to burn the remains.

‘Kill, drag and burn,’ Daryl stresses.

‘Kill, drag and burn,’ Beth echoes.

‘By yourself. No-one helps you.’

‘You’re saying that like you’ve already won. Ready to spill some truth tonight?’ the girl wags her eyebrows at him.

‘But not about Denise,’ Daryl says quickly. ‘Just – nothing like that, okay?’

‘Of course not,’ she rolls her eyes and nudges him again with her toes. ‘You start.’

‘Why are you here?’ he asks as he lets his head fall back onto his pillow. ‘For real?’

‘Maggie is worried and asked me to keep an eye on you,’ Beth answers before taking a tiny sip of her tea. ‘And I wanted to check in with you earlier, but Merle’s sleeping on the couch downstairs like some guard dog and it took a while for him to fall asleep.’

Daryl blinks. ‘Merle’s still here?’

‘If he calls me sugar tits or blondie one more time,’ Beth mutters darkly.

‘He’s downstairs?’

‘Yeah, has been all night. My turn. Why do you call Jesus _Paul_?’

‘’s his name, ain’t it?’ Daryl mumbles while bringing his cup to his lips.

‘Everyone calls him Jesus. Except for you.’

‘Just bein’ a good Christian boy and not takin’ the Lord’s name in vain.’

Beth narrows her eyes. ‘Strike one, Dixon. Two more and you’re on walker duty for a week.’

Daryl groans, ‘that was a joke!’

‘It was a lie, is what it was,’ Beth grins back. ‘You know the rules; strike one.’

The boy rolls his eyes. He buries himself deeper into the pillow, shoulders hunched as he drinks his tea. The rules have started to fade a bit, it’s been months since one of them actually lost a game. Usually they don’t bother to pretend that it is a game and not just a badly disguised gossip session or heart-to-heart. The game façade still is mostly for Daryl’s sake, so he can pretend this is something it’s not.

He scratches at his cup. ‘Carol said something to me earlier. I didn’t really get it, before, ya know,’ he says as he lets his hair fall into his eyes, hiding most of his expression. ‘She asked me whether I’d saved those people in the burnt forest. And I had. She said we were still stuck with that, because that’s who I am.’

Beth is watching him closely but stays silent.

‘You said you wanted to change, back at the cabin, after the prison. Maybe I should, too.’

‘You already have. We’re not the same people as when all of this started. We’re strong now. We are,’ she says when the boy winces. ‘Back when this all started, I wanted to give up. I couldn’t see the point to it anymore, any of it. But I made it. The people here look at me and think; oh, this fragile little thing, so far from home in this scary world…’ she scoffs, one side of her mouth lifting in a grin, ‘but they don’t know me. Or that Daryl Dixon himself trained me.’

The boy huffs out a breath of laughter and swats at her feet.

‘We are strong and sometimes we forget that everyone else is looking for an angle. We don’t do that. We don’t need to. We don’t need other people.’

‘Needed the hilltop,’ Daryl murmurs as he gnaws on his thumb.

‘No. We took an easy way out. A short-cut.’

‘Think it was easy?’ the boy glares at his cup. ‘You weren’t there.’

‘Think it was easy to be left behind like that? I should have been there with Maggie.’

‘Rick needed you here.’

Beth nods. ‘Still.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl tilts his head back again, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Still.’

‘Whatever you’re thinking right now,’ the girl says, ‘don’t. You’re a good person, Daryl. That doesn’t make you weak. And it didn’t get Denise killed. _You_ didn’t get her killed. It’s what Glenn always says, right? This is still who we are. We help people. Even if they don’t deserve it.’

‘That’s you. That’s your family’s words,’ Daryl mutters. ‘We have other ones.’

‘Don’t start this,’ Beth sighs. ‘Don’t pretend that Glenn isn’t what he is to you.’

Daryl narrows his eyes, ‘and what do you think he is to me?’

‘Your dad. And you’re my little brother, Dare. That makes Merle my big brother,’ she wrinkles her nose, ‘but I can learn to live with that tragedy.’

That makes Daryl laugh. ‘Yeah,’ he says after a little while. ‘You’re right. About Glenn. Hell, Merle ain’t gonna be Judith’s big brother, that’s for sure. Gotta keep that girl safe,’ he laughs.

‘We’ve got to keep them all safe.’

Their eyes meet.

The boy nods into his cup. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers.

 

 

The next morning, he’s surprised to find Merle sitting on their couch downstairs.

The oldest Dixon rises hesitantly. ‘I just – I wanted to make sure you were okay.’

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl says as he shoulders his bow. He dodges his brother’s gaze. ‘Gonna work on my bike a bit.’

‘Need a hand?’ Merle offers.

‘No,’ Daryl shakes his head. ‘Want to do this myself.’ He walks to the front door, holding it open for a second longer as he casts a look over his shoulder. ‘See you later?’’

‘Sure, monster,’ Merle says softly. ‘See you later.’

 

 

It’s too late for Glenn to stop him. He can hear the Korean scream somewhere behind him as he yanks the gate open. Can hear his running footsteps as he slides back onto his bike, revving the engine before tearing out of Alexandria.

He leaves Rosita, Glenn, Maggie and Michonne behind.

 

 

The track are hard to follow. Dwight’s group ran away in a panic, their footprints crossing each other over and over, zigzagging through the tall grass. He manages to track them over a couple of miles, his bow a familiar weight in his hands again.

He’s going to find them.

And he’s going to kill them all.

He’s going to end this to keep them all safe.

The thoughts are running wild in his head. It makes it hard for him to focus. He thinks about Denise, about Shane, about Gareth, about Dwight. He thinks about the girl in the burnt forest, all the graves he’s had to dig over the last three years, all the graves he didn’t have time to dig, too. He thinks about fire and tracks, about guns and knives, about his bolts and the red-handled machete.

He’s at the end of yet another field when he suddenly feels something prickle on the side of his neck. Twigs snap beneath boots. He ducks low out of instinct but catches a familiar sight out of the corner of his eye. With a growl, he whirls around a tree, firing his bolt.

It lands in the bark of a tree.

‘Watch the hell out, asshole!’ Rosita snarls as she yanks the bolt out. It had almost hit her.

He stomps over and grabs it out of her hand, ‘yeah, I did,’ he growls. ‘You shouldn’t have come!’

‘You shouldn’t have left!’ Michonne fires back. She’s flanked by Glenn.

‘When I split off from Sasha and Abe, he was out there in the woods, in that burned-out forest with them girls. Put a gun to my head!’ He shouts. ‘Tied me up! I even tried to help him.’

‘So you think it’s your fault?’ Glenn asks, stepping forwards.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says, facing him. ‘I know it is. I’m gonna do what I should have done before.’

‘What, for her? She’s gone, Dare. You’re doing this for you.’

‘Yeah, I don’t give a shit,’ he snarls as he tries to walk away again.

Glenn grabs his arm to turn him back around, ‘Dare. We need to get back there and figure this out from home. _Our_ home.  We need you. And everyone back there needs us right now. It’s..’ Glenn puts a warm hand on his cheek, ‘it’s gonna go wrong out here.’

‘We’ll square it,’ Michonne says softly. ‘I will. I promise you. Just come back.’

‘I’m gonna do it,’ Daryl tells Glenn. ‘I’m gonna kill him.’

Glenn brushes his hair out of his eyes, rubs his thumb over the boy’s cheek. ‘But not like this. Those men could be back in Alexandria right now.’

‘If they are, they’re dead,’ Daryl shoots back because Merle and Rick are still there. Maggie is, and Beth, too. Carl and Abraham.

‘I hope not,’ the Korean counters. ‘We need them alive. We need to find out more.’

Daryl looks at his boots.

‘Hey,’ Glenn says softly. ‘We just got stuck with each other. We were lucky. We figured it all out together. It felt like we did. After everything, we _did_. And at first, I was scared, right? And I thought I could just hang back and it would all be okay. And it was, for a while. I could just be – I don’t know,’ he searches for the right words. ‘I could just be your second cousin twice removed, right?’ He gives the boy a weak smile. ‘Eat Oreos together, go swimming, but then… Shane told me to step up. To keep pushing back, to keep at it and after a while I didn’t have to push anymore. And it was us and it was weird, but it was _us_. You and me.’

Daryl looks up at him through his fringe and nods.

‘But all of this? This is bigger, Dare. Not just you and me and Maggie and Beth and everyone, it’s – _everything_. It’s not what we thought it was. Hilltop, the Saviors; it’s bigger.’

Daryl opens his mouth to say something.

Someone whistles.

The sound is echoed around them.

Leaves rustle and boots snap twigs and Glenn’s eyes widen as they focus on something behind Daryl.

Someone.

Daryl whirls around.

Dwight steps out from behind a tree. ‘Hi, _Dare.’_

They take their weapons.

They take three of Michonne’s dreadlocks.

Daryl snarls when she screams and Dwight knocks him out.

 

 

He wakes up in the back of a van. Glenn’s hand covers his mouth to prevent him from making a sound, his lips close to the boy’s ear. ‘Ssh, ssh, we’ve stopped. I don’t know what’s going on but something is happening. Michonne is fine. We’re fine. Calm down.’

It’s dark. Nighttime. It’s a lot cooler now.

Before Daryl can properly get his bearings, the doors of the van swing open. Dwight grabs his shoulder to drag him out of the vehicles. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘you’ve got people to meet.’

He’s thrown on the ground between Michonne and Rosita. Forced to kneel.

‘Maggie?’

Glenn’s voice causes Daryl’s head to snap up. He’s horrified to see the rest of his family. They’re all sitting in a half circle, on their knees. Carl, Aaron, Sasha, Eugene, Abraham, Rick, Maggie. His eyes widen. Merle.

‘All right, we got a full boat!’ One of the saviors shouts gleefully.

‘Merle,’ Daryl breathes.

There’s sweat dripping down his brother’s neck. His blue eyes are wide with fear. They look at each other in the darkness.

They’re surrounded by vehicles. Trucks and motor cycles, the big RV. There are men everywhere. Leaning against the tires, sitting on the hoods, watching from the sidelines. So many faces in the semi-darkness that Daryl doesn’t know where to start. It’s an army.

‘Let’s meet the man!’ The savior walks backwards to the RV and knocks on the door.

The door opens.

A man hops out. Tall, taller than Rick but about his age, with dark hair and a silver beard. Motorcycle boots, jeans, a leather jacket with a red scarf. A baseball bat rests on his left shoulder. The end is covered by barbed wire.

He’s smiling.

‘We pissing our pants yet?’ he asks. He slowly walks into the light of one of the fires. ‘Boy,’ he grins, ‘do I have a feeling we’re getting close. Gonna be PeePee-Pants city here real soon.’ His breath ghosts in the night. One gloved hand points at the group, ‘which one of you pricks is the leader?’

‘It’s this one,’ the savior who’d knocked on the door says with a gesture at Rick. ‘He’s the guy.’

The man sighs and walks over. Looms over him. ‘Hi,’ he smiles. ‘You’re Rick, right? I’m Negan. And I do not appreciate you killing my men.’

Daryl feels sick. The dirt feels cold between his fingers. He stares up at Negan, eyes wide and mouth slightly open as sweat drenches his hair and back.

‘Also, when I sent my people to kill your people for killing my people, you kill more of my people. Not cool.’ Negan shakes his head a little. ‘Not cool. You have no idea how not cool that shit is. But, I think you’re gonna be up to speed shortly. Yeah. You’re so gonna regret crossing me in a few minutes.’ He smiles again. ‘Yes, you are. You see, Rick, whatever you do, no matter what, you don’t mess with the new world order. New world order is this, and it’s really very simple. So even if you’re stupid, which you very may well be, you can understand it. You ready?’

Rick stares up at the man.

‘Here it goes, pay attention.’ Negan brings the bat down. It swings right past Rick’s head and then goes up to his chin, forcing his head back. ‘Give me your shit or I will kill you.’ He grins widely. ‘Today was career day. We invested a lot so you would know who I am,’ Negan muses as he walks past the other members of the group, ‘and what I can do. You work for me now. You have shit, you give it to me. That’s your job. Now I know that is a mighty big, nasty pill to swallow. But swallow it you most certainly will. You ruled the roost. You built something.’

Daryl bows his head and digs his fingers into the soft earth.

‘You thought you were safe. I get it. But the word is out. You are not safe. Not even close. In fact, you are pegged. More pegged if you don’t do what I want. And what I want is half your shit! And if that’s too much, you can make, find or steal more and it’ll even out sooner or later.’ Negan spreads his arms. The barbed wire on his bat shines in the moonlight. ‘This is your way of life now.’

Daryl bites on his lower lip to stifle a whimper.

‘The more you fight back, the harder it will be. So if someone knocks on your door,’ Negan chuckles, ‘you let us in! We _own_ that door. You try to stop us and we will knock it down. You understand?’ he asks Rick. He leans close, hand by his ear, ‘what? No answer? You don’t really think that you were gonna get through this without being punished now, did you?’

Daryl’s head snaps back up.

‘I don’t want to kill you people. Just want to make that clear from the get-go. I want you to work for me,’ Negan says as he jabs the bat into Rick’s face, a couple of inches from his cheek. ‘You can’t do that if you’re dead, now, can you? I’m not growing a garden,’ he smirks. ‘But you killed my people. A whole damn lot of them.’ A hand over his heart, ‘more than I’m comfortable with. And for that? You’re gonna pay.’

He looks at Daryl. Their eyes meet.

‘So now,’ Negan says as the smile fades. ‘I’m gonna beat the holy hell out of one of you. This,’ he kneels down in front of Rick, focusing on him again. ‘This is Lucille,’ he twirls the bat. ‘And she is _awesome_. All this is just so we can pick out which one of you gets the honor.’

Daryl’s blood runs cold.

Negan walks over to Abraham.

Abraham sits up a little straighter and meets his gaze head on.

‘Huh,’ Negan laughs as he strokes his beard, ‘ugh, I gotta shave this shit.’ He moves on. Stops in front of Carl. ‘You got one of our guns.’ He kneels down, ‘whoa! Yeah, you got _a lot_ of our guns. Shit, kid. Lighten up! At least cry a little.’ He gets up again and walks over to Daryl. ‘What about you? Are you gonna cry for me?’

Daryl stares at the man as he sinks to his haunches, getting to the boy’s level.

‘Hmm,’ Negan grins again, ‘another hard ass. Don’t worry. It’s gonna happen real soon.’ His gaze flickers to Maggie when the woman sniffles. ‘That your mommy? Jesus,’ he gets up and walks over to her. ‘You look shitty. I should just put you out of your misery right now!’ He swings the bat up.

‘No! No, no, _no_!’ Glenn screams. He scrambles to his feet and launches himself at Negan.

He doesn’t make it very far or Dwight is on top of him, kicking him back into the ground. Daryl’s crossbow aimed at his face.

Negan looks unimpressed. ‘Nope. Nope, get him back in line.’

‘Don’t,’ Glenn begs as he’s dragged backwards. ‘ _Don’t!_ ’

Negan laughs. ‘All right, listen. Don’t any of you do that again. I will shut that shit down, no exceptions. First one’s free, it’s an emotional moment. I get it,’ he laughs as he points at Glenn, who’s crying. ‘Sucks, don’t it?’ the man muses. ‘The moment you realize you don’t know shit.’ He moves on again. Suddenly he seems to realize something. ‘This is your kid, right?’ he looks from Rick to Carl, while pointing the bat at the boy. He laughs. ‘This is _definitely_ your kid.’

‘Just stop this!’ Rick snarls.

‘ _Hey_!’ Negan shouts back. ‘Do not make me kill the little future serial killer. Don’t make it easy on me! I gotta pick somebody. Everybody’s at the table, waiting for me to order.’ He starts to whistle as he walks past everyone again. He stops in front of Daryl. ‘This one yours, too? You got two mini killers? Rick. You lucky, lucky man.’

Rick glares at him.

Negan laughs. ‘I simply cannot decide! Wait. I got an idea!’ He points the bat at the leader.

‘Eeny.’

Maggie. ‘Meeny.’

Abraham. ‘Miney.’

Michonne, ‘Mo.’

‘Catch,’ Glenn.

‘A tiger.’ Daryl looks up at the bat in his face.

‘By the toe.’ Rosita.

‘If.’ Sasha.

Aaron. ‘He hollers.’

‘Let him go,’ Negan grins as he points the bat and moves on, and on and on while saying the rhyme. ‘My mother told me to pick the very best one. And you…’

Daryl can’t tear his gaze away from the sickening game of roulette the man is playing. Bile rises in his throat when he stops in front of Merle.

‘Are.’

Negan points the bat for the last time.

‘It.’

‘Anybody moves, anybody says anything, cut the boy’s other eye out and feed it to his father, and then we’ll start. You can breathe. You can blink. You can cry. Hell, you’re all gonna be doing that.’

He swings the bat.

It comes down on Abraham’s skull.

It makes a sickening sound.

Daryl watches in horror as his friend falls to the ground and then sits back up again, blood dripping over his forehead, a gaping wound where his skull has broken open.

‘Look at that!’ Negan says excitedly. ‘Taking it like a champ!’

‘Suck. My. Nuts,’ Abraham grounds out.

Negan swings the bat again. And again and again and again until there’s hardly anything left of their friend’s head. Blood splatters onto the floor.

Daryl stares. He can’t move. He can barely breathe.

Rosita is sobbing next to him. Sasha is crying on the other side of the line-up.

There are tears running down Aaron’s cheeks. Glenn’s, too.

When he is finally done, Negan staggers away from his victim, laughing. It’s a sound that’s going to haunt Daryl for the rest of his life.

‘Ooh, my goodness! Look at this!’ He swings the bat one more time, splashing blood onto Rick’s face. ‘You guys, look at my dirty girl!’ He shows Lucille to the rest of the group. Blood drips from the bat. ‘Sweetheart,’ he says to Rosita. ‘Lay your eyes on this.’

She’s sobbing.

Daryl digs his fingers into the cold earth again, trying to ground himself.

‘Oh damn,’ Negan says, ‘were you together? That sucks. But if you were, you should know, there was a reason for all of this. Red? And hell, he was, is and will ever be red, he just took one or six or seven for the team!’ He sticks the bat in her face again, ‘so take a damn look! _Take a damn look_!’

Daryl snarls as he propels himself forward, getting to his feet and jumping up, curling his fingers into a fist.

He strikes Negan right in the face before landing again.

The man grunts and stumbles away from him, a hand going to his face in shock.

Another Savior is on Daryl in a flash, kicking him in the stomach.

‘ _Dare_!’

‘ _Monster_!’

Merle and Glenn are on their feet as well, pushing forward to get the Savior off their blood.

‘ _No_!’ Negan’s voice cracks down like a whip.

Two more Saviors jump in to push the two men back to their knees, a little forward now, out of the line-up.

‘No!’ Negan shouts, swinging Lucille around to point at the snarling teenager. ‘No,’ he repeats, a little calmer now before he starts to laugh again. ‘That? Oh my God! That is a no-no. The whole thing! Not one bit of that shit flies here.’ He reaches out to grab Daryl’s hair, pulling it out of his face. ‘Now you don’t kill _that_. Not until you try a little. Anyway, that’s not how it works. Now, I already told you people: first one is free. Then what did I say? I said; _I will shut that shit down_! No exceptions. Now I don’t know what kind of lying assholes you’ve been dealing with but I’m a man of my word. First impressions are important. I need you to know me. And I’m starting to know you.’

He gets up and looks at Glenn and Merle. ‘Is he one of yours? Now, I thought he was Rick’s at first, but I didn’t see him getting up just now, so I gotta know. He yours?’ He points the bat at Merle’s face. ‘Gotta be. You don’t have the whole squinty eyes thing going on. He’s yours.’

Merle sets his jaw and stares up at the man.

‘But you care,’ Negan laughs as the bat shifts to Glenn. ‘You care an awful lot. Now I can do the whole thing again, eeny meeny miney, mo,’ the bat goes back and forth.

Glenn. Merle. Glenn. Merle.

‘But that’s just drawing this out. And nobody wants that,’ Negan grins as he twirls the bat in his hand. He glances at Daryl and throws him a wink. ‘So….’

He looks down at Glenn and Merle again.

‘Back to it!’

The bat comes down again, meeting another skull.

 

 


	76. Life is but a treat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning; explicit, detailed violence and gore.

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s all happening to someone else.

Daryl stares at the body on the ground, the blood that is seeping into the dirt, the puddle of brain matter, the hands that still twitch as nerves die. His mouth is open. He’s panting, adrenaline and fear sending his body into shock and survival mode, pupils blown wide but sight hazy now that tears are  dripping down his pale cheeks. Blunt fingernails dig into the earth.

He’s staring and he sees the body but it doesn’t register. Nothing registers properly anymore. He can’t feel the cold of the night, doesn’t notice the many eyes on him anymore. Negan’s army moves, shifts, patrols, but they’re mere ghosts to the shocked teenager.

The cries of his family have died down. Every once in a while one of them will shift or exhale shakily.

Dawn is breaking.

Negan returns and throws a shaking Rick on the ground. There are no more threats coming from the Alexandria leader but Negan still isn’t satisfied. He doesn’t like the way Rick looks at him. It has to change.

Daryl doesn’t dare look when Carl walks over to the man. When he gets pushed into the ground, when there’s a black line drawn on his arm.

He hears how Rick pleads, Michonne too. It’s a faint ringing in his ears. His heartbeat picks up sharply when he hears Rick’s desperate screams pierce through the numbness, the man’s utterly broken cries. He’s pretty sure something shatters in his own chest. It doesn’t matter.

He can’t feel a thing.

He just stares at the puddle in front of him. The body, the hands which have stilled. They’re probably cold by now. They won’t ever run through his hair again, won’t clip him across the back of the head when he’s being smart, can’t brush the tears from his cheeks anymore.

‘ _You belong to me_ ,’ Negan roars as he squeezes Rick’s cheeks, forcing the broken man to meet his gaze. ‘ _Right_?’

Rick is crying. ‘Right,’ the leader whispers between sobs.

‘Right,’ Negan agrees. ‘ _That_ is the look I wanted to see.’ He gets to his feet. ‘We did it. All of us, together. Even the dead ones on the ground, hell, they get the spirit award for sure! Today was a productive damn day. I hope, for all your sake, that you get it now. That you understand how things work. Things have changed,’ he smiles as he looks at the broken members of Rick’s family. ‘Whatever you had going for you? That is over now. Dwight, load him up!’

A dull surge of anger flashes through the teenager at the name but he lets it go. It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.

He doesn’t realize Negan had been talking about him until Dwight grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him to his feet.

No one dares to protest as he’s shoved towards the car and thrown in the back.

‘Dwight,’ Negan calls out, rolling his eyes to the heavens and giving a flourishing wave with the hand that isn't holding Lucille. ‘He’s our guest of honor,’ the hand goes to his heart as he rolls one shoulder back. ‘He rides with me, not in the back like some rabid dog.’

Maggie chokes out a broken cry, one hand curling around her stomach, the other reaching out for the boy.

Negan ignores her as he sinks to his haunches next to the leader of Alexandria. ‘He’s got guts. Not a little bitch like someone I know. I like him. He’s mine now. And you still want to try something, not today, not tomorrow – not today, not tomorrow I will cut pieces off of –‘ Negan looks at the teenager and then at Simon, his right-hand man. ‘Hell is his name?’

‘Daryl.’

‘Wauw! That actually sounds right! I will cut pieces off of Daryl and put ‘em on your doorstep. Or, better yet, I will bring him to you and have you do it for me.’ He gets up, ‘now I don’t want to have to do that, with him being the guest of honor and everything – gives me a bad reputation. I’m sure you understand. So,’ he laughs, ‘welcome to a brand new beginning, you sorry shits! I’m gonna leave you a truck. Keep it. Use it to carter all that crap you’re gonna find me. We’ll be back for our first offering in a week. Until then; ta-ta.’

The Saviors disperse as their leader walks towards one of the biggest trucks.

Dwight yanks Daryl back out of the van only to shove him towards Negan, who’s now leaning against the passenger’s door. Lucille rotates in his hand. There’s a slight frown on the man’s face as he inspects his weapon.

‘Gonna have to take extra special care of her tonight,’ the man says with a sly grin when the teenager is pushed into his orbit. ‘You ever taken care of lady before, Daryl? Maybe I’ll let you help. Might learn something.’

Daryl stares at the man’s shoulder.

‘Kid,’ Negan swings Lucille until she comes to rest upon his shoulder. Daryl flinches. ‘I’m not going to hurt you unless you piss me off, okay? And you not even looking at me when I’m talking to you? That pisses me off. First one is free, it always is, I’m a reasonable guy, it’s an emotional night, you might be a slow kid,’ he laughs and rolls one shoulder back again. ‘I get it. But the second one….’

Daryl forces his gaze up to the man’s eyes.

‘Is _not_ free,’ Negan says, the laughter melting into something dark and looming. His eyes are brown. Daryl hates that. ‘So you’ll look at me. And you’ll speak when spoken to. And you will get that dull look out of your squinty little eyes and lighten the fuck up! It’s a brand new day, Daryl.’

The teenager blinks and a tear slides down his cheek.

‘Too soon, huh?’ Negan smiles, reaches out with one gloved hand to brush the tear away. The touch is almost gentle. ‘That’s okay. Rough night. Lucky you don’t have to scrape their brains off the gravel to bury them, right? There’s always a bright side. Remember that, kid.’ The hand falls away. ‘Now get the fuck into the truck.’

The next touch is anything but gentle. The gloved hand grabs Daryl’s upper arm and throws him up into the cabin of the truck.

Daryl’s knees knock against the metal of the step, he scrapes his hand on it when he catches himself. It doesn’t matter. He pulls himself into the cabin and clambers to the middle, falling onto the console and settling down, one boot on the passenger’s side, and one near the driver’s legs. The man doesn’t even glance up at him.

With a grunt, Negan pulls himself up too. He falls into the seat and closes the door, slamming his palm down on the metal as a signal for the guy to start the engine and drive off.

Daryl stares at the console. His hands are shaking. They’re still covered with the dirt from the line-up.

Negan puts Lucille between his legs and reaches up to his neck, untying his scarf. ‘Listen, kid, I hate that I have to do this, but this is just the way it’s going to have to be, okay? I want it to be a surprise. Do you like surprises? I know you already hate my jokes and that’s cool – well, something you’re gonna have to learn to live with now.’ He grins as he turns to the teenager. ‘Answer me,’ he says with a hint of warning coating the words. ‘Do you like surprises?’

‘No,’ Daryl croaks because he doesn’t.

‘Well,’ Negan’s grin turns wicked, ‘that just means you’re shit out of luck, kid.’ He reaches out and puts the scarf over Daryl’s eyes, tying it behind his head. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Can’t see,’ Daryl breathes. The scarf tickles his cheeks but he can’t move. None of his limbs are working properly anymore. It’s still all happening to someone else.

‘But you can take a damn guess.’

‘One.’

‘ _Which_ one?’

‘Your middle finger.’

Negan barks out a sharp laugh. ‘Well at least you aren’t slow. And that was a damn fine guess, kid.’ A hand ruffles Daryl’s dark hair. ‘Just sit back, let it all sink in, enjoy the ride. We’ll be home soon enough. And if you fall asleep, you better drool on Martin and not on my fine jacket, because Lucille will have something to say about that.’

He doesn’t sleep.

In a way, he’s glad that Negan decided to blindfold him.

No one notices when he starts to cry.

 

 

‘Welcome home!’

The scarf is removed with a theatrical flourish. Sunlight blinds the teenager. He winces, closing his eyes before opening them a little bit again, peering through his lashes. All he can see are shapes at first. A looming, dark building. Shadows of people milling about. He can hear footsteps on concrete, car doors opening and closing and motorcycle engines dying around him.

Slowly, the world comes into focus. They’re standing in front of some kind of factory. It’s one of the largest buildings Daryl has ever seen. Made of glass and concrete, adorned by metal emergency staircases going up to the roof where three chimneys reach for the heavens. It’s so big that Daryl has to tilt his head back to take it all in.

Negan makes an excited sound next to him, rolling one shoulder back as he follows the boy’s gaze. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

Daryl nods and hates how the man seems to end all his sentences with question marks. He doesn’t dare tell him that he hates these kinds of buildings. So big and cold and made of concrete, casting shadows on the woods surrounding it. He doesn’t think Negan would appreciate that.

‘Yeah,’ Negan grins, swinging Lucille to his shoulder. ‘ _Beautiful_.’

The sound of walkers jerks Daryl’s gaze back down. He stumbles a bit when he turns around, trying to locate the origin. There’s a metal fence behind him, chain link which he can see right through. Walkers have been chained to it, the cuffs digging into rotting flesh. Torn-off limbs lie in the dust. Some walkers were probably unable to stand anymore; their legs damaged or bones broken, and they’ve been put on spikes. Still reaching for flesh, still biting the air desperately and snarling when someone walks by.

People are darting between them. Dressed in beige, baggy clothes with red letters on them. They pick the limbs up, check the spikes and secure the chains. Some go around with a bloody bucket and Daryl wonders whether they’re feeding the walkers.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Negan puts a hand on his head and forcefully turns him back towards the factory. ‘Just a deterrent for any unwanted guests. Hell, if you weren’t my guest of honor, you’d be working that damn fence. This?’ He jabs Lucille at the building. ‘This is the Sanctuary. And it’s all mine. The building, everything in it. Everyone in it.’ He shoots the boy a sharp grin. ‘Pretty cool, right?’

Daryl nods again.

‘I know you lost a lot of things back there,’ the man says as he leans in close, ‘but your tongue ain’t one of them. _Cool, right_?’

‘Cool,’ Daryl murmurs.

‘That’s more like it!’ Negan gives him a light shove towards one of the doors. ‘Let me show you around!’

Simon and Dwight fall into step behind them as Negan walks over to one of the doors. Sometimes one of the two men will give Daryl’s shoulder a rough push. He’s dragging his feet. He doesn’t want to go inside, doesn’t want to be here at all, but he knows that it’s useless to put up a fight now.

His nerve endings seem to come back to life slowly. The palm of his left hand hurts from where he’d caught himself on the truck, his knees hurt because he’s been kneeling all night. The back of his head from where Dwight had knocked him out. A headache starts to bloom. He doesn’t know whether it’s from the punch or the slow realization of what he’s lost last night.

There’s a set of stairs, leading up to a platform. Negan’s boots thump on the steps, Daryl doesn’t make any noise when he follows.

The platform gives a broad overview of a work floor. There are people walking everywhere, standing in small groups, carrying baskets with stuff from one table to another to sort through it. Men start to come in through doors on the side, reunited with their friends and family members after the night raid. More and more and more.

Daryl feels sick.

Everything grinds to a halt when Negan steps up towards a railing, one hand curled around the banister and the other keeping Lucille locked in place on his shoulder. The people down below fall silent and turns towards him. To Daryl’s amazement, they drop to their knees.

‘The Saviors have gone out tonight and took care of that nasty problem called Alexandria. It’s ours now,’ Negan says with a grin. ‘They’ll provide for us. I said the first offering would be in a week, but of course we’ll be heading in early. Want to keep them on their toes, right?’ He laughs and then turns to Daryl. He curls an arm around the teenager’s shoulders, drawing him into his side. ‘This handsome devil is Daryl. He is our guest of honor! Now Daryl will be on a little leash for a while, just so he can get used to how things work around here. Our little pet! You can throw him scraps if you want, God knows he could use some feeding, but you aim a kick at him? It will be the iron for you.’

Daryl watches how the crowd shudders. He doesn’t know what the iron means, but he can see the fear in people’s eyes as they stare up at their leader. It’s not an empty threat. It’s something real. Something that has been done before.

‘Now it’s been a long night for this little one,’ Negan smirks as he squeezes Daryl’s shoulders. ‘Best let him take a nap. Simon. Take him downstairs.’

‘Yes sir.’ The man darts forward to grab Daryl’s upper arm and drag him away from Negan and down the set of stairs again. The teenager recognizes him as the man who’d been in charge right up until he’d knocked on the door of the RV to reveal Negan himself. He’s tall, lanky, with a mustache and receding hairline.

The teenager stumbles over his own feet a couple of times. He’s exhausted and hurting. All the corridors inside the complex blend together, it’s hard to orient himself when everything is made out of concrete and metal. They come to a halt in front of a door at the beginning of a long corridor.

‘Get in.’

Daryl opens the door and falls into a bedroom. He blinks. Sunlight streams in through a high window. The room is quite big, almost as big as his bedroom in Alexandria. A single bed has been pushed up against one of the walls. There’s a small cabinet with books and trinkets, a lazy armchair, even a tiny kitchen area.

‘Get some sleep,’ Simon says. ‘If you can.’

The door closes behind him.

Daryl turns to look but Simon has already left. A lock turns.

He’s trapped.

With a confused frown, the teenager walks into the room. His fingertips glide over the quilt on the bed. It’s colorful, tiny squares of fabric with bright colors stitched together to make a soft blanket. He reaches the kitchen and opens the fridge.

There’s food there.

Water, some kind of soda. There’s a bowl of pasta salad on one of the shelves. A tiny note rests against the glass bowl. _Enjoy_.

He closes the fridge quickly.

He walks over to the television but doesn’t dare to turn it on to see if it actually works. His own reflection stares back at him from the black screen. His hair is a filthy mess, there’s dirt on his cheeks and his eyes seem sunken. None of that matters.

This isn’t real.

It’s a set-up.

As soon as he lays his head down, as soon as he grabs a drink or uses the television, Negan is going to come straight back in. They’re probably watching – just waiting for him to mess up.

So he gingerly sits down on the kitchen floor, his back pressed against one of the cabinets. From here, he has a clear view of the door.

He sits and waits.

 

 

It’s almost dark when he wakes up. He rubs at his eyes and yawns a little before he realizes where he is and what has happened. It all comes crashing over him, making it hard to breathe. His hands tremble as he pushes his hair out of his face.

His heart stops when he sees Negan’s boots. His gaze jerks up to the man’s face.

‘You know, the whole pet thing this morning? That was a joke,’ the man says with a raised eyebrow. ‘So why the fuck are you sleeping on the floor like a goddamn dog? Get the hell up, kid.’ He snaps his fingers on his left hand and walks over to the armchair, falling into it with a theatrical sigh. ‘Maybe they didn’t properly explain this whole thing to you,’ he says while Daryl slowly gets to his feet. ‘Sit,’ he points at the bed.

Daryl sits down on the quilt.

‘We don’t have too many guests, these fuckers don’t know what the fuck to do with you,’ Negan tells him. ‘But this room? It’s yours. At least for the time being. If you show us you can behave, follow the rules, we’ll move you up the ladder, have you stay on my own level! You’ll live like a fucking _king_.

‘Can’t have you wandering around this place on our own yet. We just met! But we’ll get along great, I can just tell. We both make _stunning_ first impressions. The way you took a swing at me? That took balls. I appreciate that. You’re a pocket-sized badass and I love that.’

Daryl stares at him.

‘So come on,’ Negan folds his arms behind his head. The leather jacket rides up a bit to reveal the stark white shirt underneath. ‘You’re Daryl the badass. What else?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ Daryl mutters because he’s required to answer.

‘There’s no need for this to be an awkward first date, kid. You punched me in the face, I killed your friends, we’re practically family already. Come on. Give me something. A little birdy told me you like to hunt.’

Daryl grabs hold of the quilt, fingers twisting into the fabric.

Negan’s gaze flickers to his hands. A tiny smirk lifts one corner of his mouth. ‘Oh, you _hate_ Dwighty-boy, don’t you?’

Daryl bites on his lips.

‘ _Don’t you_?’

‘He killed my friend.’

‘So did I.’

Daryl meets Negan’s eye. They stare at each other.

Then Negan gives a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Good one, kid,’ he says as he stretches, ‘ _he killed my friend_. Shit happens, get over it. You’re on the same side now.’

 _The living side_ , Jesus whispers into Daryl’s ear from the past. The memory pulls at his heartstrings. He wishes the man was here right now, with that kind smile he flashes him sometimes and the gentle words, that playful smirk that always seem to say _nice try, Daryl_ , whenever he tries to make the man laugh.

‘Now I know he’s an asshole, but so am I,’ Negan continues. ‘That’s not gonna change. Now I’m gonna tell you how this all works, okay?’

Daryl nods.

It’s his choice.

He can be like the walkers he’d seen outside of the fence, chained up and dead but still working for the Sanctuary. That’s an option, Negan assures him. He’s expandable. He has a brother, after all. Another tiny future serial killer, just waiting to be plucked off the streets of Alexandria.

He could be one of the people working with the walkers. Nasty job, Negan muses, long hours in the beating sun and the payment they get is the fact that they get to do it another day.

Or he could become Negan. Work for him, play by the rules until the rules no longer would apply to him. He wouldn’t have to work for points, he’d just get shit done and Negan would provide him anything he wanted. A new bow, a new bike, hell, anything he wants.

‘So, what would you want?’ the man asks him. ‘Anything on God’s fucking green earth, if I can get my hands on it, it can be yours. So tell me, what do you want?’

‘To go home.’

Something dark flashes over Negan’s face. ‘This _is_ your home now.’

Daryl thinks about that. He nods. ‘Right, sorry. I just… it’s hard, you know?’

‘I know,’ Negan lets his head fall to his shoulder and actually looks a bit sorry. ‘That was just one fucking shit storm out there but it had to happen. Rick forced my hand, killing all my men like that. There is _always_ a cost, there is always a price to pay. And he paid it. You all did. It’s over now.’

‘I know,’ Daryl nods. His hands relax on the quilt. He looks around the room. ‘You got power?’

An eyebrow quirks up. ‘Of course I fucking do.’

‘The television works?’

‘Hell yeah. You like movies?’

The teenager shrugs and rubs at his nose. ‘I like videogames.’

‘Videogames it is!’ Negan pushes himself out of the chair and laughs. ‘You’re gonna have all the cool games, gonna find you some hot chicks to play with, gonna get you some snacks, it’s gonna be awesome. Hey. If you ever want to play a real game? I’ve got a Ping-Pong table all set up and I’ve been dying to kick someone’s ass at that game. What do you say? You and me.’

Daryl looks up at the man, peering through his bangs. ‘Yeah. Sounds good.’

Negan makes an excited noise. He grins as he reaches out to stroke the boy’s cheek. ‘You know what? I never had a kid of my own, but you… Hmm. You’d do _nicely_.’

Daryl grins back.

The man leans down so they’re at the same level. Hazel eyes search the boy’s blue ones. There’s a beat, a silence, a little frown on Negan’s face, but it fades into another smile. ‘Who are you?’ he asks softly.

‘Negan.’

 

 

He wakes up in the soft bed and stares at the ceiling of his new bedroom. The fridge hums quietly in the corner. Sunlight starts to creep through his window. Dawn is breaking. It’s another brand new day. He stretches out in the bed, groaning a little before sighing contently.

Then he slips out and pads over to the fridge. He drinks the soda for breakfast.

He sits in the armchair, enjoying the comfort of it and then turns on the television. Negan had promised to bring him a console as soon as possible as well as some movies from his personal collection.

With a hum, Daryl pushes himself out of the chair before walking a small lap around the room. It’s a nice room. He likes the quilt, the television, the food in the fridge.

He’s going to miss it when it’s gone.

 

 

There’s a knock on the door.

‘Yeah, come in,’ Daryl calls out because last night Negan had promised that someone would come and fetch him for breakfast. They are going to spend the day together to really get to know each other.

The door opens and Daryl is disappointed that it’s neither Negan, Simon or Dwight who has come down to get him. It’s a guy with blond hair, cut short. He smiles as he swing the door open. ‘Good morning, Daryl. Sleep well?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy slides off the bed and walks over to the man.

‘Good, glad to hear it. Negan is waiting for you.’

‘Yeah, about that…’ Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet.

‘There’s no need to be scared,’ the man gives him a kind smile. ‘He doesn’t hurt kids.’

‘He does. Just not directly.’

‘Ah. Yeah, well… I guess that’s true. I’m sorry for your friends.’

‘You will be,’ Daryl nods, ‘in about two seconds.’ Before the man can even frown or say anything, the teenager grabs the piece of wood he’d hidden between his back and the waistband of his jeans and rams it into the man’s skull. Splinters bite into his own skin, but Daryl keeps pushing, piercing the eye.

The man falls to his knees and dies.

Daryl quickly closes the door, grabs the man’s shoulders and starts to drag him to the other side of the room. He shoves him behind the bed, out of sight.

There’s a blood trail leading from the door to his bed now.

‘Shit,’ Daryl curses under his breath, looking around frantically. He grabs the quilt and puts it on the floor. It covers most of the blood. He dashes back to the corpse. The man had been wearing a knife on his belt. He takes it out of the sheath and runs back to the door, waiting beside it while his heart beats in his skull, so loud, almost deafening him.

The splinters press into the palm of his hand as he turn the knife over and over. His knuckles go white from the pressure. He only stops when he hears footsteps approaching.

‘What the fuck, Harris! Negan is waiting, what the hell is taking you so long? He’s going to put you on the fence if you-‘ the door opens again and another man storms in. He looks around the seemingly empty room. His eyes go wide when he spots the blood. ‘What the he-‘

Daryl steps away from the wall, grabs the man’s forehead and slits his throat. Blood sprays everywhere. With a strange gurgling sound, the man sinks to his knees. The teenager watches how he slowly falls forward, fingers twitching as life leaves the body.

There are footsteps in the hallway. He won’t be able to hide this mess.

He turns the man over and sits with one knee on his chest. There is no heartbeat beneath him. With a sigh, he puts the knife against the eyes. The metal slides in slowly. It makes him sick. He yanks it out seconds later, slashes the blade over the man’s face. Lashes appear on the skin, splitting open and oozing blood. Not as much as Daryl thought it would.

He wonders idly whether that’s because the man is already dead.

Footsteps behind him. A moment of silence before someone shouts, a gun is cocked and a guy grabs his arm, forcing the blade out of his hands.

The boy rolls off the man, sitting on the floor before falling back onto his elbows, looking up at the Saviors with a wicked grin.

‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘He fucking killed Remy!’

‘Where is Harris?’

Daryl tilts his head back and laughs.

One of the guys comes towards him, hand balled into a fist and anger written all over his face, ‘you little shit, I’ll get you for what-

Another grabs his arm, yanking him back, ‘he’s still Negan’s,’ he hisses. ‘You touch him, you get the iron.’

The discussion is cut short by the sound of someone whistling down the hall. Everyone in the room freezes. It doesn’t take Negan long to appear in the doorway. With his dark boots and light jeans, the leather jacket zipped all the way up. He’s not wearing his scarf right now, and only the hand that wields Lucille is gloved. The bat taps onto the floor when he stops. The dark gaze lands on the boy.

Daryl’s jeans are covered in blood, his hands too. There are smears on his shirt, barely visible unless he moves. The dark hair pricks in his eyes, pale lips curl into a smirk when their gazes meet.

‘Well, this is just disappointing,’ Negan says as his gaze moves to the butchered man on the floor. ‘Where is Harris?’

One of the Saviors darts past the boy to search the room. He checks under the bed first, pushing the blankets up to reveal the remains of the bedside cabinet. The wood has been splintered. The Savior shoots Negan a pointed look before moving on.

‘He’s back here,’ he says when he rounds the bed. ‘Dead.’

‘Of fucking course,’ Negan sighs as he swings Lucille onto his shoulder. With a grimace, he steps over the dead man’s legs to loom over the teenager sitting next to the body. ‘I’m not gonna lie, kid. This is really disappointing. I’m, dare I fucking say it? I’m _hurt_.’

‘Not yet,’ Daryl breathes. ‘But you will be.’

Negan sinks to his haunches so they’re on the same level. ‘I thought we were friends.’

‘You killed my friends.’

‘Still butt hurt over that? Hell, I could have picked the other one, you should be fucking grateful. I could have picked your mommy. Hell, I might just go back to Alexandria, tell Rick that this is just not working out, and get me a new guest of honor. Sounds like an awful lot of work and there’s a price tag on that too, but if that’s how you want to play this out? Be my fucking guest. And since you already are, hell, kid, I just might do it.’

Daryl spits the man in his face.

It drips down his cheek.

The Saviors take an involuntary step backwards, eyes wide as they stare at their leader.

Negan slowly brings his hand to the saliva, wiping it off his skin. He reaches out to wipe it on the dead man’s jeans instead. Then he looks back at the boy. ‘You annoy the shit out of me.’

‘Good.’

A wagging finger is his answer. ‘ _Not_ good. What did I say about you pissing me off? I said I would hurt you for it. And killing my men? That’s pissing me off.’

‘First one’s free, right?’ Daryl asks with a soft laugh and he sits up and tries to wipe the blood off of his hands. It doesn’t work. It’s still there.

Negan sighs . He rubs at his forehead. ‘I hate to break it to you, kid. But one and one is two. Because that’s Harris there, dead as fuck, and that’s Remy, _also_ dead as fuck. See how this adding up thing works? That’s two. And the second one is _not_ free.’

‘I know,’ the teenager says. ‘You said you’d hurt me. Just me. And you’re a man of your word, right? That’s what you said.’

Negan leans back on his heels. He looks thoughtful as he twists Lucille back and forth in his hand. The barbed wire almost shimmers in the early morning light. Someone cleaned it, there’s not a trace of blood on the weapon anymore. Daryl wonders whether he really did it himself, like he said he would, or he got someone else to do the nasty work for him.

It’s most likely that he did it himself. He wasn’t disgusted by the remains in the line-up, seemed gleeful at the sight of all the blood and brain matter when it splashed up around him. Negan might be theatrical villain, but at least he’s not scared of getting his own hands dirty.

‘You think you’re pretty clever, huh?’ the man asks softly. ‘I could kill you now and nobody would ever know.’

‘You like me,’ Daryl bounces back.

‘You’re _adorable_ ,’ the man smiles, ‘but you’re putting me in a difficult situation here. I like you, but these guys?’ he gestures to the men around him. ‘You just killed their friend and they want to see blood on the wall. I’m sure you can sympathize.’

Daryl’s gaze flickers up at the men. A hint of fear starts to bleed into his heart.

‘Now I can’t let shit like this slide,’ Negan continues. ‘Makes me look like a pussy, you know? There are rules. That is why we’re still here. I’m gonna hurt you, kid.’

‘Just you,’ Daryl nods.

Negan smiles. He stands and points at one of the men over his shoulder. ‘Who are you?’

‘Negan,’ is the prompt reply.

‘Who are you?’ Lucille swivels to point at another guy.

‘Negan.’

‘ _Who are you_?’ Negan demands as he rolls a shoulder back.

‘ _Negan_ ,’ all the men echo.

The man smiles down at the teenager. ‘That’s right. I? I am _everywhere_. They are all Negan. And you tried to be clever, you tried to be a smarty-pants, get me all riled up – and I have to give it to you, you rock star. It worked. I’m pissed. Now what are you going to do? Huh, sport? Did you think about that?’

‘I can take it.’

Negan’s eyes widen before they narrow. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Whatever you’re gonna do,’ Daryl nods, ‘I can take it.’

Negan laughs softly. ‘We’ll see about that.’ He walks out of the room. Lucille on his shoulder, hips swinging lazily. At the end of the corridor, he looks back at the teenager.

He smiles.

And whistles.

The men close the door.

 

 

Just before the first fist hits him, Daryl glances at the corner of the room.

Will lifts an unimpressed eyebrow at him. He sighs as he pushes himself away from the wall and saunters over to his youngest son. ‘You never learn, do ya?’

Daryl works his jaw.

Will gives him a sad little smile. One hand goes to his belt.

B _race yourself_ , Daryl thinks as knuckles collide with his cheekbone.

 

 

His whole body is on fire. Every inch of his skin hurts. There are boot prints on his back, legs, hands, arms, on his cheeks, covering his chest, too. He throws up several times while the doctor inspects the blooming bruises on him.

There’s blood running down his face. One of the guys was wearing a ring and backhanded him so hard that the skin just under his eyebrow has split. The blood stings in his eyes.

There are no broken bones but the doctor worries about internal bleeding.

Daryl throws up again.

The doctor worries about that, too.

He’s not allowed to have pain killers. Negan’s orders.

Daryl cries when Dwight forces him onto his feet and shoves him down the hall again. He’s not taken back to his room. Instead he’s forced into a small cell at the end of the hall.

‘Strip,’ Dwight snaps.

Daryl whimpers. The doctor has already removed his shirt, cut it away to inspect the massive wounds on his back and sides. With shaking hands, he reaches for his belt and the button of his jeans.

After a minute, Dwight snarls impatiently, bats his hands away and undoes his zipper for him, forcing his jeans down. Another push and Daryl stumbles out of them, catching himself on the cold concrete wall.

Tears are streaking down his face. He’s shaking so bad that he fears his legs won’t be able to hold him. He hates that he’s naked in front of the other man.

‘You could have made this easy on yourself,’ Dwight says as he drapes Daryl’s clothes over his arm. ‘You could have just accepted it. That is the only way.’

‘He killed them,’ Daryl cries.

‘And you thought this would make it easier? Almost getting yourself killed? What was the _point_ , Daryl?’

‘Fuck you.’

‘You’re gonna wind up back in that room or hanging on the fence!’ Dwight shouts.

Daryl collapses, sinks down to the ground and draws his knees up to protect some of his modesty. ‘The fuck do you care?’

Dwight hesitates for a moment. ‘You’re just a kid. Look at you.’ He shakes his head. ‘There’s no point to this, Daryl. You can’t survive this. There is always more. Worse things. If this doesn’t work?’ He sink to his haunches to meet the boy’s eye, ‘if this doesn’t break you, he will find another way. He likes you. Don’t push him any further.’

‘I’m gonna kill him,’ Daryl promises with a nod. ‘I’m gonna kill you all.’

‘Like how you killed your friend at the line-up? That worked out great, didn’t it?’ Dwight sneers as he stands. ‘Didn’t your daddy teach you how to think before you act?’

Two had tried, one hadn’t bothered.

‘Here,’ Dwight throws something on the floor next to him. ‘A reminder. Take a damn look.’

The door clangs shut behind him. His footsteps fade.

 

 

Daryl picks the item up.

It’s a photograph.

With shaking hands, he turns it over.

And stares at Glenn’s bashed in skull.

 

 


	77. Right here on easy street

 

* * *

 

 

He’s shivering. It’s so cold inside his cell and no one has given him his clothes back yet. The concrete kisses his bare skin, sending goosebumps up his arms and legs every time he shifts. It doesn’t matter to him that he’s naked. He knows it’s just part of the sick game they’re trying to play, but it’s been a long time since he’s been ashamed of his body. When one of the Saviors comments on his scars, he doesn’t react. When another tells him his dick is tiny, he lifts his gaze warily and manages as weak grin.

‘Made ya look,’ he mutters with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

It earns him another slap but it still makes him laugh.

The laughter has faded now, however.

They’ve found a new way of torturing him.

They won’t let him _sleep_.

Every time he curls up, puts his head down, closes his eyes, that damn song starts to play. It seems to come from the very walls, the sound squeaky and metallic, pouring out of second rate speakers but loud enough to drown out whatever he’s thinking about. It’s a horribly cheerful song, too. It taunts him.

There are a couple of seconds of silence between the end of the song and when it starts again. And every time Daryl’s heart clenches with hope that it is over, that they’re done with their games, that he can finally close his eyes and get some sle-

It starts again.

Daryl stares at the light under the door. It’s too hard for him to tell whether it’s artificial or not. Probably. Or dawn, it’s always dawn under that door, outside. He tries to think of the last sunrise he’s seen but he can’t focus. Thoughts are sloshing around in his brain, never settling down.

He wonders how long he’s been here.

Weeks, months, it feels like years, but the bruises haven’t even began to fade yet so it can’t have been more than a couple of days. That makes him sick. Days. He’d hoped that time would go faster inside his little box, that he could live out his last years quickly, grow up and die here. That he could just die here. But days. _Days_. Another week of this, a month, a lifetime.

He presses his fingernails into his shoulders and drags his hands down his arms.

It hurts, but everything else hurts more and it’s not enough.

The photograph is still on the floor. He can see the picture because of the light beneath his door. Maybe that’s why it’s always dawn; someone always leaves a light on so he can see what he’s done. That’s silly though. He sees it every time he closes his eyes. In that split second between the end and beginning of the song, just when his heart blooms with hope, he sees it.

Lucille coming down on Glenn’s head, splitting it open, popping his eye out.

He hears it, too.

Glenn’s ragged breath and Maggie’s whimpers. That last, broken promise the Korean made.

His own sobs and then horrified screams when Negan resumed the beating.

He tries not to think about it but there’s nothing else in the world. There’s nothing left but blood and memories. With a trembling hand, he reaches for the photograph. Forces himself to look at what he’s done, just because he couldn’t control his temper.

There’s so much he wants to tell Glenn. That he’s sorry. That he’s so, so _sorry_ , and would have taken his place if he only could. That the thought of Glenn’s child growing up without his dad makes him sick. That it’s not fair that he got to have the Korean for almost three years and his own blood won’t even know him.

That none of this is fair.

And he’s sorry.

So sorry. It almost rips him apart. He can’t stomach the thought of ever facing Maggie again. Beth. Carl and Rick. With a whimper, he rakes his fingernails over his thighs, leaving angry red marks over his bruises. Fresh tears spill onto his cheeks.

Maybe that was the point of it all. Not revenge, not showing Negan that he can’t be controlled or owned, but just another easy way out. Maybe he’d hoped for a far greater punishment.

But that wouldn’t have been a punishment at all.

Daryl stares at the photograph and wishes he were the one who was dead.

That would have been better. Sure, Merle would have been sad, Glenn and Maggie would mourn him, but it would have been his own damn fault. It would have made sense. It would have been fair, Daryl thinks hazily.

‘So that’s how it’s gonna be?’ Will asks him. The man is standing on the other side of the small cell, partly hidden by the shadows. ‘You’re gonna be a little bitch about it, roll over and die? Hell,’ he sinks to his haunches, ‘always knew you weren’t no real Dixon.’

Daryl swallows with some difficulty. He wants to close his eyes but doesn’t want the song to start yet. ‘You ain’t real,’ he rasps.

‘How the fuck would you know?’ Will cocks his head to the side and narrows his eyes.

‘Burned ya.’

The man lets out a huff of amused laughter. ‘Family tradition, huh?’

‘Shut up,’ Daryl croaks. He tries to curl up in a tighter ball. Shaking hands find his ears. A desperate attempt to shut his dad out.

‘No, you’re going to listen to me, you little shit.’ There’s no heat in the words, no anger. ‘I’ve told you a million times already; you’re too damn sweet. Got a soft heart, that’s why it hurts so much now. Told you this would happen.’

‘Stop, please stop,’ Daryl cries.

‘And it’s all your damn fault, too. Hmm-hmm-hmm. That’s a tough one, a’right. This is on you.’

‘I know.’

‘So what’re you gonna do about it?’ Will asks as he stands up and walks a slow lap around the tiny cell. His footsteps sound like thunder to the boy. ‘You gonna try and get yourself killed again? No, I know that weren’t your plan,’ he says when Daryl looks up at him. ‘You just wanted a beatin’, right? Itching for it. Thought it would make it all easier. Skin deep pain, hell, you’re used to takin’ that with clenched teeth. But this? This is something else, all right.’

Daryl moves his hands from his ears to his eyes, hiding his tears.

‘So what’re you gonna do? What do we _always_ do?’

Daryl shakes his head.

‘Don’t know?’ Will asks. His tone of voice shifts into something gentle and soft. ‘You’re gonna get up. Dixon’s don’t kneel. They don’t beg, they don’t _break_. Whatever they’re going to do to you, you _will not_ beg and you _will not_ break. And you will _never_ kneel.’

Daryl whimpers.

‘This is on you, so you’re gonna have to _live_ with it. And you can. You will, because it’s gonna be you, at the end of all of this.’

Daryl thinks about Glenn, touching his cheek and promising that it was going to be them, at the end.

‘It was always going to be you,’ Will tells him softly. ‘My boy. My little king.’

‘I can’t,’ Daryl whispers.

‘Of course you can,’ Will urges. ‘You’re doing it right now.’

Hey,’ another voice fills the cell. ‘You promised me, little king. You promised me we would look after them.’

Daryl looks up. One trembling hand reaches out. ‘ _Shane_.’

‘I’m right here,’ the cop nods from where he’s sitting against the other wall. ‘Can’t look after them when you’re dead, Dare. Come on, close your eyes and get some sleep. You’re going to need your strength.’ He looks at the door. The brown eyes are swirling with hatred. ‘You’re going to show them all.’

‘Show ‘em what?’ Daryl whispers.

‘Just how strong you are,’ Glenn says as he leans against the wall. The blood is gone, there’s no crack in his skull, his eyes are normal again. They’re filled with kindness when he looks at him.

‘Not you,’ Daryl whimpers, hiding his head and face behind his arms. ‘Please. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please, _please_ ….’

‘This world is out to get you, Dare,’ Glenn says. ‘It’s out to get _them_. They need you.’

‘They don’t,’ the boy cries. ‘They _don’t_.’

‘Pathetic,’ Will scoffs. ‘That what I raised you to be? A little bitch?’

‘Ain’t no bitch.’

‘Show me then. Prove it. Sleep. And tomorrow, you’ll get up and go to war.’

‘Got to be clever,’ Shane cautions. ‘One thin wire you’re going to be walking on, Dare.’

Glenn laughs softly. ‘If there’s one person who knows how to tread carefully, it’s him. You can do this, Dare. You promised me you could. No more kid’s tuff, for real this time.’

Daryl shivers. He knows they’re his words, he knows his dad is echoing Rick from long ago; none of this is real. They’re not here. They’re _gone_. He whimpers, nails digging into his eyelids.

There’s a rustling sound, a whisper of clothing and a warmth settling down beside him.

‘Look at me.’

Daryl slowly drops his hands and opens his eyes again. He looks at Shane through his lashes. The man is lying next to him on the ground. There’s a small smile playing around his lips. And even though he’s just a memory, just a hallucination, Daryl still wants to reach out and twist his fingers into the man’s shirt. He wants to pull himself close, hide his face into the crook of the man’s neck, breathe him in one last time.

But he can’t. And he doesn’t want to reach out and feel nothing but coldness, so he stays still. He watches and hopes that his delirium lasts forever.

‘That’s it,’ Shane says as he scoots a little closer. ‘We’re never splitting up again.’

A tiny smile tugs at the corner of Daryl’s mouth. ‘Yeah,’ he breathes as his hands finally still.

He falls asleep before the song starts.

 

 

Dwight seems to be his handler. Every time the door opens, he is there, framed by sudden light and casting a shadows on the teenager cowering in the corner. The bow dangles from his wrist. The first time he turns around to leave again, Daryl nearly throws up when he sees his own wings on the devil’s back.

The second time he flinches and third time he doesn’t react at all.

He’s gotten used to it now.

It’s late in the afternoon when Dwight opens the door and throws some clothes into his lap. ‘Put them on.’

Daryl grunts as he gets up. His whole body screams in protest but he bites his lip bloody to prevent a whimper of pain from escaping. The fabric scrapes over his bruises and cuts, agitating his skin even more. He’s a little warmer now though.

‘No,’ Dwight says when Daryl tries to sit down again. He grabs the teenager’s shoulder, ‘you’re coming with me.’ The hold shifts to the back of his shirt as he guides Daryl through the corridors. They pass two people mopping the floor. Nobody says anything.

They pass the room Daryl had earlier. The door is open.

Dwight clips him over the back of his head when he looks. The blood is gone.

‘Carson,’ Dwight calls when he shoves Daryl into one of the rooms at the end of the hall. Hope flares in the teenager as he stumbles in, expecting to see the doctor from Hilltop. The man with the kind smile and soft eyes, the one who’d let him help with Maggie’s echo. But it’s not him. This man is taller, with a sterner face. He seems older, too.

There’s a woman sitting on the examination table. She’s wearing a tiny black dress, long legs swinging gently back and forth. She tugs the dress down a bit when the teenager and his handler burst in.

‘We were just finishing up here,’ the doctor says as he puts his hands in the pockets of his long, white coat. ‘Chop, chop,’ he tells the woman.

She glides off the table. ‘Hi, D.’

‘Hey,’ the man breathes.

The woman looks at the teenager. He is staring at his own bare feet, allowing his long hair to shield most of his expression.

‘Daryl, right?’ She asks, ducking her head a little to try and catch his eye.

‘Don’t talk to him,’ Dwight says forcefully. He give Daryl’s shoulder a shove towards the examination table and watches how the boy climbs on.

‘He’s just a kid,’ the woman says softly. ‘Dwight. He is just a _kid_.’

‘You don’t know what he did. He’s not a kid, but he is Negan’s. Check on his wounds,’ Dwight tells the doctor. ‘Make sure there are no broken bones.’

‘You should have brought him in earlier,’ the doctor says sternly as he throws some of the equipment he’d used on the woman away. ‘There are no broken bones, or he wouldn’t have been able to walk like that or climb on the table.’ He falls into a smaller seat on wheels and pushes himself closer to the hoy. ‘Can I give him painkillers at least?’

‘No.’

The doctor sighs and starts his inspection by checking the boy’s face, prodding at his cheekbones and flashing a light in his eyes. It forces his gaze up. He can see the woman properly now and realizes that it’s Sherry, the woman from the burned woods.

Dwight’s wife.

‘Whatever they say, just do it,’ she tells him with a sad look in her eyes.

‘I said; don’t talk to him!’

The doctor taps on Daryl’s elbows to signal that he has to lift his arms. With a smooth motion, he removes the shirt. There’s a frown on his face when he inspects the boy’s chest. He prods at his ribs. Daryl doesn’t wince. Then he touches one of the scars. Daryl doesn’t react.

‘These are old, what did you-‘

‘Wasn’t us,’ Dwight cuts it, ‘so it’s not our problem. Just check him over, doc, ‘s not that hard to do.’

The doctor gets up to look at the boy’s back, ‘so you knew.’

‘Took his clothes,’ Dwight shrugs. ‘Saw. Ain’t our problem. Like you said; they’re old.’

‘Does Negan know?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ Dwight insists. ‘Come on, just check him over for the usual.’

The doctor shakes his head but continues his examination, checking the spine, his reflexes, his legs and feet. ‘Just the bruises,’ he says when he pushes himself away from the boy again. ‘They’ll fade with time. What did he do to earn that?’

‘Killed two of our men.’

Sherry inhales sharply and the doctor just shakes his head again.

‘Negan will take care of you,’ Carson tells the boy. ‘If you’ll let him. Trust me.’ Then he looks at Dwight, ‘I wish you would let me give him some painkillers. He’s in pain.’

‘No.’

‘ _Dwight_ ,’ Sherry objects.

‘I said; no,’ the man snarls back. ‘Help him put his shirt back on. We’re done here.’

 

 

The routine is easy enough. Every morning and every night Dwight will open the door to give him some food. It’s the same thing every time. A moldy piece of bread with dogfood on it. Daryl doesn’t care. He eats without thinking, drinks water whenever it’s offered, winces only a little when the door closes with a bang.

The first few times, he sits in the corner, whimpering whenever the light assaults his eyes suddenly, hands shaking.

But now he stands up whenever he hears Dwight’s approaching footsteps. Stands against the back of the cell, head slightly bowed, shoulders low and waits for his food. He eats it while Dwight watches.

He stops thinking about it. He stops trying to make out whether it’s morning or evening, how many days have passed, how many hours, because he fears that only seconds have ticked by.

He can’t lose his mind now.

He can’t break.

So he stands and he eats dog food and drinks water. He’s glad when Dwight pulls him out of his cell so he can use a bathroom but doesn’t dare to look at himself in the mirror.

He’s surprised when he’s allowed to go outside after he’s relieved himself. The sunshine isn’t too bright today, a breeze tickles over his cheeks and plays with the ends of his hair. It doesn’t matter that Dwight makes him look at the people who are working the fence. The ones who feed and take care of the walkers. They’re wearing the same clothes as Daryl.

He wonders what they have done to end up there.

One of the workers is grabbed by a walker and almost bit.

Dwight fires a bot into the walker’s skull. It goes down easily. He shoots the teenager a grin, twisting the bow a bit. ‘I’m getting the hang of this thing.’

Daryl wants to tell him that he’s holding it all wrong but bites on his lip.

Dwight must see the flash of defiance in his eyes because he grabs the boy and throws him up against the chain link, one cold hand in the nape of his neck. ‘That’s you, asshole, unless you’re smart. Your choice. You could be like them, or me.’

Daryl doesn’t answer.

The other man doesn’t seem to care. He forces the boy back inside, guiding him through the corridors back to his cell. Daryl hates that it’s already becoming a safe space. He’s never sure what’s going to happen when he has to step outside so he’d rather stay inside his little box. He’s tired from the short trip to the doctor and sags down on the floor.

Dwight leans against the doorframe. ‘Make this easy on yourself,’ he urges.

‘I ain’t ever gonna kneel.’

‘Yeah, I said that, too.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Dwight sighs and looks at the ceiling. ‘See, that’s the thing, man. You don’t.’ He give the boy a sharp look. ‘But you’re gonna.’

The door is closed.

The lock turned.

Daryl leans his head back and closes his eyes.

The music starts.

 

 

The next time Dwight comes to get him, there’s a tightness around his mouth and eyes. He refuses to look at the boy, just grabs him by the scruff of his neck and drags him along. They’re not going outside or to the doctor. They pass the large hall, go up some stairs, wind through a different section.

It takes them a while but eventually Dwight knocks on one of the doors at the end of a hallway. A voice answers and Dwight throws Daryl into the room.

‘Well, hello there,’ Negan greets as he leans back on the couch he’s sitting on. One arm on the armrest, the other folded behind his head. He’s not wearing his leather jacket. The shirt he’s wearing is shockingly white against the black leather of the couch. ‘Glad you could make it, Daryl. How are we feeling today? Pretty fucked up, right?’

 ‘Yeah,’ Daryl agrees as he looks around the room quickly. There’s a couch, coffee table, two chairs on one side. There’s a fireplace, cabinets, plants and ornaments. Curtains and a big bed with dark sheets. Rugs on the floors. Lights. A chandelier dangles from the ceiling.

It almost looks homely.

‘Thank you, Dwight,’ Negan nods. He waves one hand, ‘now kindly piss off again. Daryl and I have private things to discuss.’

Daryl freezes. His gaze is still on the bed.

Behind him, the door closes again. Footsteps fade.

He hates how he wants to whirl around and shout for the other man to come back.

Negan doesn’t seem to notice his rising panic. The man is flipping through a stack of papers, signing some of them at the bottom while throwing others onto the floor in a messy pile. ‘Sit your ass down,’ he tells the boy without looking at him.

Daryl sits on one of the chairs. His toes dig into the rug. It’s soft and warm.

‘Daryl,’ Negan says as he pulls a sheet of paper from the pile with a flourish. ‘No broken bones, minor cuts, yada yada yada – bruises will fade, malnourished, growth stunted,’ he looks at the boy, grunts and turns back to the fade, ‘looks fine by me, the hell’s he talking about? Fuck him. Let’s see. Additional notes,’ he pulls his eyebrows up theatrically, feigning surprise, ‘severe scar tissue on chest and back, at least three years old.’

Daryl relaxes fractionally.

‘Rumor has it,’ Negan says as he throws the sheet back onto the pile, ‘that you look like the cat got you in the cradle. What’s that about?’

‘What do you care?’

Negan gives him a toothy grin. ‘I don’t. I just like to see you squirm.’

Daryl narrows his eyes.

‘But you’re not squirming, are you? No, sir, you are not. Is that just because you’re a badass first-class – I bet it is. See? I still think highly of you. Yeah, you pissed me off, wasted my men, but you took your punishment like a total champ. Not a peep, and no painkillers?’ He reaches for the paper again and waves it at Daryl, ‘you bruiser!’

‘What the hell do you want?’ Daryl sighs, relaxing further into the chair, enjoying every second of the small comfort it gives. ‘For real.’

‘For real?’ the smile fades from the man’s face. ‘I want you to tell me who gave you those scars.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if it was Rick, or any of those fine people you call family? Then I’m going to have to have a talk with them when we collect their offering. Now I’m not much of a diplomat, all that talk gets on my nerves – me? I like to get shit done. And I will get shit done that day. Trust me.’

Daryl cocks his head to the side. ‘Weren’t Rick.’

‘No?’ Negan trails his tongue over his front teeth, ‘then who?’

‘My dad,’ the boy says easily, digging his toes a little deeper into the rug.

‘You’re kidding me, you really are that stereotypical southern hick, aren’t you? _Jesus_.’ Negan barks out a sharp laugh. ‘Now that makes things real easy,’ he gets up and walks over to his bed. Lucille is resting against the bedside table. He swings her to his shoulder before lifting it higher, bringing it down in one fell swoop.

Daryl flinches.

‘Just practicing my swing, don’t you worry about her today,’ Negan grins. ‘Knew I picked the wrong guy that night. Soon as I let Lucille loose, I knew it. But you know, can’t go back after that first swing, _that_ would be cruel. Finish what you started. And I finished it, all right.’

‘Wrong guy?’ Daryl frowns.

‘Yeah,’ Negan swings Lucille again. The barbed wire shines in the artificial light.

There’s fear clawing at Daryl’s insides. His hands are shaking again. He can’t help but flinch every time the bat glides through the air. Memories flash by, of Glenn and Abraham, bleeding out on the forest floor.

‘What do you mean?’ the boy asks as he watches the bat come down over and over.

‘What?’ Negan staggers a bit after the final swing, brought off balance and breathing a little heavier. ‘You said it; was your dad. Hell, if I had picked him the first time around, that night, it wouldn’t have been a big deal now. People are going to be upset, lots of tears, I hate that. I really do.’

‘You did.’

Negan lifts an eyebrow, ‘excuse me, kid?’

‘You did pick my dad that night.’

Lucille thuds on the floorboards as Negan leans on her, looking skeptical. ‘Red was your dad?’

‘No.’

‘ _Squinty eyes_?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says, his mouth going a bit dry. His throat is closing up, he can feel fresh tears burning in his eyes.

‘You have to be kidding me,’ Negan laughs. ‘What- are-  what the actual fuck, kid. I don’t even know where to start! I mean, you get a sticker and pat on the back for the effort, but that is just a _bad_ lie. You’re gonna tell me that the other guy kneeling, the guy who has the same blue eyes – and I wasn’t going to make this weird, you know, but I just noticed, they’re just so fucking _blue_ , right? – same cheekbones, same _fuck you and your mom_ attitude is _not_ your father? Seriously, kid?’

‘He’s my brother.’

Negan scratches at his beard. ‘How much older?’

‘Fifteen years. My dad died a year after the turn. I burned him.’

The man whistles. ‘Of course you did.’ He stares at the boy, probably trying to figure out whether he’s lying. ‘So what, China adopted you?’

‘He is Korean.’

‘Was,’ Negan says as he walks back to the couch. ‘He was Korean.’

‘Was,’ Daryl agrees softly.

‘I’m sorry, kid.’ Negan sits down and Daryl is surprised to see that he actually looks sorry. ‘I know it’s hard.’

Daryl nods and carefully pulls his feet up, putting them gingerly on the seat of his chair, toes curling around the edge of the cushion. He’s watching Negan closely, scared that the man will tell him to put his feet on the floor again so he won’t mess up the furniture with his filth. Lucille is still in his hand.

But Negan just watches him and leans back on the couch again. He lets go of the bat.

‘He just looked after me, ya know?’ the boy murmurs. ‘Didn’t find my brother until like a month ago, so.. was just us a while and now…’ A tear slides down his cheek. He dries it on his shoulder. ‘Just me now, I guess.’

‘Yeah,’ Negan says softly.  I’m sorry, killer. I really am.’ With a soft grunt, he gets up only to sit down on the coffee table. He’s much closer now. Slowly, he reaches out to fold his hands over Daryl’s ankles, rubbing his thumbs over the boy’s cold feet.

Daryl shivers.

‘Your life is about to get so much cooler,’ Negan tells him. ‘Dwight gave you some options but considering how it all went down last time someone tried to explain shit to you – I don’t think you get it yet so I’m gonna break it down for you. You get three choices. One, you wind up on the spike and you work for me as a dead man. Two, you get out of your cell, you work for points, but you're gonna _wish_ you were dead. Or three, you work for me, you get yourself a brand-new pair of shoes, and you live like a king! Choice seems pretty obvious.’ The man grins. ‘You should know, there is no door number four. This is it. This is the only way.’

Daryl brings his thumb to his mouth. He gnaws on the nail, glancing at the man suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why’d you let me be? Give me shit?’

‘Because I like you and you’re mine now. I take care of those who are mine.’ Negan ducks to meet his eye, ‘if you do this; no more disgusting rags,’ he plucks at the boy’s pants, ‘no more fucking dogfood, okay? You live like a king.’

The corner of Daryl’s mouth shoot upwards.

‘What?’ Negan asks with an amused laugh. ‘You like that?’

The boy wrinkles his nose and laughs a little. ‘My dad used to call me that. Little king.’

‘You’re too fucking cute, you know that? Jesus,’ Negan grins back. ‘How old are you? Thirteen?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You have no right to be so cute. Tell you what – you gotta put that damn nickname aside, okay? Your dad was a fucking prick, we already established that. Lucille can’t even say hi to him anymore – that pisses her off. She finds it to be disrespectful if something else does her job for her, you know? Likes to carry her own weight, very modern woman, my Lucille,’ Negan snorts and scratches at the back of his neck. ‘I am the king around here, and having two kings is fucking impossible, never works out, so you only have one option, right?’

Daryl frowns a little.

‘You can be my prince.’

Daryl snorts and runs a hand through his filthy hair. ‘For real?’

‘For real. Pinky fucking promise.’

The boy looks at the held out pinky. He worries his bottom lip and then reaches for it with his own pinky.

At the last second, Negan draws his hand away.

Daryl looks up, eyes wide.

‘Who are you?’ the man demands.

Daryl swallows.

‘ _Who are you_?’

‘Negan.’

 

 

Fat Joey takes him to his new room because Dwight has gone out on some mission. A code red, apparently, but Daryl doesn’t know what that means so he disregards it. It turns out that it’s his old room, the one in the corridor next to his cell. The one he’d killed the two Saviors in on his first morning.

Fat Joey seems a little scared of him. He never looks at him, doesn’t shove him inside like Dwight would have done, doesn’t want to touch him at all. He just mutters something about food being in the fridge, about clothes being brought by later and then closes the door quickly.

The fact that the man is a coward doesn’t make him a liar.

About two hours later, there’s a knock on the door and a guy walks in with a heavy looking bag. He throws it down on the bed. ‘Negan selected it himself for you. If something doesn’t fit, you can trade it at the stalls. You don’t have to have any points, okay? He wants you to have dinner with him and his wives tonight. Dwight will show you around the complex in about an hour.’

‘What’s the time?’ Daryl asks because he has no idea anymore.

‘Eleven o’clock in the morning.’

‘Thanks.’

The man nods. ‘You wanna shower or tonight before dinner?’

Daryl’s eyes widen.

The man laughs, ‘can’t have dinner with the man’s wives smelling like this. You stink, boy.’

‘Okay. Now, please. Can I take the bag so I-‘

‘Fine, whatever,’ the man rolls his eyes. ‘Come with me.’

The water is cold.

The man stays in the room to keep an eye on him.

They haven’t given him a towel so he drips water everywhere.

None of that matters to him.

He rummages through the bag and finds underwear. He frowns a little as he pulls the other items out of the bag. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he asks the man. ‘Where the hell are my clothes?’

‘Those rags you had on before?’ the man wrinkles his nose. ‘They probably threw them out. Nobody was going to waste points on fixing those up again. Like I said; Negan picked this out for you. Figured you’ll bear his name, might as well dress the part, I guess.’

Daryl stares at the items.

 

 

The leather boots are his exact size. He wonders whether Negan somehow knew that his old boots were getting too small, or whether he just got lucky. It doesn’t matter either way, of course. Doesn’t change the fact that they feel and look like they were made just for him.

His knees had almost buckled when he found the two necklaces in a small pouch on the bottom of the bag. The one with the 22, ant the two wedding rings.

Daryl looks at himself in the mirror, gaze gliding from his boots to his chest. He wobbles on the balls of his feet. The jeans they gave him are black, the shirt white. He’s got a leather jacket now. Fingerless gloves. A black and white bandana which he ties to the loops of his belt. Everything looks in pristine condition, like he is the first person who is wearing it.

It’s been a while since he’s had clothes that felt like his own.

He pushes the sleeves of the leather jacket up to past his elbows and grins at his own reflection.

‘You look like a fucking girl,’ Dwight drawls from the door opening. ‘You gonna do a twirl for me next?’

Daryl flinches because he hadn’t seen the man come in.

‘So you knelt, huh?’ The man asks with a slight frown. ‘Thought you would hold out longer.’

‘How much longer?’ Daryl asks. ‘If this is gonna be it, forever, then… don’t matter how long you hold out then. Makes no difference.’

‘Right.’ Dwight doesn’t look convinced. ‘Listen, a word of advice? If this is another one of your tricks? It’s not going to end well for you. Negan likes you, for now. But if you make a fool out of him again, he’s going to hurt you, again. _Worse_. He’s going right back to Alexandria and wipe out the rest of your family and he won’t kill you last. He won’t kill you at all. You’re going to have to live with it, for however long he can keep your heart beating, okay? That’s how it’s going to be.’

‘Ain’t no trick.’

‘It better not be,’ the man warns. ‘Follow me.’

One of the halls of the factory has been arranged to work as a marketplace. Tables overflowing with clothes, people haggling for better prices and fewer points for products, crates filled with little trinkets, stations where batteries can be recharged for a certain price. People are selling all kinds of stuff. Clothes and books and shoes and hygiene products, small electronics, knives, board games, magazines, paintings.

Daryl’s eyes are wide as he follows Dwight through the hall. Sometimes the man will stop and grab something off of a table so he can inspect it before either placing it back or stuffing it in his bag. He stops to talk to one of the guys behind a table with all kinds of weird things. After a brief conversation, the man pulls a box out from under the table.

Daryl has to stand on his tiptoes in order to see what’s inside.

Rocks. He’s not sure what kind, but Dwight rummages through it, obviously searching for a specific one.

‘Why’d you want it?’

Dwight glances at him, ‘if they’re soft enough, I can carve them.’

‘Carve stone?’

‘Yeah. Takes a while, but…’ he shrugs. They’ve got time.

Daryl nods his understanding and falls back onto his heels while the men start to argue over the price. From what he’s gathered, most of the people just write Dwight’s name down in their notebooks, knowing full well that the man has enough points to get whatever he wants. The rocks seem to be expensive though and the vendor likes to make sure he gets paid.

It’s boring to Daryl so he wanders to the next table. There’s a woman leaning against it with one hip. At first she looks at him with a sneer, but then she does a double take.

‘You’re the kid.’

Daryl nods, ‘how much is that?’ he points at something behind the woman on a rack.

‘You got points?’ she asks skeptically.

‘Guess not,’ Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand, ‘Negan said I didn’t have to have them. Maybe you can just write his name down for mine?’

‘Right,’ the woman drawls. ‘’cause we’re all Negan, right? Yeah, it don’t work like that, smart-ass.’

‘And you won’t be working at all, except for on the fence, if you talk to him like that again,’ a voice booms from behind Daryl.

The woman’s eyes widen as she pushes herself away from the table, standing up straight before kneeling down quickly. Everyone around them follows her example. They all sink to their knees.

Daryl turns around.

Negan smirks at him.

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ Dwight hisses.

‘Sorry,’ the boy murmurs before dropping to his knees too. The movement is still painful because of his bruises, but they’ve begun to fade, so he can ignore it easier.

‘Fast learner,’ Negan says as he holds out his hand to the boy. ‘I like that!’

Daryl smiles as he grabs the man’s hand, allowing him to help him to his feet again. When he stands, the man curls his arm around his shoulders, almost pressing into his throat, drawing him into his chest. ‘Now, what did you want, kid?’

‘The cap,’ Daryl says as he points. There’s a cap hanging from the rack behind the woman. All black, nothing on the front. A simple black baseball cap.

‘We can get you a cool one,’ Negan frowns.

‘I like that one.’

‘You heard the kid,’ the man says with a flourish, ‘he likes that one. Give it to him, put it on my tab,’ he throws the woman a wink because he’s never paid for anything. Everything is already his. He holds his hand out for the cap.

The woman passes it to him.

‘There you go,’ Negan plops it onto Daryl’s dark hair. ‘Come on, forget Dwight and his boring ass tour. We’re gonna play some ping pong now.’

‘Sure,’ Daryl says as he turns the cap around so it’s backwards. It’s been almost a year since he’d last owned one. They had taken his cap from him at Terminus. At the time it hadn’t bothered him, he’d lost way worse things in that place than Glenn’s ugly baseball cap.

‘Looks good on you,’ Negan laughs. ‘Little crown for a little prince.’

‘Thanks,’ Daryl says as he falls into step behind the man. ‘Never played ping pong though, so…’

‘But you like playing games?’

Daryl looks around the hall and tugs the cap a little lower. ‘I love playing games.’

 

 


	78. Ping pong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warning; explicit self harm, section that starts with 'The door closes'. Can be skipped if it bothers you.
> 
> Quick note;
> 
> I appreciate you all, very much. You always make me smile with your comments, and everything. It's so great. Thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

 

‘Kid, I don’t mean to bust your balls here,’ Negan says as he leans onto the ping pong table with one hand, ‘but you suck _ass_ at this game. What is it? Seven to zero? I’m getting bored while playing my favorite damn game. Bet that other fucking kid would have rocked my world, even if he only got one eye.’

Daryl puts his paddle down. ‘Eight to zero,’ he mutters because it had still sounded like a question.

‘The hell happened to him anyway? Rick’s kid.’

‘Shot in the face,’ the Dixon boy answers. ‘Close range.’

‘One badass kid,’ Negan laughs, bowing backwards a bit, ‘I mean; he didn’t waste two of my men, of course, but the way he told Rick to just cut his damn arm off?’ The man bites on the knuckles of his left hand and makes an excited noise. ‘ _So_ cool!’

Daryl shivers and looks at his paddle to avoid having to meet the man’s eye. He scratches at the red rubber on one side. ‘Want me to go back to the room?’

‘ _Your_ room,’ Negan booms, ‘and no, absolutely fucking not. I want you to sit your skinny ass down somewhere and be my fucking cheerleader.’ He reaches over and grabs Daryl’s chin, turning his face to the light, ‘could pass for a girl anyway.’

The rest of the Saviors snicker. The ping pong table turned out to be in some sort of common room. There are a couple of couches on the other side of the room, occupied by various men and women. There’s a coffee table, littered with empty beer bottles and a television is playing a movie in the corner. Nobody seems to be watching it.

It’s pretty clear that these Saviors are a select few. Lieutenants. Dwight is there, of course, but so is Fat Joey. Simon is talking to a dark-skinned woman. Her dark curls fall over her shoulders and end in blonde tips. There are a couple of them hanging around the ping pong table, making snide comments whenever Daryl missed the ball, trying to make their leader laugh.

It didn’t work. A pointedly raised eyebrow shut them up instead.

Daryl nods. The touch burns him and he tries not to shiver again.

‘Go on,’ Negan dismisses him, dropping his hand. ‘Make sure you stay in my sight.’

The boy looks around the room and then decides on his spot. He walks over to one of the cabinets on the side and jumps up on it, heavy boots thumping against the wood as he drags his feet up. He sits cross-legged, elbows on his thighs as he gnaws on the nail of his left thumb.

Negan shoots him a grin before demanding a new opponent. The saviors are all too eager to comply. One of the guys quickly snatches the paddle off the table, claiming the turn. The rest of them grumble under their breaths but stop when Negan gets ready to start the game again.

The game looks more fun now. Negan curses and has to dive for some of the balls, palms sliding over the smooth table as he reaches, while the other guy has to jump a couple of steps back when the ball bounces high due to the force behind Negan’s hits. It all goes a lot quicker too. Daryl had been too busy to try and get the ball to land somewhere on the table to really get the ball going around quickly but now the ball is just a blur to the boy.

It’s clear that the Savior isn’t about to let Negan win just because he’s Negan. He’s fighting for it and Negan _loves_ it.

The Savior groans when the ball whizzes past him, earning Negan the victory.

The leader lets his tongue run over his teeth before grinning wickedly. ‘Serves you right for making me almost lose at my own damn game, jackass.’ He throws the paddle onto the table and saunters over to Daryl. ‘Did you see me, killer?’ He braces one hand on either side of the boy and leans in. ‘Pretty cool, huh?’

‘Yeah. You’re really good at it.’

‘I know,’ the man says. ‘And I didn’t get a chance to say earlier, but you look rad as hell, kid. Like the clothes? Fit all right?’ He plucks a little at Daryl’s leather-clad shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ the boy nods. ‘I like them a lot. Thank you.’

‘Better than that redneck outfit you were sporting earlier. Flannel plaid?’ Negan pretends to retch, ‘ _ugh_. May be the goddamn apocalypse, but that shit is _still_ unacceptable! Don’t even get me started on that beige bullshit the workers have to wear. That shit scratches in all the wrong places. This is loads better,’ he flicks Daryl’s nose and then settles against the cabinet beside the boy. Elbows on the smooth wood, shoulders a little hunched as dark boots cross at the ankles.

A new game starts. Negan watches. Occasionally he’ll give the players some pointers, urging the woman to stay light on her feet while laughing when the guy gets hit by the little ball, but mostly he watches quietly. The dark eyes follow the little ball intently.

The door opens and another lieutenant comes in. He spots Negan and heads over straight away.

‘Wade,’ Negan greets without taking his eyes off the game.

‘Sir,’ Wade ducks his head. He glances at Daryl and seems to hesitate.

‘Spit it out,’ Negan orders.

‘Gavin and his group returned from their trip to the Kingdom, sir. No problems. They took care of a cluster of walkers underway. A couple of miles north of here.’

‘Good. They met their target?’

‘Yes. Everything is there, we just checked it.’

‘Good,’ the leader repeats. The dark gaze flickers to the lieutenant for a second. ‘If that’s all, then get the fuck out-‘

‘How many men do you want to take to Alexandria tomorrow?’ Wade cuts in. ‘The usual or a show of force? We were planning to do a sweep of the fields, take out some more clusters before they become a herd and head for Hilltop colony, but if you need the men, we can do that tomorrow.’

Negan tilts his head back so he can look at Daryl.

The boy is plucking at his fingernails, trying not to bite them but still fidgeting nervously. He squirms under the stern gaze. Bright blue eyes meet brown ones.

‘Yes?’ Negan asks pointedly.

‘You going to Alexandria?’ Daryl caves and lifts his hand to gnaw on the skin beside his fingernail.

‘I am.’

Daryl nods. One of his sharp canines cutting through his own flesh. Blood trickles over his lip.

‘Show of force,’ Negan tells Wade. ‘We’re going to turn that whole goddamn town upside down, drive the message home. We’ll deal with the walkers later. Make sure everyone is ready to leave at dawn. Bright and early and armed to the fucking teeth.’

‘You expect trouble?’

‘No,’ Negan grins. ‘But we like to make an impression, don’t we? There are others. I want them to see exactly who put the fear of death in Rick’s blue eyes’

Wade smirks and nods. ‘I’ll take care of it, sir,’ he says before taking his leave.

The leader stretches lazily and then turns around again, leaning on the cabinet as he looks up at Daryl. ‘What’s with the big, sad eyes, killer?’

Daryl shrugs.

‘Worried about your family?’

He nods.

‘If they don’t try anything, I won’t do anything,’ Negan says with an easy smile. ‘It’s all up to Rick.’

‘He won’t try nothing,’ Daryl murmurs, swallowing the blood and licking his lips.

‘I’m sure he won’t,’ the man says kindly. ‘You seem upset. Why don’t you fuck off to your room for a while and I come get you for dinner, hmm? I can’t play pong while there’s a kid crying in the corner.’

‘Ain’t cryin’,’ Daryl protests.

‘I’m not done planning the visit yet. _Dwight_ , get your ass over here.’

Daryl’s eyes widen.

Negan sneers at him, ‘that’s what I thought. Fuck off.’

Daryl gets up and jumps off the cabinet. He walks over to the door and expects Fat Joey to follow him, but no one does. He opens the door and looks back. Negan is already deep in conversation with Dwight, both their backs turned to him. One glossy black, the other decorated with wings.

 

 

He wanders the halls and is not sure where he is or how he’s supposed to get back to his room. Everything seems the same. He can vaguely hear the noise that comes from the big market place in the middle of the sanctuary but he doesn’t want to go there. It feels strange, he’s one of them now but he feels uneasy without the looming presence of Negan behind him to make sure that everyone sticks to the rules.

He has killed some of them.

Two men in the cell. He doesn’t know whether they had a family, whether there’s a wife waiting for some vengeance within these walls. All he knows is that the Saviors guarding his room and cellblock look at him with hatred in their eyes.

And they don’t even know about the outpost. What he did there. How many he’s killed.

How many more he will kill before this all ends.

So he wanders and hopes to just stumble upon his room.

After about half an hour, he stumbles onto something else.

An open door. The last sunlight of the day falls through it, warms his skin as he stares out into the world. He can see the place where they’d first stood, him and Negan, staring up at the sanctuary. He knows it’s close to the actual entrance. He can see the chain link fence with the walkers but also knows that people dodge past them all the time. They’re a deterrent for people who are actually scared of them.

He’s not.

But he also doesn’t have a weapon. Maybe he could get lucky and find something outside. Maybe there’s a car there he can raid or just a brick he can pick up. It wouldn’t matter. Just something that will get him through that last line of defenses, that will get him to the woods he sees beyond. Once he’ll disappear in those shadows, he could disappear forever.

He walks towards the doorpost. His chest hurts with longing. His hand shakes when he grabs hold of the doorknob.

He closes the door.

Forehead pressed against the warmed metal, coldness slowly creeping back into his leather jacket.

It’s a trick. He knows it is.

It’s a five dollar bill on their kitchen counter and Will just itching to make his youngest son bleed. It’s a bunch of candy in the highest cupboard. It’s Merle’s phone left unattended and filled with addictive games he’s not allowed to play. It’s their teacher trying to get him to draw a family picture, it’s the lady from child protective services handing him some kind of doll that looked just like him to play with, it’s his mom’s friends trying to make him feel safe so he’ll spill all their family secrets.

The first time he’d snatched the five dollar to buy some candy and a comic. He’d learned to avoid those traps when he got home.

A horrific wound on his back, blood soaking into his jeans and underwear as it ran down his skin. By God, had he learned his lesson.

Nothing is ever that easy. Nothing is ever free.

He pushes himself away from the door and walks on. There’s a worker mopping the floor. Daryl asks the guy for directions.

The curt reply leads him straight to his own room.

Fat Joey is leaning against the wall next to his door. ‘Hey, bud,’ he smiles, ‘where have you been? Negan wanted me to check on you. You seemed pretty upset.’

‘Good lord, I’m _fine_ ,’ Daryl says. He makes sure to let a bit of wounded pride slide into the words. ‘Not my fault this place is a maze. And I weren’t crying, okay? Jesus.’

‘Okay,’ Joey puts his hands up and backs away. ‘Just making sure. Someone is going to come get you in about an hour for dinner.’

‘Fine.’ Daryl slips inside his room. He stands on the other side of the door and listens intently. When he hears that Joey’s footsteps start to fade, he opens the door a crack. A walkie-talkie crackles and Joey speaks up.

‘Yeah, he didn’t go for it. He’s back in his room. Said he got lost.’

Daryl closes the door silently. His heart is beating furiously in his chest as he sinks to the floor. Palms pressed into his eyes so he can see nothing but darkness and stars. _Breathe_ , he reminds himself, trying to recall the soft tone of voice Glenn always used. _Just breathe_.

 

 

The table has been set for eight people. There are white plates and napkins, bowls overflowing with fresh fruit between steaming pots and pans filled with all kinds of meat, greens, potatoes and pasta. Silverware glistens in the soft light of candles. A chandelier is suspended above the large table, crystals tinkle softly whenever a breeze hits it just right.

Daryl is shoved over the threshold and stumbles into the room. His mouth waters at the smell of real food. The dogfood he’d been given the past few days had only made him sick. He’d eat it, too hungry to give a damn, but his body would protest the moment it started to try to digest it. He always threw it up in the end.

He’s been hungry for days now.

‘Well, hello there!’

Daryl suppresses a shiver at the sound of Negan’s leering voice. He turns to towards the sound. The man is lounging on a dark couch near a fireplace. One arm curled around the shoulders of a dark-skinned woman and booted feet resting on the coffee table in front of them. The woman has her feet tucked up beneath her as she leans against the man’s broad chest.

‘The guest of honor!’ Negan laughs as he pulls his arm away from the woman. ‘Sorry dear,’ he tells her before pressing a kiss to her forehead, ‘time to eat. _Ladies_ ,’ he shouts towards an open door to his left, ‘ _dinner is served_!’

The teenager can’t help but stare when four women walk into the room. They’re all beautiful. Glossy black, blonde and red hair cascades over shoulders, frames soft and harder faces, is pushed back by slim hands with painted nails. They’re all wearing little back dresses and high heels. Jewelry sparkles when they move. Some have wine or martini glasses in their hands.

They all look at Daryl curiously.

They’re Negan’s wives, the boy realizes. Five of them.

‘I know, right?’ Negan laughs as he rolls one shoulder back for his trademark lean. ‘They’re _gorgeous_! Now, you can sneak a peek, they won’t mind – hell, they’re used to it. No touching though,’ Negan wags a finger at him. ‘There are rules.’

Heat spreads over Daryl’s cheeks. He looks at his boots.

Negan barks out a sharp laugh at his obvious discomfort.

The sound of heels on wood approaches and another woman comes through the door, ‘sorry,’ she says, ‘I had to-’ She grinds to a halt mid-sentence and stares at him. ‘Daryl.’

There’s a faint frown on the leaders face as his gaze darts from the boy to his sixth wife. ‘You two know each other?’

‘No,’ Sherry says quickly, pushing a strand of brown hair behind her ear. ‘I saw him at Carson’s office. Negan,’ she turns to her husband, eyes flashing, ‘he’s just a _boy_. What are you doing?’

‘What am I _doing_?’ the man asks with raised eyebrows. ‘I’m trying to feed this young man some dinner, is that so bad? Are you looking at me like I’m the goddamn boogey man because I won’t let a kid starve? You are something else, dear. _Savage_ ,’ he gives her a wicked grin.

‘I know you,’ Sherry answers, voice low. ‘Please don’t do this.’

‘If you know me so well,’ Negan steps into her space, forcing her to lift her chin to look at him, ‘then you know I’m a reasonable guy. The kid has had a rough couple of days. Watched his daddy’s skull getting bashed in by yours truly. Some would even say it was his own damn fault but I’m sure someone would have snapped eventually. I rarely just take one on first meetings,’ Negan trails a finger down Sherry’s cheek. ‘I like him so I took him.’

‘And now what?’ Sherry asks. ‘Now that you have him?’

‘Thought he’d make a nice pet at first,’ Negan admits, ‘but then he killed some of my men. Slit their throats and I just _knew_ ,’ he beams. ‘He’s perfect. Had to throw him into a tiny box for a while, messed with his pretty little head a bit – your ex-husband is _really_ good at that by the way. He’s been hustling!’

Something tightens in Sherry’s face.

‘But Daryl here,’ Negan points at him, ‘has seen the error of his ways. He got himself a brand new outfit, played a pathetic game of pong, committed himself to the cause! I’m all kinds of proud. Honey,’ he leers, ‘I got us a kid.’

‘Please,’ the woman says, voice soft a she raises a hand to touch one of the zippers on his leather jacket, nails raking over the metal teeth above his heart. ‘Let him go home to his own family.’

‘Didn’t you hear?’ the man whispers back, ‘I killed his daddy. Oops.’

‘ _Negan_.’

‘ _Fine_ ,’ he rocks back on his heels and looks at Daryl. The brown eyes storm with anger and impatience. ‘Do you want to go back to that broken mess I left sobbing over two piles of blood and bones? Do you want to go back to Rick and his pathetic crew so you can scrape your daddy’s blood off the forest floor and bury it in your goddamn garden bed? Live off of canned food, working like a dog while kissing Rick’s ass, having to worry every day about how he’s going to get you all killed?’ He walks over to Daryl and grabs his chin roughly, forcing the boy to meet his eye. ‘Do you want to go back?’

‘No,’ Daryl says quickly.

Negan rolls one shoulder back so he can give Sherry a pointed look before turning back to him. ‘And why the hell not?’

‘Ain’t nothing there for me no more.’

Negan makes a noise. ‘’cause I killed your dad, huh? Weren’t his real dad anyway,’ he tells his wives, ‘just some poor fuck who took him in and hell, who the fuck could resist, eh?’ he laughs, ‘’s not every day you find a pocket-size serial killer. What about Rick?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Ain’t nothing to me.’

‘No?’ Negan tightens his fingers on his chin.

‘Nah. Was me and Glenn at the start. Rick’s the reason my dad died. Chained him to a roof like an animal. Left him. He died there,’ Daryl lies. ‘We didn’t have no choice but stay with Rick.’

‘So you hate him?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Don’t like him much, that’s for sure, but he got us here, I guess. Don’t owe him nothing though.’

‘You sure as shit do not,’ Negan grins, ‘and your brother?’

‘Fifteen years older, joined the army the second he could,’ Daryl mutters, ‘don’t really know him. I mean, he’s blood, so, I don’t know, if you could, just – maybe, leave him alone?’

‘ _Leave him alone_?’

Daryl winces and squirms in the man’s grasp, ‘I mean –‘

‘I’m just messing with ya. I’ll leave the guy the fuck alone, don’t you worry about him,’ Negan laughs. ‘I can’t promise the same thing for Rick of course, gotta yank his chain a bit, make sure he’s still chained up tight. And if anyone pulls anything, then I can’t be held accountable, but I’ll try to show some restraint,’ he puts a hand over his heart and then strokes Daryl’s cheek, ‘for you. Now let’s go eat before it’s fucking cold. Sit your ass down somewhere. See?’ he asks as he looks at Sherry. ‘It’s fine. He doesn’t want to go back to those sorry shits.’

A weak smile appears on her face. It’s so fake that it looks painful. ‘Of course,’ she says as she breezes past her husband. One arm curls around the boy’s shoulders, ‘come on, let’s go find a seat and get something to eat, Daryl.’ She steers him towards the table while the other wives take their seats.

‘What about that widow?’ Negan asks suddenly. ‘The one who belonged to number two? He was your dad. She your mom?’

Daryl swallows with difficulty. It’s a good thing that the woman has just forced him to turn around and head to the table. Negan can only see the back of his head. Tears are burning in his eyes at the mention of Maggie.

Sherry is looking down at him. Her nails dig into his shoulder, eyes growing a little wide as the silence stretches.

‘Well?’ Negan demands.

‘No,’ Daryl manages to say. His voice is steady enough. ‘She hated me. Thought I were redneck trash.’

‘Oh- well, that’s just part of your charm,’ Negan laughs as he sits down at the head of the table. The wives take their seats.

Sherry steers him towards one of the last seats on Negan’s left hand. She sits down at the other head of the table.

‘Not quite what I had in mind,’ Negan comments. ‘That was _his_ seat, dear.’

Daryl frowns, a little confused until he looks up to meet the man’s eye. He can’t. The wife next to him is leaning forward just slightly, one elbow on the table as she turns to the boy and plucks the baseball cap from his dark hair. ‘No hats on at the table,’ she says. ‘Let me make you a plate, sweetie.’

Sherry smiles. ‘We don’t have assigned seats,’ she tells her husband.

She idly twirls one strand of hair around her middle finger.

 

 

 ‘What?’ Frankie asks as she laughs. Green eyes wide and red hair framing her face, she’s one of the most beautiful people Daryl has ever seen. He grins back at her, ducking his head a little as he sits on the bar. Heavy boots thump against the wood occasionally as he swings his feet.

Amber reaches out to still them whenever he does it. She’s standing on his left side, one elbow on the bar and a cocktail in her hand. One eyebrow is lifted pointedly at Frankie.

‘I just like them, okay? Sue me. I like Harlequin novels because they’re cheesy and I don’t have to think while reading them. It’s always the same damn story. Insanely hot guy finds insanely hot girl, they decide they’re crazy in love despite what their families have to say about it and have beautiful children. The end. I love it,’ Frankie laughs as she takes a sip from her wine.

‘I thought you were all about intelligence and studying and all that,’ Amber comments.

‘Different life,’ Frankie muses, ‘and intelligent conversation is in short supply these days.’ She looks around the room until her gaze lands on Negan. The man is doing some kind of paperwork while one of his wives rakes her fingers through his short hair, occasionally scratching at the base of his skull.

Amber snorts but then seems to remember that Daryl is sitting between them on the bar. A faint blush colors her cheekbones. She looks at him briefly, almost too scared to maintain eye contact. ‘Don’t tell him we said that.’

‘He won’t,’ Frankie grins, knocking her elbow into his thigh, ‘right?’

‘Won’t tell him nothing,’ Daryl promises.

‘You really should be more careful,’ Tanya warns as she walks around the bar and hands a steaming cup of tea to Daryl before sliding onto the barstool in front of the boy, completing their circle. ‘He has ears everywhere.’

‘Thanks ma’am,’ Daryl murmurs.

She smiles and squeezes his knee.

Frankie huffs. ‘I’m sure he’s extremely intelligent. You don’t get to be where he is if you’re not, I know that. It’s just a shame that we are unworthy of such conversation,’ she throws her red hair over one shoulder and bats her eyelashes, ‘we’re good for something else, I suppose.’

‘Don’t,’ Amber says with a pointed look at Daryl.

‘He survived the apocalypse. I’m sure he knows that a husband likes to fuck his wife,’ Frankie says as she rolls her eyes.

‘Frankie!’

‘Sorry,’ the woman throws a wink at the boy. ‘So,’ she turns around to lean on the bar with both elbows, looking up at him. ‘Do you like to read, Daryl?’

He shrugs and rubs at his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Just comics. I read a western one time, too. Was pretty good, I guess. Like to read about horses.’

‘ _Cute_ ,’ Tanya says with a small moan as she slumps in her seat, one hand over her heart. ‘He likes horses.’

Amber shakes her head fondly at the other woman. ‘You two are terrible.’

The conversation spins from books to horses to pets to gardens to flowers to shops to old towns and older lives. The women chat easily, teasing each other by threatening to tell Daryl all kinds of secrets about each other while never actually doing it. They make jibes about a couple of Negan’s lieutenants and a couple of younger soldiers. Apparently a couple of them had arrived earlier in the week from distant outposts and none of the younger ones had ever seen Negan or met his wives.

‘He didn’t fall on his face,’ Amber says as she looks at the ceiling with exasperation. ‘He just stumbled a bit.’

‘While running forward to hold the door open for you,’ Tanya giggles. ‘And his eyes nearly popped out when you came in, so…’

‘I mean, the guy had some balls,’ Frankie says lightly. She reaches for the wine bottle to refill her glass. ‘He asked Negan for permission to dance with you.’

Amber shrugs, ‘he should have listened to me, when I said _no_. It’s a real shame though. He was handsome.’

‘He really was,’ Frankie nods as she puts the bottle back. ‘Oh,’ she laughs when she spots Daryl’s confused frown. ‘He got a little too handsy when she said no, grabbing her arm and stuff. Negan doesn’t like that. He send the group back to the outpost at night, without guns, on foot,’ she takes a sip from her wine, ‘and with the guy’s head in a box. Just the head.’

Daryl feels sick.

‘ _Frankie_!’ Both Amber and Tanya cry out.

‘What has she done now?’ Negan drawls suddenly, appearing behind Tanya and looping his arms around her middle, drawing her into his chest. He nuzzles her dark hair. ‘Hmm?’

 Tanya goes rigid for a second before melting into his strong frame. ‘She’s giving away all our secrets.’

Negan grins, ‘is she now?’

Frankie salutes him with her wine glass and laughs a little, shaking her head. ‘I’m just filling the kid in.’

‘I hope you got to all the good stuff, because it’s time for the kid to go to fucking bed. I’m done with all this PG13 crap. Beat it, killer. See you tomorrow.’

Daryl puts the mug onto the bar next to him and slides down, landing with a heavy thump. He shoots the wives a quick, shy smile. ‘Thanks for dinner and the tea.’

Amber reaches out to tuck a strand of hair that had escaped the baseball cap behind his ear. ‘You’re welcome, Daryl. We hope to see you again soon, we had fun tonight.’

He ducks his head, kicks one boot against the other, and nods. ‘Yeah. Me too, ma’am. Bye.’ He heads over to the door.

‘I’ll walk you down,’ Sherry says as she gets up from where she’d been sitting on the couch. ‘It’s almost curfew,’ she says when Negan looks at her with narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t want anyone hassling him.’

‘They know better.’

‘Some people think they can get away with anything.’

Negan straightens. The charismatic smile fades into something cold and calculating. ‘Be careful out there, dear,’ he warns. ‘I would just _hate_ to see something happen to your pretty face.’

Sherry meets his gaze steadily. ‘You say the sweetest things.’ She kicks her high heels off at the door and slips into a set of black boots before grabbing a jacket from the coatrack and shrugging it onto her bare shoulders. She zips it up to cover herself. ‘Come on, Daryl.’

‘ _Wait_.’

Both Sherry and Daryl freeze.

Negan walks over to them. He goes to the woman first, running a hand through her brown hair and claiming a soft kiss. He grins against her lips. Then he moves to the boy. ‘Sweet dreams, little prince.’ He leans down and presses a kiss to the boy’s forehead.

Daryl curls his hand into a tight fist. He hides it behind his back. ‘Good night, sir,’ he says softly.

‘Sir,’ Negan’s grin grows impossibly wider. ‘Did you call your real dad _sir_ too?’

 

 

Sherry hesitates. She turns around again, takes a deep breath and looks at him. ‘This isn’t real, right? You’re not Negan.’

Daryl looks up from where he’s sitting on the bed. ‘It is.’ He swallow. ‘I am.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ the woman says. ‘We both hate him. We both want him dead.’

‘Ain’t lyin’.’

‘He is going to find out, Daryl. He’s not an idiot. He knows it’s not this easy and he’s just going to keep pushing until you do break.’

‘What?’ the boy asks with a glare, ‘a week of no sleep, naked in a cell, eatin’ dogfood and throwin’ up all the damn time ain’t enough? Pictures of Glenn’s smashed in face on my wall to look at? That ain’t enough for me to want it to stop? There ain’t nothing there for me no more. Maggie hates my guts and Rick never liked me anyway. My brother thought I were a worthless piece of shit, too. You went back because it were _easier_! Why the hell can’t I join for the same reason?’

‘There’s always more,’ she whispers. ‘It’s never enough for him.’

‘Got new clothes,’ Daryl shrugs, ‘good food, Negan taught me how to play ping pong. Got a roof over my head and don’t have to worry about no walkers. They were right after all.’

Sherry frowns.

‘Life is pretty sweet,’ Daryl smiles, ‘right here on easy street.’

 

 

The door closes behind Sherry.

Daryl waits sixty seconds.

Then he shoves himself off the bed, stumbling towards the kitchen. With shaking hands, he turns the tap on. There’s no hot water here but the cold water bites at his skin and that’s even better. He puts his head under the stream and scrubs at his forehead, right where Negan had kissed him.

While keeping his head under the cold water, he struggles out of the leather jacket, throwing it blindly into a corner. With blunt fingernails, he scratches at his skin, trying to remove every trace of the leader of the Sanctuary from it.

He’s still everywhere.

Daryl grunts as he stops the water and stumbles away from the counter. He yanks his shirt over his wet hair and throws it aside, too.

There are no knives or forks in the kitchen drawers. He’s checked.

Nothing sharp.

No lighter, no matches, nothing that can burn.

No pens, no pins, nothing made of wood that he can splinter and use.

He pants as he sinks to his knees. Fingernails digging into the skin just above his hipbone, where it’s soft and tender. He slowly drags his hand up, up, up, from his left hip to his right nipple.

First, nothing happens. It burns and hurts and that feels so good that Daryl wants to cry.

Then the lines appear. White turning an angry red in an instant, the skin raising into welts. It starts to hurt more, burn more.

He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling, heartrate calming down at last.

Skin-deep pain, he thinks. Easy.

He can deal with that.

 

 

He’s woken up by someone singing the next morning.

‘Good morning, Daryl. Good morning, Daryl. It’s going to be a beautiful day!’

The boy moans sleepily before rolling onto his back, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes.

‘Good morning, Daryl,’ Negan sings from where he’s leaning against the wall, Lucille twirling in his hand, ‘good morning Daryl. It’s going to be a beautiful day! Boom, boom boom!’ He smashes the bat against the metal door, causing Daryl to almost jump out of his skin.

‘The hell?’ the boy breathes, pressing himself against the headrest of his bed.

‘The grass is growing in the fucking meadow,’ Negan sings as he slowly saunters towards the teenager. His voice is deep but he can’t carry the tune for very long. ‘The sun is shining through the fucking trees. The birds are singing and the bells are ringing and the leaves are blowing in the fucking breeze.’ He smacks Lucille against the side of the bed three times, ‘boom, boom, boom! Good morning, Daryl. Good morning, Daryl. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Yeah,’ Negan grins as he sits down on the edge of the bed, ‘it’s going to be a beautiful…’

He raises his eyebrows pointedly.

‘Day?’ Daryl finishes after a beat.

‘ _Exactly_!’ the man grins. ‘I finally get to be one of those people who keeps fucking nagging about how clever their kids are. You genius. But hey. Good morning.’

‘Yeah, good morning,’ the boy says, still a little unsure.

‘Come on, get the hell up. Brand new day and we got a lot of shit to do,’ Negan snaps his fingers impatiently. ‘I sang the goddamn song, now up you get.’

Daryl stumbles out of bed, reaching for his jeans and shoes. He’s glad that he’d been wearing a shirt to sleep in. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What?’ Negan looks up with a frown. His hand smooths over Lucille, ‘oh, not so clever after all, are you? Whatever.’ He gets up and swings the bat onto his shoulder.

The teenager can’t help but flinch at the move.

Negan smirks at him. ‘You didn’t think I was going to let you stay here, right?’

Daryl sinks down on the bed to put his boots on. ‘I – I don’t understand.’

‘We’re going to Alexandria! It’s time for their first offering and I always find time to be at the very first one. Sends a good message, you know? And Simon’s going to be there, Dwight, Wade – hell, everyone. We’re going to turn that place upside down, inside out. Half of everything is ours now. And we’re going to get it. Today.’

Daryl nods.

‘And you,’ Negan jabs Lucille into his direction, ‘are coming with us!’

Daryl freezes.

‘Yeah! You looked like a kicked puppy when I send you away yesterday, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. So what do you say? We’re gonna do a little road trip, visit your old gang, scare the shit out of them,’ he grins, ‘sounds like fun, right? Thought there might be some stuff you wanted to grab from your old place. Hmm? What do you say?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says. ‘I mean – I… yeah. Sure. I could grab some things.’

‘As long as you don’t grab any of your goddamn clothes. Don’t want my kid looking like some fucking hick, okay? You look rad as hell now, burn the fucking flannel.’

‘Yeah –not the clothes, I guess… Just, I don’t – my comics, maybe…’

‘I don’t give a fuck what you grab,’ Negan dismisses. ‘Ready?’

Daryl nods.

‘Let’s go then,’ the man grins. ‘Let’s say hi to Rick.’

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Negan is singing is taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZiP1gGPzMo and I made it creepy.
> 
> You're welcome.  
> I'm sorry.


	79. Alexandria

 

* * *

 

 

The car ride seems to take longer now. Maybe it’s because he’s more aware of his surroundings this time. He can feel how the early morning sunlight filters through the trees and warms the cabin they’re sitting in, can hear the wind rush by the big truck, and he can hear the engines of the vehicles behind them. Vague shadows of the world flash by. He can barely make out the person next to him.

He knows it’s Negan of course. The man had blindfolded him as soon as he’d sat down, apologizing without much sincerity and promising that he’d remove it once they were closer to Alexandria. That had annoyed Daryl. He’d hoped to be able to memorize the road home this time around. In the beginning he’d tried to get his bearings by the flashes of the sun, trying to figure out which direction they were headed in, but it’s no use. He can’t be sure.

The road twists and turns.

A CD plays softly.

Negan doesn’t talk much. His foot sometimes taps along with the music, fingers twitching when a guitar solo rings out and he hums along to familiar tunes. The driver whistles, the sharp noise joining female voices in the chorus. Every once in a while, one of the men will make a comment about the band or singer which results in a conversation about concerts, half-time shows, and festivals they have been to.

Daryl rests his head against the door and thinks about Alexandria. The last time he’d seen Rick, the man had been broken, crying on the forest floor, shaking hands on Carl’s back as he promised Negan that he understood the rules. He remembers Maggie, pale and in obvious pain, even before her friend and then her husband was murdered before her eyes. He never knew what was wrong with her. He’s been praying she’s okay now. As okay as she’ll ever be, after losing Glenn.

He wonders how they’ll react to him.

He doesn’t know what to hope for. It would be best if Rick opened the gate for Negan and didn’t care that he was at the man’s side. Blue eyes cold, face drawn and heart uncaring as the former cop would watch as his brother’s son walked next to his nemesis, perfectly in step.

But he wants it to hurt. He wants Rick’s eyes to widen, his mouth to open slightly, his hands to shake when he reaches for him. He wants Rick to _care_. It might all be his fault but he’s so sorry and he doesn’t think that he could survive if Rick shuns him now.

‘Thirsty, little prince?’

Daryl nods. It’s been hours since dawn. There have been a couple of breaks on the way here, either to fill up a tank, to give everyone an opportunity to take a piss and stretch their legs, or to clear the way. Every time, Negan had allowed him to stretch his legs, too. Not without the blindfold though.

The last two stops, Daryl had refused to get out of the car. He hated stumbling around blindly with the rest of the saviors so close by.

He goes rigid when he feels Negan’s hands glide through his hair. He bows his head forward when he realizes that the man is searching for the knot on the scarf.

‘Thanks, kid,’ Negan murmurs as he unties it. ‘There. Better, huh?’

Daryl blinks against the bright sunlight. They’re about to drive into the town that is right next to Alexandria. Nerves surge from the pit of his stomach up to his chest and neck, causing his breath to hitch a little. His hands shake as he takes the water bottle that Negan is holding out to him. The liquid does nothing for his dry mouth.

‘Now,’ Negan shifts in his seat so he can face the boy, ‘we’re going to have to talk about some rules here. You’re gonna want to talk to Rick, to your brother, to the other kid.’

Daryl glances up at the man. He must have looked too hopeful.

‘But you _won’t_ ,’ Negan says forcefully. ‘You won’t talk to them, you won’t even fucking _look_ at them. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Daryl whispers. The plastic bottle crunches when he subconsciously tightens his hold on it.

‘I like you,’ Negan smiles, ‘but don’t think I won’t chop pieces off of you whenever the hell I feel like it.’ He lifts the baseball bat, shoving it right into the boy’s face. ‘And if you piss me off today? It might not be _your_ limbs that will be chopped off, but I sure as hell will make you do it. To Rick. His kid. Hell, maybe even that damn widow.’

Daryl flinches.

‘But that won’t matter because you don’t like her, right?’ Negan says softly, dark gaze searching the boy’s face. ‘She thought you were redneck trash, _right_?’

He doesn’t believe him, Daryl realizes with a pang of fear. 

A predatory grin creeps onto the man’s face. ‘Is that why she was screaming your name when I took you with me?’

He doesn’t remember that.

‘Is that why she was trying to fucking _crawl_ after our truck when we left?’

He hadn’t seen that.

Negan works his jaw for a second. ‘Yeah,’ he says slowly. ‘Thought so. But you’ve been good, kid. Real good,’ He puts his gloved hand on Daryl’s cheek, ‘maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s going to be okay.’ The hand glides to his neck, drawing the boy closer. Their foreheads press together. ‘It’s going to be fine, little prince. Just remember the rules.’

 

 

‘ _Little pig, little pig. Let me in_!’

Negan is standing in front of the gate of Alexandria. He bangs Lucille against the metal frame. The sound sends shivers down Daryl’s spine.

He’s still inside the truck. Negan had ordered him to stay seated while he went to greet whoever is manning the gate today. The screen gets pushed back to reveal Spencer. Wearing his slacks, a polo, looking every bit the entitled rich kid Merle had hated so much when they were younger. He seems to lift an unimpressed eyebrow at the sight of Negan and Daryl closes his eyes.

 _Don’t piss him off_ , he thinks. He prays.

‘Errm,’ Spencer says when Negan prompts him to speak. ‘Who are you?’

His voice drifts in through the open window of the truck. Daryl wants to crawl out of his own skin when the question registers. He thinks about running. He can see that old house on the corner, the woods beyond, and he just wants to run and run and never come back.

That’s not an option, of course. There is no door number four.

Negan’s men are already moving to the side of the wall, lining up to enter the small community. And the driver is still sitting next to him, keeping an eye on him just like Negan had asked him to.

‘Oh, you better be joking,’ the man says with a wide grin. ‘Negan? Lucille? I know I had to make a pretty strong first impression.’

And then Rick appears behind the gate. Eyes wary, shoulders a little hunched as he looks at the leader of the Saviors. His steps slow down as he gets closer, reluctant to be so near him or to open the gate. Rosita ghosts behind him, ready to back him up.

Daryl sinks lower in his seat. He hopes they won’t spot him.

‘Well hello there,’ Negan leers at the cop. ‘Do not make me have to ask,’ his tone grows cold and threatening when no one makes a move to open the gate for him and his men.

‘You said a week,’ Rick says as he steps forward to slide the gate aside. ‘You’re early.’

‘I missed ya,’ Negan grins.

The sound of a walker rings out. It’s stumbling towards the gate, snarling and growling as it drags itself forward between the cars.

Daryl’s hand goes to where his knife is supposed to be instinctively. It’s not there of course. He’s not allowed to carry a weapon.

Negan turns towards the sound. ‘Oh, Rick, come out here!’ he says. ‘Watch this. Calling it!’ He walks towards the corpse. With one fell swoop from Lucille, it goes down. The sound of the bat hitting a skull is by now so familiar, but it still makes Daryl sick to the stomach. His hands are shaking. Bile is rising in his throat as he watches the man through the open window.

Negan is laughing. ‘Easy peasy, Lemon squeezy! I would have just let it be, you know, but it was coming a little close too for comfort to something real precious to me.’ Negan looks up at the cabin of the truck, one gloved hand reaching out to open the door. ‘Come on out. It’s all clear now.’

Daryl stares at him.

Negan sucks on his teeth in warning.

Daryl swallows and manages a watery smile. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters as he stands up and jumps out of the truck. Black boots hitting the concrete with a loud thump. He makes sure not to look at Rick even when he can hear the sharp intake of breath coming from the man.

‘You’re welcome,’ Negan beams, curling a possessive hand around his shoulder to tug him close. ‘I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, little prince.’ He plasters himself against the boy’s back, hugging him from behind. ‘Hey, Rick. You see that? What I just did?’

Daryl shivers but forces himself to relax against the man’s large frame.

‘That is some service! I mean, we almost get turned away at the gate – who is that guy anyway?’

Daryl glances up to look at Spencer, figuring that Negan won’t notice that he’s looking at anyone in particular instead of staring at his boots. He knows that Rick is staring at him. Can see it, a little blurry on the side as he tries to stay focused on Spencer.

Nerves claw at his chest. They almost rip him apart. His hands shake so badly that he has to push them into his pockets, afraid that Negan will see.

‘Do I get mad? Do I throw a fit? Do I bash some ginger’s dome in?’ Negan asks, rubbing a soothing hand over the boy’s chest. ‘Nope! I just take care of one of these dead pricks that could have killed one of y’all. Service,’ he smirks before kissing the top of Daryl’s head.

Daryl screws his eyes shut for a second.

Negan laughs again before pushing himself away from the teenager. ‘Here, little prince,’ he says as he holds out Lucille. ‘Hold this.’

 

 

The bat is heavier than he thought it would be. His fingertips glide over the smooth surface. There’s blood and brain matter on the barbed wire, just like last time.

Daryl swallows. When he lets it hang down his side, it touches the floor. He quickly lifts it again.

Negan won’t like it if she scraped over the floor when he walks.

He doesn’t want to hold it like the man normally does. His fingers so close to the barbed wire.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks. This is not real. This is not him.

He’s not in Alexandria.

He’s home, back in the trailer. He’s listening to that old radio and rain coming down on the metal roof. One of those rare nights when everything was quiet and peaceful. He’s on the couch with his dad, lying half on top of him so he can listen to Will’s heartbeat.

Merle is playing around on his phone, face illuminated by the artificial light of the screen, the corners of his mouth tilting up whenever he wins a round.

He’s there. He’s that boy.

This, this isn’t him.

Someone else swings the bat to their bony shoulder where it comes to rest upon leather.

Someone else walks past Rick to follow Negan, never daring to look up and meet the cop’s eye.

 

 

‘Hot diggity dog! This place is magnificent! An embarrassment of riches, as they say,’ Negan exclaims as he walks into Alexandria, gazing at the big mansions. ‘Yes, sir, I do believe you are gonna have plenty to offer up!’

Daryl is standing next to the man. He can see his home from here. The lake which he had set on fire with his brother. The wall Enid had helped him climb when he needed a break. He supposes he should be grateful that it’s just Rick and Rosita out here, with Spencer and Eugene, because everything inside his body hurts and he fears it will all collapse when he sees Maggie. Or Merle.

Rick takes a step towards him. ‘Dare, hey….’

‘ _No_ ,’ Negan snaps. Daryl flinches. ‘Nope! He’s mine now. You don’t look at him, you don’t talk to him, and I don’t make you chop anything off of him.’

Rick quickly looks away but Daryl can feel Rosita’s gaze burn in his neck.

Negan notices it too. He walks over to the woman. ‘Same goes for everyone,’ he sings, drawing the last word out. ‘ _Right_?’

A couple of beats of silence.

The teenager stares at his own boots, fingers going white on Lucille.

Rosita scoffs and moves away.

‘A lot of suspense there,’ Negan says as he slumps over to where Rick is standing, ‘I don’t think she even knew how much. All right, let’s get this show on the road. See what kind of goodies you got in the cupboard.’

‘We’ve put aside half of the supplies and-‘

‘No, Rick. _No_. You don’t decide what we take. I do. Arat!’

The woman steps forward. She’s holding her gun awkwardly, like it’s too big for her, but Daryl knows that she’s just a lethal as Negan is. Her eyes flash when she looks at the men surrounding her before she barks out an order for them to move out.

The men immediately set off. They head into Alexandria, moving towards the houses to start their search. A couple of residents come out. Some look surprised and a little affronted. One starts to objects to the intrusion but one of Negan’s men shoves him aside easily.

‘Come on, little prince,’ Negan says cheerfully as he watches how his men disperse. ‘Show me around! I wanna see your house, I wanna see your room, _everything_.’

Daryl swallows.

‘I can’t wait to see it,’ Negan beams at him. ‘Wait,’ he reaches for the boy and unclips the baseball cap from his belt. With a flourish, he brushes the boy’s hair out of his eyes before putting the cap on. ‘There. God knows how you can see with that mess you call hair covering those pretty blue eyes, huh?’ He trails a gloved finger over his cheek. ‘And I want to make damn sure you see this.’

‘Thanks,’ Daryl manages to mutter.

‘You’re welcome! _Service_ ,’ Negan throws a wink at Rick. ‘On a second thought, why don’t you do the honors, Rick? Show us around. This place used to be yours, after all.’

The cop doesn’t move.

‘ _Well_?’ Negan takes a couple of slow steps towards him.

Rick jerks into motion. He looks away, glaring at the ground before heading out into Alexandria.

The leader of the Saviors claps his hands excitedly as he follows the man.

Daryl has no choice but to fall in step beside him.

They pass a couple of houses. The infirmary, the church, they loop around the lake leisurely. Sometimes Negan will ask a question, who lives in the house that’s boarded up, whether they have a doctor, where they keep their medicine. Daryl answers most of the questions. Rick is walking a few steps ahead of them, refusing to slow down and come too close to Negan. The teenager tries to be as vague as possible. Acid runs through his veins when he has to admit that they don’t have a doctor anymore.

There are a couple of people of Alexandria who are sitting on their porches. They look hopelessly lost as Saviors raid their houses. Some lift their gazes as Rick walks by, eyes tracking the leader before they notice that Daryl is walking behind him. One of the women gets up, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. Her husband drags her back down beside him.

He spots Enid sneaking between the houses on the other side of the road.

She spots him, too.

For a moment, she doesn’t move. Eyes wide and brown hair blowing in the breeze and then she’s gone.

They pass Merle’s house.

‘Who lives here?’ Negan asks.

‘Don’t know,’ Daryl murmurs. ‘Some guy. Kevin, I think.’

He’s glad that he still hasn’t caught a glimpse of the rest of his family. He’s pretty sure that Enid ran off to warn them. It doesn’t stop him from glancing around anxiously. They can’t hide everyone forever, but he hopes Enid has enough sense to hide Beth away. The girl is far too pretty and far too young to escape Negan’s attention.

And with her fiery temper, maybe she won’t even try to evade him.

She hadn’t been there.

He doesn’t know why but she hadn’t been in the line-up. She doesn’t know what he does to people. How he breaks them.

They approach Rick’s house. They’re four doors down. Eric and Aaron are standing on their porch. Saviors carry some of their furniture out of the house. The armchair Daryl used to curl up in when he stayed after dinner to talk to Eric, the bed Eric and his husband shared.

He watches how realization dawns. How Eric grabs hold of Aaron’s arm, fingers going white with tension as he spots the teenager. Aaron’s knees seem to buckle. He leans onto the banister and allows his husband to tug him close, an arm around his waist.

Daryl can’t look up at them.

‘Aaron and Eric,’ he mutters when Negan makes an inquisitive noise.

‘Friends of yours, I guess?’

‘Used to be,’ Daryl nods.

Rick shivers.

‘Exactly,’ Negan grins, pulling the teenager close by his neck. ‘You see this? This is the kind of thing that just tickles my balls!’ he said as he walks along the curb, motioning to the Saviors and the Alexandrians who are watching them with wary eyes. ‘A little cooperation and everything is pleasant as punch. You see, we really are reasonable people once you get to know us.’

There’s a cooler standing beside the curb. He opens it and takes a can out, cracking it open. He only drinks half of it before throwing it aside.

‘Oh damn,’ he says, turning to Daryl. ‘Did you want some of that?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘There’s more,’ Negan grabs another can, opens it and then hands it over. ‘Here, sorry about that.’ He leans into Rick’s space, ‘still trying to get a hang of this whole dad-business. Maybe you can give me some pointers later, huh?’

Rick works his jaw but doesn’t say anything.

‘Got something you want to say, Rick?’

The leader of Alexandria takes a deep breath before meeting the guy’s eye. ‘I need to talk to Daryl about something.’

‘You can talk to _me_ ,’ Negan says with a grin. ‘He is off-limits.’

Rick hesitates. ‘Please,’ he grinds out, ‘it’s important.’

‘He can hear you fine.’

Rick shakes his head lightly, ‘please, let me look at him when I say it. Let me… _Please_.’

Negan leers and brings his lips close to Rick’s ear. ‘No,’ he whispers, ‘but I like it when you beg.’

‘ _Negan_!’ Wade comes lumbering over. There’s a grin on his face and a video camera in his hand. It’s the one Deanna had used to record their interviews. It seems like several life-times ago. He can’t even remember what he had said on the tapes, he only knows that he’d been playing a different game at the time. The stakes had been just as high.

Both times he’d gambled for a shot at something.

He’d won that round.

He’s already lost so much this time.

With some effort, he manages to tune Negan out who is mercilessly teasing Rick with the video tape. First because he hopes to find some freaky-deaky, then because the man on the videotape in not the same man who is standing before him today. Daryl remembers Rick from those days, before he’d gotten too scared to meet anyone’s eye, before someone had broken him.

He missed the old Rick. And while it wasn’t _all_ his fault, some of it was, and he’s sorry, so sorry to have been the one who executed that old Rick.

‘Oh, hot damn,’ Negan says suddenly, throwing the camera back to Wade. ‘Shit, kid, I’m sorry, I totally forgot to ask,’ he says before turning to Rick. ‘Where the hell is his brother? I mean – the little prince told me they weren’t really all that close, but he’s a good Southern boy, cares about his blood, and you know what, Rick? I got a lot of questions for him, too. And you.’ The teasing has vanished from his tone of voice. Anger seeps into the words, that metallic twang of vengeance. ‘Did you know?’

Daryl’s head snaps up. He stares at Negan with wide eyes.

Rick shifts his weight. ‘Know what?’ He asks without looking at the man.

‘The kid looks like fucking Frankenstein, chest and back all fucked up like that? Did you know? Is that why you left his daddy to die on a fucking roof like a goddamn animal? Because that? That I respect. Not gonna lie, Rick. That _does_ something to me.’

Rick seems to search for words, ‘I – I knew,’ he admits.

‘That why you left him up there?’

‘Yes.’

Daryl gives a little sigh of relief, shoulders sagging when Rick embraces the lie.

‘Good for you,’ Negan grins at him. ‘That’s real fucking good, Rick. The question is; why the hell did that piece of shit of a brother wait for the goddamn apocalypse and then a goddamn stranger to do it for him? Where is he?’

Rick shakes his head and then turns around, looking at the boy. ‘Daryl,’ he starts, voice so broken that it makes the teenager sick.

‘No,’ Negan grabs Rick’s chin to make him look at him instead. ‘You’re talking to me, Rick. Don’t make me make you, remember? Chop, chop, chop.’

Rick meets Negan’s eyes finally. ‘He died,’ he says softly.

‘Oh shit,’ Negan whispers back, letting go of the cop. ‘How?’

‘A run gone bad – there were walkers and – ‘ Rick turns back towards Daryl, ‘Dare, I’m so sorry, I-‘

‘ _You talk to me_!’ Negan hisses.

Daryl barely hears it. It’s just a buzz in the back of his mind. He can’t feel his hands, can’t feel his arms, can’t feel his feet anymore. He just stands there and stares. Tears start to well in his eyes, he chokes on nothing at all. ‘No,’ he whispers, ‘ _no_.’

‘Please,’ Rick begs with tears in his eyes. ‘Let me talk to him. Dare, I’m – I – please, let me-‘

Daryl is glad that Negan doesn’t let him do whatever it is he wants to do because he imagines that Rick would scoop him in his arms, would hug him so fiercely, would kiss his hair and tell him that it’s going to be okay. That he would feel those arms, would feel Rick shake against him, would feel how much the cop loves him.

And it would break him.

It would tear him apart.

He’s barely holding on now. His whole world is crumbling around him. Everything he was and is and was supposed to be. There are hot tears rolling over his pale cheeks. He tries to be someone else. He tries to go back to that trailer with the rain and the radio and his dad and Merle sitting in his armchair with his phone and – it’s all gone now.

‘What the hell happened, Rick,’ Negan demands in that low voice.

‘He went out on a run to find more supplies. Medicine. Food. He – he got stuck in a warehouse, a part of the roof came down and he got trapped. There were walkers. He – he got bit.’

‘Couldn’t take his goddamn arm or something?’

‘They couldn’t reach him, there were too many, they just – ‘

Negan rolls back onto his heels, ‘ripped to fucking pieces, huh?’

Rick nods. Tears spill over onto his cheeks. He wipes them away angrily, ‘let me talk to Daryl. Please.’

‘What more is there to say?’ Negan asks with a raised eyebrow.

Rick shakes his head, bites his lip and raises his hands to cover his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath. ‘Negan, I-‘

‘ _What more is there_?’

‘Maggie Rhee,’ another voice cuts in.

Negan whirls around. ‘ _Holy crap_!’ Father Gabriel is standing just behind him. ‘You are creepy as shit, sneaking up on me, wearing that collar with that freaky-ass smile.’

Gabriel waits a beat. ‘My apologies,’ he offers. ‘I’m father Gabriel.’

‘Oh no,’ Negan says with a tiny moan, ‘Maggie Rhee? The goddamn widow?’ Then he looks at Daryl, ‘his fucking mom, too?’

Lucille clatters onto the concrete. Daryl doesn’t even notice. There’s a shrill ringing sound in his ears. Gabriel’s mouth moves but he can’t hear what the Father is saying. None of it matters, anyway.

Maggie.

 _Maggie_.

Maggie who kisses his forehead so many times, who had taken him in without question, who’d shook his hand when they had been formally introduced in front of Hershel’s farm. Who had cried when she’d visited him on death row, had talked to him through glass, who had nurtured him back to health when it was all over. Who had never been afraid of his harsh words, had never doubted his heart, who always had a smile and gentle word for him.

The one who would drag him into her lap when he was smaller, hugging him fiercely just because she could. Who had taken pictures of him and Glenn because she never wanted to forget what they looked like when they were happiest.

A hand curls around his shoulder, gentle and soft. It tugs him into motion.

He follows blindly. Can’t see a thing, doesn’t realize that it’s Negan who is guiding him towards the graveyard.

‘No,’ he whispers when they pass the first graves and dread makes his feet so, so heavy. ‘No, I don’t – ‘ he chokes on the words, tears streaming down his face. ‘No, please, I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see, let me go!’

But Negan pulls him close, Daryl’s back against his chest, effectively pinning him in place. A gloved hand grips the boy’s chin.

‘Look,’ Negan says into his ear. ‘Look at it.’

Two graves.

Freshly dug.

Merle and Maggie.

They didn’t even have time to make proper markers yet.

And Daryl _screams_.

Because it all hurts so much and it’s all his fault and it’s ripping him apart. He tries to escape Negan’s grasp, tries to fight him, tries to get away from it all, but the man just holds on tighter and forces him to look at the graves, at what he’s done.

‘This didn’t need to happen,’ Negan whispers.

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl screams. ‘Fuck you. I’m sorry! I’m sorry. _I’m so sorry_!’

And then it’s just a sound. A soul-tearing scream of hurt and sorrow.

Rick is crying now, like he had been in the forest. ‘Please,’ he begs Negan, ‘please let me hold him, he’s – please. Oh my God, Dare. I’m so sorry.’

But Daryl screams and screams and screams and Negan won’t let go until the boy collapses.

Knees buckling, he falls into the grass beside the graves. The earth is cold when he claws at it. He slams his fists down, trying to make it hurt, raking his hands through the earth, hoping his fingernails will catch on hidden stones. He curls into himself, rolling onto his side as his body shakes and shivers.

Carol was right.

It just consumes you.

And it’s burning now. Everything is on fire.

Soon, he will be nothing but ashes. He’s so sure of it.

He hopes it, too, because he shouldn’t even be here anymore. Not when they aren’t. Not when it’s all on him.

Negan squats down beside him. ‘I ain’t gonna lie, kid,’ he says while he looks at the graves. ‘This is some messed up shit. But everything is a lesson. That’s what my mom used to say, everything is a goddamn lesson. Sometimes it hurts like a motherfucker, but that’s just how the world is. Or, you know. How you made it, I guess. This did not need to happen.’

Daryl rakes his dirty fingernails over his face, crawling at his own skin as he moves his hands to cover his ears. It doesn’t help. He can still hear Negan’s voice.

‘Number one, that was on me. No choice there. Lessons had to be learned. But number two? That didn’t need to happen. You forced my hand. It probably put her right on her back. Damn. I was gonna ask her to come back with me. At least your brother died with some dignity, trying to get me shit. That’s a good death.’

‘Shut up,’ Daryl whispers, tugging at his hair and sobbing. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘There’s always a cost, little prince.’ Negan purses his lips and cocks his head to the side. ‘And you can try to bullshit me all you want with that evil stepmother bull crap, but shit. I think you kinda showed your hand just now. Thought you wouldn’t give a damn.’

Daryl screws his eyes shut but the tears still escape.

‘Shit,’ Negan laughs as he looks up at Rick, ‘the kid lied to me, _again_ , what the fuck do you do about shit like that? Make him write lines _; I will not lie to the guy who clothed me, fed me, kept me save from goddamn walkers_? Wash his mouth with soap? But that’s for cursing, right? I’m fine with that,’ he grins. ‘I know,’ he pushes himself up again. ‘I’m a reasonable guy, I keep telling you guys. Listen, kid. I can see you’re upset. Why don’t you just stay here a while, huh? Think about what you’ve done.’

‘Negan,’ Rick croaks, ‘please, let me just-‘

‘What, Rick? Comfort him? I don’t think he deserves that. And if he did, I would be the one to-‘

A gunshot rings out.

The smile fades from Negan’s face as he stares at Rick.

‘Looks like we got more important matters to attend to,’ he says after a beat. ‘Wade. Stay here with the little prince. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. No one talks to him. No one looks at him. No one touches him. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Wade says, walking over to the boy from where he’d been standing guard at the edge of the graveyard.

‘Lead the way, Rick,’ Negan smiles.

 

 

_‘Why do you always call me that?’ Daryl asks as he sits in the grass in front of their trailer. He watches how Merle tinkers with his bike._

_The older Dixon boy shoots him a look over his shoulder. ‘Call you what?’_

_‘Monster,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Ain’t no monster.’_

_Merle laughs. He turns on his heels and crawls over to his little brother on all fours, ‘because I think you’re the most badass person alive, little-D, and sometimes you just make me piss my pants.’ Show me them guns.’_

_Daryl grins a little as he flexes his muscles on his right arm._

_‘Whoa!’ Merle reaches out at squeezes his arm. ‘See? You’re a monster, like the Hulk.’_

_‘But monsters are mean and scary,’ Daryl points out._

_‘So are Dixon’s, haven’t ya heard? Everyone says so.’_

_‘Yeah…’ Daryl drops his arm. ‘Some people at school won’t talk to me. Say I’m trash, ‘cause I’m a Dixon.’_

_‘Some people are just asking to get their ass handed to ‘em,’ Merle laughs. ‘You holler and I’ll kick their little butts for you. Hey,’ he puts a finger under his little brother’s chin to force it up. ‘Chin up, little bro. You’re a Dixon, ain’t nothing wrong with that. Just means you’re tough as nails.’_

_‘Yeah?’_

_‘Yeah,’ Merle smiles. ‘And I mean it; if you need me to beat up your seven year old friends, I can do that. Or maybe I’ll just run over their bikes a bit or something. Slash their tires, put spiders in their beds, I dunno. I’ll think of something.’_

_‘_ You’re _the monster,’ Daryl giggles. ‘That’s mean!’_

_Merle smirks as he dives forward, engulfing the little boy in a fierce hug that has him shrieking with joy. He presses kisses to the boy’s dirty blonde hair and waits until the shrieks have died down a little. ‘Yeah,’ he grins, running a comforting hand over his brother’s back. ‘No-one told you? Every little monster has a big monster watching over them. You’re still in training, monster-training, ya know? But I got ya.’_

_Daryl frowns. ‘But what if my training is done? What if I’m a big monster?’_

_‘Then I’ll still got ya,’ Merle smiles into his hair. ‘’cause that’s what big brothers do.’_

Daryl stares up at the blue sky.

The tears have dried. His heartrate has gone down to normal.

It’s been hours since Negan left.

The fire has died down.

Ashes.

 

 

Everything hurts when he gets up. There’s vomit on the grass next to him and a sour taste in his mouth. He can’t remember throwing up, can’t remember a thing about the last couple of hours. Just one blaze of hurt and grief and sorrow.

Wade passes him a bottle of water.

He washes his face and rinses his mouth. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, feeling a little dazed.

Wade takes the bottle back and holds something else out. ‘Here. You dropped it.’

Lucille.

Daryl just takes her, swings her onto his shoulder and heads out towards the gates.

None of it matters anymore.

He walks with his head down, doesn’t give a damn when he spots Tyreese on one of the porches, can’t lift his gaze when he recognizes the noise of distress Eric makes when he walks by.

‘You going to a party, little girl?’

That attracts his attention, but only because he fears that the Savior is talking to Beth. He doesn’t want to see her but also doesn’t want anyone to hassle her, so he glances over only to spot Enid facing a Savior. The man is holding a couple of green balloons.

Daryl stops dead in his tracks.

They’re the balloons Glenn had used to signal his return to Alexandria.

‘Can I keep them, please?’ Enid asks. ’It’s just… let me keep them.’

‘Say please again, little girl,’ the savior demands, stepping closer to her.

‘Give them to me,’ Daryl cuts in, walking over and holding his hand out.

The Savior looks at him and lifts an eyebrow. ‘Why the hell should I?’

‘I want them. Give them to me.’ Daryl twirls Lucille on his shoulder, ‘or I’ll tell Negan that you’re bothering little girls. I heard her say _no_ , man.’

‘What the hell, I didn’t even do anything.’

‘I heard her say no,’ Daryl repeats, wiggling his fingers to silently demand the balloons. ‘And he has a thing about women saying no, right? He won’t like what I have to tell him.’

‘Fuck you,’ the savior mutters but he still slams the balloons into the palm of the boy’s hand.

Daryl watches how he walks away. ‘Here,’ he mutters, handing the balloons to Enid. ‘Sorry.’

‘Daryl, I-’

‘Don’t talk to him, girl,’ Wade warns.

Daryl doesn’t meet her eye. He just walks away.

He never notices that Carl and Rick are watching him with equally broken hearts.

 

 

He goes home.

He trudges up the staircase and puts Lucille on his bed.

When he looks around the room, he realizes that there’s nothing here that he wants to take.

He doesn’t care about the comics.

He doesn’t want his own clothes back.

‘Wait here,’ he tells Wade. ‘Got to grab something from the other room real quick.’

The man shrugs. There’s nobody else in the house so he looks through Daryl’s bookcase.

Daryl slips out into the hallway and then into Carl’s room. With shaking hands, he unclasps his two necklaces and puts them on his brother’s pillow.

 

 

‘Little prince,’ Negan greets when Daryl joins him at the gate. ‘Ready to go? Glad to see you on your feet. You want a hug?’

Daryl shakes his head.

‘No? Bet you wanted a hug from Rick, huh?’ Negan nudges him with a teasing smile. ‘That’s okay. You were a little messed up back there, nothing a little time-out can’t fix, huh? Saw that one on T.V.,’ Negan tells Rick, ‘looked like some bullshit to me, but it worked. Gotta give it to them.’

Michonne is standing behind Rick. A deer is draped over her shoulders. Her dark eyes go wide when she sees the teenager, dressed up like her nemesis and with Lucille on his shoulder.

‘And to you,’ Negan beams. ‘This is something to build a relationship on. You’ve been real good today, Rick. Now that little hick-up with your boy? I ain’t mad. Kids do stupid stuff, right? I mean, mine sure as hell does, sometimes,’ he reaches out and tugs Daryl into his side. ‘I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again, Rick. You, sir, are _special_.’

Rick bows his head. ‘Now that you know we can follow your rules…’

‘Yes?’ Negan asks, urging him on.

‘I’d like to ask you if Daryl could stay.’

‘Not happening.’

Rick opens and closes his mouth with a jerk, clearly frustrated.

‘You know what?’ Negan asks. ‘We’re being rude. He’s right here,’ he jostles Daryl a bit. ‘I don’t know. Kid? Would you like to stay here, with Rick?’

Daryl looks up at Rick. Finally meets his eyes, just for a second. Then he tilts his head back so he can looks up at Negan, ‘I wanna go home now. Let’s go.’ He shakes himself out of the man’s embrace and walks over to the truck, pulling himself up by the mirror and jumping into the cabin, settling into his spot.

Negan laughs. ‘Well,’ he tells Rick. ‘You tried.’

 

 

The trucks stop and the men jump out.

Daryl watches how they drag the mattresses out of the vans, piling them up on the side of the road.

They set them on fire.

Daryl sighs and lets his head thud against the window. He looks at Negan, who is watching the fire with a grin on his face. Shadows make his eyes seem darker, skin taking on that strange orange glow of growing flames.

 _I’m gonna kill you_ , Daryl thinks as he watches the man. _I’m gonna kill you all._

_Not today._

_Not tomorrow._

_But I’m gonna kill you._

_Before Rick even gets the chance._

 

 


	80. bowed, knelt, broke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warnings; self-harm.

 

* * *

 

 

_‘Thought I’d find you here,’ Maggie says when she climbs onto a low garage next to the house they’re staying in for the time being. Her boots scrape over the brickwork, hands holding on to the drainpipe until she makes it onto the roof._

_Daryl looks up from his bolts with a scowl on his face. He doesn’t say anything._

_‘There’s a lot of people in that house,’ Maggie sits down beside him. ‘It’s quiet here.’_

_‘Were,’ Daryl mutters. ‘It_ were _quiet here.’_

_‘Was,’ Maggie corrects. ‘If you have to do it, do it right.’_

_The boy frowns and hunches his shoulders, trying to radiate hostility._

_The woman pretends not to notice. ‘How are you doing?’_

_‘I’m fucking starvin’, how the fuck do you think I’m doin’,’ Daryl snaps. It’s been days since they’ve had a decent meal. He shouldn’t even complain. Shane gives him half of his own rations every time while Glenn gives his to Carl so Rick can pass Lori some more. They’re the ones who are really starving._

_‘It’s not your fault, you know.’_

_‘Of course it ain’t,’ he growls. ‘Ain’t my damn fault there ain’t nothing to hunt here.’_

_It feels like it’s on him, though. Every time he breaks the forest line empty handed, he can see the disappointment flicker over Rick’s face while Shane grimaces. They’re both very nice about it. They always thank him for trying, Shane pulling him close for a rough hug while Rick slaps him on the shoulder, but that doesn’t erase the guilt he feels whenever Carl and Beth go to bed hungry._

_‘No, it’s not,’ Maggie agrees._

_‘Why the hell are you here?’ Daryl demands angrily. He doesn’t even know why he’s so angry with her. She’s been nothing but nice to him since they met, not so long ago. He can see how her and Glenn grow closer every day, curling up together at night and staying close during the day._

_‘Glenn’s worried about you.’_

_‘Then why ain’t_ he _up here then.’_

_‘Because you’re scared and when you’re scared you tend to lash out.’_

_Daryl narrows his eyes. ‘You callin’ him a coward? He too damn scared to come up here?’_

_‘No. It wears people down. When they try to care for someone who does that, it wears them down. Sometimes they need a break. Sometimes they need someone to take over for a little bit.’_

_‘So that’s what you’re doing? Takin’ over?’_

_‘If you’ll let me.’_

_Daryl looks away. He gnaws on the nail of his thumb._

_‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ Maggie says softly._

_It nearly makes the boy laugh. He glares at her again. ‘Everything. How’re ya plannin’ on fixing that?’_

_‘I don’t know,’ she admits._

_They don’t say anything after that. They just sit there, on the roof, watching how the world seems to turn without them. There are walkers roaming in the fields beyond. There’s a pile of dead bodies in the garden. Some have neat holes in their heads from sharp bolts, others larger slashes from hunting knives. They’ve stopped burning them._

_There’s no point._

_There are too many._

Let them rot _, the boy had snapped after another hushed conversation about morals and ethics and the way the smoke always draws more._

_No one had outright agreed but no one had burned another body after that either._

_Maggie sits next to him. They’re not close enough for her to wrap an arm around his shoulders, for her to offer him any other comfort than peaceful silence. He wouldn’t accept it even if she tried. She might not be scared of his sharp words, indifferent to a stranger’s anger, but she cares about Glenn and his weary heart. And they’re slowly becoming something far from strangers._

_He doesn’t know how to deal with that. It’s easy with Shane because the man slides into the gaping hole Will left, never quite filling it but making it all better all the same. And maybe Glenn could squeeze in where Merle used to be, just for the time being, but Maggie is something new. And she’s not alone. It’s Beth and Hershel, too. It’s a whole other dynamic where he doesn’t fit in but is still drawn to._

_He never knows what to say when Hershel tries to talk to him, doesn’t know how to react when Beth slides into the empty spot next to him. And when he looks at Glenn a little helplessly, the man just gives him an encouraging smile and leaves him hanging._

_Maybe he just wants him to figure things out on his own. Or maybe he also doesn’t know what to do with all of this._

_Maybe it doesn’t matter that none of them know what they’re doing because Maggie sits next to him and doesn’t expect him to open up, to crawl into her side like Beth would have done. She seems perfectly content to just sit there._

_He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. He gets up for just a second to put his bolt back into his quiver. And when he sits down again, he sits an inch closer to her than before._

Daryl is staring at the cupboards of the small kitchen inside his room. He can see it from his bed. His head resting on his pillow, knees drawn up to his chest, so high that it makes it a little hard to breathe. Sunlight casts strange shadows in the room. Dust dances in the rays.

Everything is silent.

He knows there’s someone just outside of his room. One of Negan’s men, a wiry guy with brown hair that falls into his eyes. Every fifteen minutes he will open the door and check on him. Every time, Daryl will lift his hand to give him a thumbs-up, too lazy to turn around and face the guy. They’d agreed to the signal when the man got tired of having to walk into the room and to the other side of the bed just to see that he was fine.

The door opens.

Daryl gives a thumbs-up.

The door closes again.

Daryl shuts his eyes.

Suicide watch.

It’s a stupid principle to him. There are loads of ways he could kill himself in fifteen minutes and it’s been hours now. He wishes they would stop with this charade. It’s not like Negan actually cares whether he survives. The man doesn’t give a damn about him. He knows that. He’s just another pawn in this sick game they’re all forced to play.

Maybe he fears what Rick will do when he discovers that he died in Negan’s care.

That’s not very likely. Abraham died. Glenn died. And Rick bowed, knelt, broke.

He won’t be resurrected by a much softer blow.

The door opens again. Daryl frowns because it hasn’t been fifteen minutes yet, time crawls by in this place and it’s hard to tell sometimes, but he’s pretty sure that his thoughts haven’t sped things up for him. Time flies when you’re having fun. Not like this.

So he casts a look over his shoulder and immediately drops his head back onto the pillow. ‘Leave me alone,’ he mutters.

‘I got you some ice cream,’ Sherry says as she pads into the room.

Weeks ago he would have sat bolt upright on the bed, stretching his arms out eagerly, fingers wriggling to get a hold of the cup in her hands. But weeks ago he hadn’t even known her and weeks ago, if it had happened at all, it would have been Maggie or Michonne who brought him a secret treat. Now he just stretches his legs to make sure she can’t sit too close to him.

She sits down on the edge of the mattress. ‘Sit up and eat this.’

With a huff, Daryl sits up. The bowl is cold in his hands. The metal of the spoon burns his skin as he shovels some ice cream into his mouth. Vanilla. Cold. He doesn’t pretend to give a damn. It melts on his tongue and runs down his throat, soothing the burning sensation there.

‘Negan is worried about you.’

Daryl licks the spoon clean.

Sherry watches him out of the corner of her eye. ‘ _We_ are worried about you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re on suicide watch, Daryl.’

‘Ain’t my fault you’re a bunch of paranoid assholes.’

‘Paranoid?’ she reaches out to tug his shirt up. The skin is raw, scratch marks red against pale skin. The doctor has clipped his fingernails. Negan warned that he will bash his skull in if he does it again. Sherry sighs and drops the shirt. ‘I’m really sorry about your family, Daryl.’

‘Me, too.’

She reaches out to touch his chin, to force him to look at her. ‘Have you slept at all?’

He hasn’t. Every time he tries, he dreams of Maggie, Merle, of Abraham and Glenn. Nightmares of that line-up mixed with scenes he hasn’t witnessed at all. He can see his brother being torn to pieces when he closes his eyes, can see Maggie dying while she holds Rick’s hand.

‘Just give up,’ Sherry whispers. ‘Just give in, Daryl. You can’t keep going on like this. It’s killing you.’

‘ _He_ is,’ the teenager corrects. ‘He is killing me. What the hell does he want? I can’t break any more. This is fucking it. And if this ain’t enough then…’ He swallows with some difficulty and shakes his head.

‘You didn’t break,’ the woman tells him. ‘You still think there’s a way out of this.’

Daryl presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.

‘There is no way out of this,’ she insists.

‘Tough as nails,’ he whispers to himself.

‘He _will_ win.’

‘Kick their heels,’ he commands himself.

‘There’s always more.’

‘Get me a knife,’ Daryl demands now. His hands fall away from his blue eyes. He looks at the woman. ‘Give a knife. A gun. Give me my bow back and I’ll end him. Give me _something_.’

Sherry strokes his cheek. ‘There are others. It’s not just him.’

‘I’ll kill them too. I’ll kill all of them. Just help me. Give me a knife.’

‘No.’

‘Please,’ he begs softly. Blue eyes close tiredly and he can’t help but lean into her touch, fingertips ghosting over his cheekbone, brushing over his jaw. ‘You want him dead too. Give me something.’

She slides an arm around his shoulders, drawing him close. Her hand in his hair, his forehead on her collarbone. ‘No. We let you down once,’ she murmurs into his dark hair, ‘I won’t let it happen again. You will get through this, but you just have to give up. This is it now. This is all there is. The rest of it doesn’t matter.’

Daryl can feel tears burning in his eyes. ‘I want Rick,’ he whispers. ‘Michonne. Carol. Tara. I want Eric.’

‘They don’t matter anymore,’ Sherry tells him as she cards her fingers through his hair. ‘Forget about them. Make it easier on yourself and just forget about them. You’re here now. And you’re lucky; he likes you even after all you’ve done.’

‘He doesn’t know what I’ve done,’ Daryl says. ‘I’ve killed people before. So many, I’ve lost count. The outpost… I was there, with my brother. We went from room to room and killed them all. I can do the same thing here, just give me a knife. I’ll do it when it’s dark. I’ll do it,’ he promises.

The door opens again. The teenager lifts his head tiredly, trying to focus on the guy at the door. He lifts his hand before he realizes that it’s not the same guy as before. Instead, it’s Dwight. He closes the door behind him.

‘How is he?’

Sherry shakes her head and guides Daryl’s head back onto her shoulder. ‘Leave us alone, D.’

‘He’s going to lose his patience,’ Dwight warns.

‘Keep him away for as long as you can.’

‘I’ll try,’ Dwight nods as he walks over to the coffee table. There’s a CD player there. He pushes play.

‘Please, don’t,’ Sherry begs.

‘It’s just a reminder,’ Dwight mutters before he slinks out of the room again.

The song starts to play.

_We’re on easy street. And it feels so sweet._

He wanders through the sanctuary. There’s a pounding in his head, a ringing in his ears. The song won’t stop, it starts over and over and over again even when he’s nowhere near a CD player. He thought it would be better if he got up and did something, that everything would melt away when he could focus on something else but he was wrong.

Everything is worse.

Fat Joey follows him around today. The man is panting when they climb a couple of stairs and Daryl hates that. The sound mixes with the beat of the song. It becomes a part of his daily soundtrack, a part of him, and he wants to scratch his eyes out but knows he can’t. He can’t do anything like that. Negan had promised to bash his skull in if he hurt himself again.

Maybe that’s the easiest way to go, he thinks hazily as he stumbles through the long corridors. Maybe it wasn’t suicide watch after all, but just someone checking in whether they could kill him yet. He wonders whether his dad would still consider it suicide if he hurt himself now. He remembers if Will had scoffed at the notion of a suicide pact, thinking it a coward’s way out, too easy. It’s not easy at all, Daryl wants to tell him. And no coward would ever have the guts to leave without knowing where they’re going.

Glenn would still disapprove though.

Shane, too.

Different reasons, or maybe the same but with the arguments better worded.

It doesn’t matter. Fat Joey is right behind him and he has no way of actually doing it now.

They reach the large hall. He walks past the tables with stolen goods but doesn’t see them. Everything is just a haze. The edges of his vision blurred. His limbs shake due to exhaustion. He hasn’t slept in days. Whenever he closes his eyes, he has to watch how Abraham and Glenn get beaten to a pulp. Blood and terror and the feeling of cold earth between his fingers.

When he’s awake, he’s haunted. Will and Shane and Glenn ghost in every shadow, in every whisper of a closing door, in every footstep that is all wrong and not theirs. They tell him to never break, to never give up, to kill that monster, but their words turn into a roar inside his ears, too much and too loud and it all hurts when he realizes that he’s losing his mind.

He knows they’re not real.

He _knows_ that.

But they were and they say things Michonne has said in the past, they mimic Rick, and that was real and so maybe they’re still around but why won’t they let him _sleep_?

He stumbles, catches himself on a table and almost overturns it.

Fat Joey jumps forward, righting the table and shoving him back onto his own two feet. ‘Careful,’ he warns.

 _How_ , Daryl wonders, reaching up to press his hand to the side of his head where the pounding is.

The woman behind the table glares at him. That’s nothing new. Everywhere he looks, people are giving him the evil eye. Some are jealous of Negan’s obsession with him, other remember how he’d tricked them all in the beginning and how that had ended with two of their friends dead. Perhaps some know that a lot more blood sticks to his fingers. Perhaps they can see that he once hacked someone to pieces before laughing, smearing the blood all over his face.

Maybe they look at him and just _know_ how fucked up he really is.

It doesn’t usually bother him.

A little voice in the back of his head nags, though. How is he supposed to live here when everyone hates him? He doesn’t have a knife anymore and Dwight still carries his bow. He’s not getting that back. If something happens, if someone corners him now, he’s a goner.

He glances over his shoulder.

Fat Joey gives him a small smile. He looks as useless as Eugene did in the beginning. If it comes down to a fight, he’s not going to be any help.

Daryl shivers. There’s not going to be a fight, he tells himself sternly but Will smirks at him from the shadows, haunting his steps through the hall. There’s _always_ going to be a fight.

He stumbles again, feet clumsy due to the lack of sleep. With a soft groan, he sinks to his haunches, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes.

 _Get the fuck up_ , Will sneers.

 _We told you you had to be clever_ , Shane warns. _Don’t lose it, bud._

‘Shut up,’ Daryl whispers. ‘You don’t know nothing.’

A man’s knee bumps into his shoulder when he walks by. It knocks him over.

‘Wow,’ Fat Joey grabs his arm to help him to his feet again. ‘Are you okay? Do you want to go back to your room?’

‘No,’ Daryl breathes because the song keeps playing even though he has smashed the CD player. ‘Take me somewhere else. I just want to sit for a moment.’

‘Yeah, okay, there are some stairs that way. You can sit down there.’ Fat Joey drags him over to the metal staircase and shoves him onto it, none too kindly.

His hands shake when he takes the baseball cap off so he can run his fingers through his hair. It’s getting long, he thinks hazily. Maggie was supposed to cut it a couple of days ago. She’d been threatening do it ever since they got to Alexandria. After they visited the Hilltop, he was thinking about letting her.

It’s a stupid thing to regret; not letting her cut his damn hair. A selfish thing, too, because she had more important things to do at the time anyway, and he got her killed and now wishes for something so stupid as…

Everyone in the hall stops and kneels.

Daryl narrows his eyes.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs behind him.

Fat Joey falls to his knees too and looks at him pointedly before bowing his head but he is too tired to get up. He feels sick. Will whoops in the corner while Glenn shakes his head a little and Shane just folds his arms in front of his chest.

‘Well, well, look-y here,’ a voice drawls just before gloved fingers glide through Daryl’s hair. The touch is gentle.

The boy leans into it, closing his eyes.

‘Did Fat Joey take you out on a walk or something?’ Negan stops next to him on the step. His gray jeans brush against Daryl’s arm.

Daryl slumps to the side and leans against the man’s leg.

It seems to alarm Negan. ‘Hey,’ the leg is jerked back but hands curls around his shoulders to keep him upright. The man kneels in front of the teenager, one hand cupping his cheek, thumb brushing over the soft skin. ‘Daryl? Look at me.’ He casts a glance over his shoulder, ‘get Carson. Have him come to my rooms.’

Fat Joey jumps up and quickly walks away.

‘You’re okay,’ Negan says softly. ‘You’re going to be fine, kid. Can you open those blue eyes for me?’

Daryl opens his eyes.

A grin slides back onto Negan’s face. ‘Hello there. Can you stand up? Walk?’

He shakes his head.

An eyebrow quirks up. ‘You expect me to goddamn carry you, kid?’

Daryl doesn’t want him to but the thought of having to move again drives him crazy. Everything hurts, especially his head. The song is playing and Will is laughing and he fears that it’s only a matter of time before Maggie and Merle find him and start to haunt him too. He knows Merle will be mad. That he will rage that he got him killed, but Maggie won’t. He knows she won’t. She’ll just look at him with those sad eyes and lay a hand on her stomach and…

Daryl reaches out and twist his fingers into Negan’s leather jacket, moaning softly as he drags the man closer. He puts his head on his collarbone, near the crook of his neck.

Negan seems stunned for a second. Then he puts a gentle arm around the boy’s trembling shoulders. ‘You’re a goddamn mess,’ he mutters. ‘Dwight took it a little far, huh?’

Daryl nods.

‘That’s good.’

He wants to object but figures that it doesn’t matter. Negan is warm. He smells of leather, the hint of sweat and smoke. He’s strong. People bow before him and Daryl relaxes against the man’s frame.

It feels safe.

No, no, no, he thinks, trying to push the man away when the thought and feelings finally register.

‘It’s okay,’ Negan shushes as he strokes his hair, ‘it’s okay. Just give up.’

‘No,’ Daryl moans, fingers scratching at the leather.

‘Just give in, kiddo,’ the man whispers. ‘It’s okay. I got you.’

 _That’s what big brothers do_ , Merle tells him, walking up to them, boots heavy on the concrete. _You got me killed and now it’s him, huh?_ _It’s okay. He’s got you. It’s okay, monster. Just give in._

Daryl whimpers.

‘That’s it,’ Negan smiles. ‘Up we get,’ he pulls the boy closer and, with a grunt, lifts him up. ‘I know, kid. I know. It’ll be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you, remember?’

Daryl nods.

‘Let’s get back to the rooms. Frankie has been dying to fucking see you. Was real rude of you to slam the goddamn door in that pretty face of hers.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the boy whispers as he loops his arms around the man’s neck, holding on tightly and squeezing his eyes shut. ‘I’m _so_ sorry.’

‘I know,’ Negan says even though the boy hadn’t been talking to him.

 

 

Exhaustion, Carson says. Grief. Despair. Stress. PTSD.

He lifts the boy’s shirt to look at the wounds. Bad coping mechanisms.

‘Fucking tell me about it,’ Negan laughs.

 

 

He sleeps and dreams of Alexandria.

It’s on fire.

He and Merle are standing on top of a truck that ended up in a lake in another future, the white one that would get stolen by a man with a wicked smile and gorgeous eyes. They watch as their home burns. He’s older than he was when he went to sleep but Merle is younger, almost twenty and he isn’t five years, so it’s all wrong.

They’re the same height, which is new, too.

‘Best fireworks I’ve ever seen,’ Merle says even though they were Will’s words first.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods. ‘It’s beautiful.’

They can hear someone scream. When Daryl looks, he can see that Enid is sitting on a platform, arms wrapped around Maggie’s waist as she tries to keep the woman from jumping off the wall. Below, near the gate, Glenn is being torn to pieces.

Daryl sighs. ‘Was surprised he lasted this long, man.’

Merle hums in agreement. ‘He had some brass balls, I’ll give him that. Wish that girl wouldn’t scream so loud though. Hurts my head.’

‘Same.’

‘Whatever happened to Officer friendly?’

Daryl frowns. ‘Which one?’

‘The one who was banging the wife.’

‘They both were!’ Daryl sniggers.

Merle snorts. ‘What a mess. Shane. What the fuck happened to him?’

‘Lucille said hi.’

‘Ah,’ the older Dixon pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘Well, I don’t know what they all tried to tell you, but there ain’t nothing wrong with kneeling, man. Not to a guy like that. Keeps you safe and that’s all that matters. I’m glad you stuck with him.’ He nods and looks out over Alexandria. Everything is on fire. There are walkers everywhere. People are being torn to pieces on the streets, in their houses. ‘He’s gonna take good care of you.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl wobbles on his feet. ’He’s a good guy. Bit of a dick sometimes, but… you know.’

‘So was dad,’ Merle laughs, knowing exactly what his little brother is thinking.

The youngest Dixon smiles, ‘yeah, so was dad.’

 

 

Everything is easier once he has given up.

He stops fighting it all and it’s so much easier.

Negan is still a crude asshole, but he can be unexpectedly funny, too. Sometimes he startles the boy into a fit of giggles with his rude commentary. It never fails to make the man smile when he sees Daryl on the couch, curled up next to one of his wives and shaking with laughter.

The evenings are oddly domestic. Daryl spends most of his time in Negan’s quarters now, only going back to his own room when the man asks one of his wives to come join him in the next room, which is his bedroom. The walls are thin. He’d found that out one night when Negan took Amber to his room and he stayed behind to play cards with Frankie and Sherry.

He’d left mid-game, blushing and stumbling over his words and the girls had laughed.

Sometimes it’s one of the wives who walks him back to his room, other times one of the lieutenants falls into step beside him. He likes Arat, who never says a lot, hates Wade who was with him in Alexandria when he finally broke, and always hopes that it’s Dwight. The guy seems to have made a promise to Sherry to keep him safe. And no matter what game they’re pretending to play, the guy loves his ex-wife.

The rest of the Saviors slowly get used to him. They glare less when he jokes around with Laura or teases Fat Joey. They see him in the game room, sitting on the cabinet as he cheers Negan on, see him working the wall with Dwight, nudging the man’s elbow higher to correct the shot when he sees that a bolt will miss its target. They see him escorting the wives, see him shoving Negan away and then spirting down the halls when the man chases him, their laughter bouncing down the halls.

At night, in his own room, he listens until the whole cellblock goes quiet.

Then he kicks his blankets off of him, pulls the leg of his boxer short up to reveal the pale skin of his inner thigh, and uses his fingernails to draw jagged lines until blood trickles down his legs.

 

 

Amber is crying.

She sits on the couch surrounded by the other wives who try to comfort her. It’s only Sherry who sits at the bar, shoulders hunched and expression pained as her hands shake when she tries to pour a shot of whiskey.

‘Let me do it,’ Daryl says softly, taking the bottle from her and pouring the drink. He’s sitting cross-legged on the bar and watches Amber out of the corner of his eye. He’s not sure what’s going on. He’d been on patrol with Laura, going as far as the other side of the Sanctuary before looping back through the big building.

He knows every corridor now. Every room. Every exit and entrance.

When he came back, the girl was already crying and he thought it best not to ask.

Sherry reaches out and takes his hand, squeezing his fingers to thank him for the drink.

He lets his thumb brush over the back of her hand, the way Maggie used to do with him.

‘Something is wrong,’ Sherry says. ‘He knows by now but he hasn’t shown up yet. Something is wrong.’

‘Like what?’

Sherry shakes her head.

Daryl watches how she knocks back her drink.

Half an hour and two shots later, Negan walks into the living room. ‘Ladies,’ he greets, ‘Daryl.’

The Dixon boy looks up to shoot the leader a smile but it fades as soon as he sees who’s standing next to Negan.

Carl.

‘Don’t mind the kid,’ Negan says with a grin. ‘And you stick to the rules,’ he tells Carl as he pokes him in the chest. ‘Don’t look at my Daryl, don’t talk to my Daryl, he’s _off limits_ , or I’ll take your other eye and _still_ let daddy take your arm. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ Carl mutters as he looks at the floor.

Negan didn’t say anything about Daryl not looking. So the boy stares at the teenager he used to call his brother. He doesn’t seem to be harmed. Long hair still covering his bandage, no blood on his clothes, sheriff’s hat hiding most of his expression.

‘Make yourself comfortable, kid,’ Negan grins after he tells him that it’s okay to sneak a peek with his wives, they don’t mind. They do, in fact, Daryl knows, but none of them object right now. Carl looks a little lost when Negan walks over to the bar. ‘Hey, bud,’ he gives Daryl a hug.

Daryl hugs him back, ‘hey.’

‘Everything okay with Laura?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thank fucking God, kid. I don’t like it when you’re that far out, try sticking to inside the Sanctuary, okay?’

‘Okay.’ He never needs to be prompted to use his words these days. Negan’s back is towards Carl and Daryl can feel the boy’s stare drilling holes in him.

Negan turns to Sherry, ‘can I talk to you, dear wife?’

 

 

Amber cheated on Negan with her ex-husband, Mark.

She doesn’t want to go back to Mark though.

Her mother is still alive, Daryl realizes as he listens to their conversation. She’s probably elderly and Negan threatened to give her the same job he would Mark and Amber. The threat clings to every word he utters. She’ll lose one or both of them if she leaves him.

So she doesn’t.

And Negan orders Dwight to light the furnace.

Time for a little de-ja-vu.

‘Do you know that tragic love story, bud?’ Negan asks as he leans against the bar, his head lolling to the side so it rests on Daryl’s shoulder. ‘Fucking beautiful, man.’

‘Yeah. People told me,’ Daryl murmurs. He already knew parts of it but the rest of the story didn’t surprise him.

‘Hmm,’ gonna do the same to Mark. There are rules for a reason.’

‘Nothing matters if you’re dead, Daryl supplies automatically.

‘Damn straight,’ Negan grins up at him. He slides onto a barstool, fingers drumming onto the wood until Daryl passes him a beer. ‘By the way, are you sure you’re not fucking related to the Grimes kid? Because he just went on a little joy-ride in the back of one of my trucks and gunned a bunch of my men down with a kick-ass looking gun. Sounds like someone I know and love,’ Negan laughs, shoving at Daryl’s knee playfully. ‘Except you went feral on them with a piece of _wood_. Hot damn. You still win in the badass department, but that kid?’ He jabs a finger in Carl’s general direction, ‘he’s adorable.’

Daryl’s eyes go a little wide. ‘He did what?’

‘Yeah!’ Negan laughs. ‘I know, right? Some crazy shit!’

‘What are you going to do with him?’ Daryl asks. He hates that Negan has his back to Carl again. Carl is staring at him with that stunned look on his face.

‘What?’ Negan narrows his eyes and squints up at Daryl. ‘Are you worried about him?’

‘No,’ Daryl reaches out and takes the beer bottle from the man’s hands. He takes a sip before giving it back. He’s always allowed one sip. ‘I don’t give a fuck.’

 

 

It takes a long time for the furnace to heat up.

When it’s ready, Negan orders Daryl to stick to his right hand side while Carl trails behind them. Lucille lands on the metal of the railing. The sound echoes through the big hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl sees how Carl flinches every time the bat comes down.

He has long since gotten used to it.

At the top of the staircase, Negan rolls one shoulder back and holds Lucille out.

Daryl takes her immediately, swinging her to his shoulder. The weight now familiar.

Carl gapes at him. The bandage is gone from his face. It has been since he talked to Negan behind closed doors while they waited. It doesn’t matter to Daryl. He’s seen the wound many times before.

Daryl ignores him.

‘You know the deal,’ Negan says. ‘What’s about to happen is gonna be hard to watch.’

Everyone has gathered in the hall, next to the furnace. Dwight is poking the flames with a long iron rod. In the middle of a circle, Mark has been bound to a chair. He’s writhing, squirming, sobbing softly, because every knows the deal.

They’ve been made to watch before.

Sherry holds Amber while she cries.

Dwight refuses to look at anyone.

‘ _Here? If you try to skirt it, if you try to cut that corner_?’ Negan roars, causing the Saviors and Carl to flinch while Daryl just tightens his hold on Lucile. The man chuckles darkly. ‘Then it’s the iron for you!’

The saviors rise when Negan tells them to.

Daryl lobes down the set of stairs, leading Carl down and following the man.

Negan apologizes to Mark, but it is what it is.

Then a red-hot iron, Mark who whimpers and then screams when it touches the side of his face.

Carl stares with his mouth open. He looks at his brother.

Daryl stares back impassively.

It is what it is.

He doesn’t feel sick until his gaze travels down. And he sees that Carl is wearing two silver necklaces.

A set of wedding rings on his chest.

And the number 22 which blinks in the light of the flames.

 

 

Negan takes Carl home.

Daryl watches as the trucks drive off.

Something _aches_ inside his chest.

 

 

It’s late in the afternoon when Daryl is reading one of his books on his bed. Finger tracking his progress on the page, slow but steady as the story unfolds before his very eyes. It’s a Western. Frankie had given it to him the other day.

The door opens and closes.

Daryl looks up. His eyes go wide when he sees who came in.

‘ _Paul_.’

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There probably won't be an upload this Friday. I have two important projects to finish for college before Sunday at midnight. I need to focus on that the rest of the week, this story takes up a lot of my time.
> 
> I'll be back on Tuesday though! (pinky promise)  
> I know you all understand.
> 
> Thank you!


	81. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really relieved that everyone was so nice about me missing an update. I've handed in all my projects, yay! It felt really strange not to be able to write for a whole week, but also kinda nice. I was just glad I didn't have this deadline to consider as well!
> 
> Thank you for being so sweet! Let's get back to it.

 

* * *

 

 

‘ _Daryl_!’ Paul sounds relieved when he closes the door behind him. He quickly crosses the room, checking the area of the small kitchen and frowning a little dismayed when there’s no other exit there. ‘We have to hurry,’ he tells the teenager as he jumps onto the couch and peeks out of the small window, standing on the tips of his toes on the armrest. ‘Negan left with a lot of his men, the rest is being sloppy.’

For a couple of seconds, Daryl just stares at the other man. From the boots to the cargo pants, the double belts and padded vest, the white shirt, his trench coat. Gloves, scarf, down to the hat. He’s wearing the exact same thing he’d been wearing the first time Daryl had ever seen him. When he’d been standing outside the gas station, realizing that the man’s eyes were blue.

‘When?’ the teenager asks softly.

Paul throws a look over his shoulder, ‘what? He left just now so we have some time but we really shouldn’t wait around.’

‘No,’ Daryl puts the book he’d been reading aside. ‘I mean; when did you die?’

Paul slowly turns around. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Don’t bullshit me.’

Paul slides off the armrest and jumps back down onto the floor silently. He looks at the boy with a mixture of curiosity and horror. ‘Daryl, I didn’t die. Why would you say that?’

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ Daryl says, a little dazed. ‘I thought it was over, I mean – I haven’t seen them in days, sometimes when I dream but… This isn’t fair,’ he mutters as he rubs at his temples with the palms of his hands. ‘You’re not – this isn’t _fair_! You’re not real.’

‘Of course I’m real,’ Paul says as he walks over to the teenager and kneels down before him. With a gloved hand, he reaches out to touch his cheekbone, thumb stroking over the cold skin. His voice is low and soft. ‘Of course I’m real, Daryl. Sasha asked me to find out where Negan lives. A group of them came to Hilltop to talk to Gregory, I jumped into the back of the truck when they left. Turns out, I wasn’t the only stowaway.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Carl…’

‘Yeah,’ Paul nods, moving his hand to the boy’s shoulder to grip it tightly. ‘You saw him. He was real.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl breathes because he knew that Paul was real, too, from the moment his hand touched his cheek. Will never touches him when he visits, and Shane always comes close enough so Daryl can feel his body heat but won’t actually hug him, not even when he begs, and Glenn always stays on the other side of the room. Maybe he simply can’t bear being near him anymore.

He tilts his head to the side so he can press his cheek against Paul’s hand.

‘Come here,’ Paul whispers, pulling him close enough so he can wrap one arm around the boy’s shoulders, hugging him.

Daryl lifts trembling hands to the man’s back, feeling the smoothness of the leather and the hard edges of the shoulder blades. It reminds him of Negan with his leather jacket and softer touches, the gloved fingers raking through his hair. But when Paul gently forces him back so they can look each other in the eye, he sees that they’re startling blue whereas Negan has Glenn’s brown eyes.

‘We need to go,’ Paul whispers.

‘I can’t.’

The blue eyes narrow dangerously, ‘Daryl, _come on_. We need to go.’

‘There is _always_ more,’ Daryl breathes. ‘What if he finds me? What if he goes to Alexandria and finds me there and – Lucille. She’ll…’

‘You’re not going to Alexandria. I’m taking you back to Hilltop.’ Paul pushes himself back to his feet and looks around the room again. After a second, he seems to decide that Daryl doesn’t have anything worth taking. He moves towards the door. When he notices that Daryl isn’t following, he turns around again. ‘Daryl. Get up.’

Daryl just looks at him. The tips of his dark hair falling into his eyes. ‘Why?’

That makes Paul smile a little, smirk, really. ‘When I agreed to find out where Negan lives, that’s what I decided to do. I wasn’t even planning on going into the complex. I would just hang around for a while and then make my way back to Hilltop, but of course, I hadn’t planned on running into Carl in the back of that truck. He tricked me,’ he pulls a face. ‘Figured I couldn’t just leave him to his fate, so I followed the trucks. It wasn’t far. I heard the gunshots, saw how Negan took him away and just hung around to see what would happen.’

Daryl nods. ‘So you still left him to it.’

Paul draws his eyebrows together. ‘What was I supposed to do? Me against the entire Sanctuary? That would have been suicide.’

Daryl looks at his feet.

‘So I waited, scouted a bit, tried to figure out where the guards were, a weak point in their system. Found it,’ he leans against the door, another small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘Didn’t go in until I saw Negan taking Carl back to Alexandria.’

‘Why’d you go in at all?’

‘I saw you.’

Daryl looks up through his fringe and meets that blue gaze again.

‘You were standing outside, watching them leave. I saw you. I knew you had been taken, of course, but…’ He looks away for a second. ‘We didn’t know whether you were still alive. But there you were. I knew I had to get you out, somehow. So, here I am. Getting you out,’ he gives the teenager a sharp look. ‘So get up.’

‘Doesn’t explain shit,’ Daryl mutters as he scrapes his boots over the floorboards. ‘You don’t owe me nothing. Could have just left me once you saw I were fine. He… He ain’t treating me bad.’

Paul makes a soft noise of disgust. ‘Yeah,’ sarcasm drips from the word. ‘I can see that.’

Daryl curls his shoulders and lets one of his hands glide over his inner thigh. The wounds aren’t bleeding anymore but they still hurt when he touches them through the rough denim. ‘He don’t,’ he insists even though he fears what will happen should Negan ever find out that he’s been hurting himself.

Paul’s look softens into something that reminds Daryl of pity. It’s gone before he can call the other man out on it. He knows what he did and he knows that he deserves so much more than a couple of extra marks on his skin.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Paul says softly, pushing himself away from the door. Slow, measured steps back to the bed until he’s looming over the boy. ‘I saw you. I don’t even want to think about what Maggie would say if I went back to the Hilltop with just that message: I saw him.’ He laughs a little, eyes twinkling with vague amusement. ‘She’d gut me on the spot. And Sasha looks like she sports a mean right hook.’ One hand comes up to wipe over his face, ‘don’t even get me started on Merle. Might be called Jesus, but resurrection is not something I’m keen on trying anytime soon.’

‘Fuck you.’

Paul blinks, surprised. ‘What?’

Daryl pushes himself off the bed and lunges for the man. Anger swirling in his veins, propelling him forward until he collides with Paul. He pushes him back, so hard that Paul hits the wall next to the door. With a snarl, he draws his fist back for a hit.

Paul recovers fast, however. The surprise melts into a grim look. With a move that’s too fast for Daryl to register, he grabs hold of the fist that comes flying at his face. He pulls, causing Daryl to lose his balance and stumble forward. Paul steps around him easily, still holding onto his wrist so his arm gets twisted behind his back. He moves the wrist up, close to his shoulder blades. It hurts.

Daryl groans as he hits the wall, his one free hand softening the impact, but he can’t prevent that the other man pushes him into the concrete. He scrambles to stand on the tips of his toes, trying to alleviate some of the pain that is radiating from his twisted shoulder and arm.

‘Calm down,’ Paul tells him sternly. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re a fucking liar,’ Daryl growls through clenched teeth.

Paul sighs, easing his wrist a little lower so it doesn’t hurt as much. ‘Sasha told me what happened in the woods. Nobody blames you, Daryl. They’re so worried abo-‘

‘They’re dead,’ the teenager hisses angrily. ‘Stop fuckin’ with me. I know they’re fucking dead, okay, and I’m sorry, I’m so goddamn _sorry_ but-‘

‘What are you talking about?’ Paul lets go of him and takes a wary step back, eyes searching the boy’s face as he turns around. There are angry tears in his eyes, the pale mouth just a thin line, hands shaking, one of them still balled into a fist. ‘Daryl, they’re not dead, I don’t know who told you-‘

‘I saw their graves!’

‘What? Where?’

‘He took me to Alexandria for their first offering,’ Daryl snarls. ‘Rick told me. Said Merle had been ripped to fuckin’ pieces and Maggie, she just…’ He swallows thickly. ‘She died. I saw her out in them woods. She were sick already and after what I did?’ He lets out a shaky breath. ‘Put her right on her back.’

‘What _Negan_ did,’ Paul corrects. He lifts his hands and carefully cradles the boy’s face again, smooth leather brushing over cheeks now wet with angry tears. ‘None of this is your fault. She didn’t die, Daryl. Merle didn’t. You’re right, Maggie was sick. Your brother and Sasha brought her to Hilltop after what happened. Harlan checked her over, gave her some meds, she’s fine, Daryl. The baby is fine. She just needs plenty of rest.’ He strokes the boy’s cheeks and brings him closer, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth once more, ‘which is why she isn’t busting down Negan’s front door at this very second.’

Daryl closes his eyes and breathes through his nose.

‘We basically had to tie Merle to a tree.’

‘Stop,’ Daryl says, voice breaking on the words ‘I don’t want to hear it. You’re lyin’.’

‘I’m not,’ Paul whispers as he pulls the boy even closer so their foreheads press together. Breaths ghosting over their faces. ‘I promise you I’m not, Daryl. He couldn’t tell Negan that Maggie was at Hilltop. He can’t know that we’re working together or he’ll come to Hilltop and do the same to our people, line them up and-‘

Daryl inhales sharply, squeezing his eyes shut tighter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Paul says immediately, hands burying themselves into the teenager’s dark hair, ‘I’m sorry. They’re fine. They’re waiting for you. Please, let me take you home.’

‘I saw their graves.’

‘It wasn’t real,’ Paul insists.

‘Rick wouldn’t lie to me.’

‘He would to protect you.’

Daryl’s eyes snap open and he pushes the man away from him. Open palms on that lean chest, just enough to have some distance. ‘Are you with him?’ he demands to know. ‘Is this another stupid test? Like the door and letting me carry Lucille and-‘

‘No,’ Paul cuts in. Hurt flickers over his face but Daryl can’t be sure whether it’s because of his words or just him. For him, even. Maybe. ‘I’m not working for Negan.’

‘You will,’ Daryl mutters, hands coming up to cover his eyes. He staggers back, hits the wall and hunches over, feeling sick. ‘Everyone will and everything is going to be his and…’ He opens his eyes only to look at the palms of his hands, too close to his face to be able to see the lifelines there but still not all black. He fears that the song will start to play again if he closes his eyes for too long. ‘You need to leave.’

‘ _We_ need to leave.’

‘No. I can’t. I – ‘ Daryl shakes his head, presses the palms of his hands into his eyes until it hurts. ‘I have to stay.’

Paul wriggles his fingers between Daryl’s hands and face and pulls them back down. ‘Why?’

There was a reason. Back when this all began, there was a reason why he didn’t mind being here. Before the ice cream and the books and the wives who stroke his cheek, before he pretended to be younger than he is, or maybe after, in between. It got lost along the way. Warped. The reason. He, too.

He looks at Paul, who is still so handsome that it makes his chest ache. ‘I’m going to kill him,’ he remembers. ‘I can’t leave yet because I’m going to kill him.’

‘Daryl…’

‘I will,’ the teenager promises even though the mission had faded over the past couple of days. His mind is hurting, always competing with his heart. Everything got easier since he’s forgotten who the real enemy is. Since he bowed, and knelt, and broke.

But he remembers, despite the fact that Negan makes him laugh with his crude jokes and sometimes plucks his book out of his hands to toss it over a shoulder, claiming he shouldn’t bother to read crap like that when they can play some ping pong instead. He likes ping pong now. Negan says he still sucks at it.

‘Not today, not tomorrow,’ Daryl says. He’s not sure why not today. Why not tomorrow. Yesterday. There have been so many chances. Negan makes him carry Lucille all the time. The man has even fallen asleep on the couch a couple of times, head in the lap of one of his wives and a corkscrew on the bar next to Daryl.  He could have done it.

He feels sick.

‘I’ll do it,’ he whispers. ‘I’ve done it before. So many, I’ve lost count.’

‘ _Stop_ ,’ Paul urges, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. ‘They need you back home. _Maggie_ needs you.’

He desperately wants to believe the man but he doesn’t want to find out that he’s being lied to. Even if she’s alive, she won’t want to see him. Maybe she had shouted for him back in the forest, maybe she’d tried to crawl after the truck as he got taken away, but she must have realized by now…

It’s on him.

Of course it is.

‘You promised him, Daryl.’

Blue eyes meet blue eyes. The boy blinks hazily, ‘what?’

‘You promised Glenn that you would look after her, remember? Back at Alexandria, when she found out that she was pregnant. Glenn told you that you would have to help out and you did. You carried jugs filled with water for her, right?’

He nods because he remembers.

‘You can’t bail now,’ Paul gives him a faint smile. ‘She needs you. And you promised Glenn.’

‘How do you know that? You weren’t there.’

‘She told me,’ Paul whispers. ‘She’s at Hilltop, Daryl. And she’s waiting for you and she told me all these stories… Please. Just come home with me.’

Daryl opens his mouth but the sound of running footsteps causes him to freeze and fall silent. With wide eyes, he looks around the room but he already knows that there’s nowhere to hide for Paul. Wordlessly, they shove each other aside to take the other one’s place. Paul pressed against the wall now with one of his knives in his hand and Daryl stumbling to the middle of the room just in time.

The door opens.

Daryl turns. ‘Wait, Paul, _no_!’

The door closes.

Daryl watches how Paul darts forward, how the knife blinks and Sherry’s eyes widen in fright at his shout. She tries to turn but Paul grabs her by the shoulders from behind, curling one arm around her while pushing the knife into the soft skin of her neck.

There’s no blood.

The knife stills.

Sherry breathes through her nose, grabbing hold of Paul’s forearm but not fighting him. She tries to look at the knife but can’t see and focusses on Daryl instead. ‘Go now,’ she says.

Daryl stares at her.

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ she says sharply, ‘you have to go _now_! The rest of the guards are in the game room, the girls are distracting them but I don’t know for how long. Please. You have to leave now.’

‘Let her go.’

Paul glances at him before lowering the knife and taking a step back. There’s a dismayed frown on his face but he doesn’t say anything.

‘Here,’ Sherry holds out her hand, palm upwards, offering him something. A key.

He recognizes it immediately. With a shaking hand he reaches out before he even realizes that he’s going to take it. It’s warm to his touch. Always has been, from the moment Aaron had given it to him in that garage next to his house.

‘Take you friend,’ Sherry says. ‘And just go.’

‘Come with me,’ Daryl breathes as his fingers curl around the key. He looks up at her. ‘Come with us.’

Her eyes are filled with tears when she looks at him. Big brown eyes, the color of honey when the lights hit them just right, and a heartbreaking smile around pink lips. She brushes his hair out of his face. ‘Come here,’ she whispers, drawing him into a fierce hug. She kisses his temple.

He hugs her back, ‘please…’

‘Go,’ she pushes him away, into Paul’s arms. ‘Just _go_!’

 

 

They run through the hall, down the corridor and burst through the door that leads to the little parking lot at the side of the sanctuary. Daryl knows that’s where his bike is parked. He knows every inch of this place by now. With Paul hot on his heels, he runs over to the machine. Palms gliding over familiar metal, fingers curling around handlebars once more. He’s about to swing a leg over to slide into the seat when there’s a noise behind them.

Fat Joey rounds the corner.

‘Hey, Daryl,’ the man greets before his gaze lands on Paul. ‘What the hell? Who are you?’

‘I’m Paul,’ he says. ‘I’m…’

‘He’s from the outpost North of here,’ Daryl says quickly. ‘Wanted to show him the bikes.’

Paul nods.

Fat Joey narrows his eyes, ‘right. I thought you guys weren’t supposed to be here until the end of the week?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Paul glances at Daryl, ‘we just got here, so – I mean, it’s just me for now. Scouted ahead. You know how the roads can be. All clear though,’ he flashes the man a smile, ‘one of these yours?’

Fat Joey is silent for a second. Then he takes a couple of steps back to reach for both the walkie-talkie and gun on his belt. ‘Code orange,’ he says as soon as he hits the right button, ‘code orange at-‘

And then he says nothing at all. His mouth falls open in horror, eyes bulging as he looks down at his own chest. The tip of a machete sticks out from between his ribs. Trembling hands come up to touch the metal, confusion quickly morphing into final moments of agony before he sinks to his knees.

The machete is drawn back. And then thrusted into his brain.

Dwight lets go of the handle when the body sags to the side. He looks down at the Savior, then wipes his nose on the back of his hand before bending down to grab the walkie-talkie. There’s chatter on the channels, someone asking what’s going on, code orange _where_?

‘This is D,’ Dwight says, cutting through the noise. ‘Code green,’ he looks at Daryl as he says the words. ‘I repeat, code green. Fat Joey just saw his own shadow and pissed himself as usual. All good.’ He lowers the device. ‘Did Sherry give you the key?’

Daryl nods.

‘Good. I opened the gate for you.’ He glances at Paul, ‘I saw you go in. You’re his friend?’

‘Yes.’

Dwight nods. ‘Here,’ he throws the walkie-talkie to Paul. ‘He’s going to be pissed when he finds out the kid is gone. He’ll come looking. This one is long range, so you’ll have a heads-up.’

Paul frowns but catches the radio, slipping it into one of the pockets of his trench coat. ‘Thank you.’

‘Give this to Rick,’ Dwight says to Daryl as he grabs the Colt Python from where it was hidden under his shirt at the small of his back. ‘Tell him… Tell him I’m sorry.’

The sight of the familiar gun causes Daryl’s heart to bleed in his chest. He takes a cautious step forward and snatched it out of the man’s hand, checking the chamber just how Rick had taught him and then aiming it at Dwight.

The man doesn’t seem surprised. A look of resignation passes over his scarred face.

‘Daryl,’ Paul says softly behind him. ‘We should go.’

The boy hesitates.

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ Paul urges.

‘This don’t make us square,’ Daryl tells Dwight. ‘You wanna make shit right? You take Sherry and get the hell out of here.’

Dwight swallows and works his jaw. ‘Leave now,’ he says. ‘Before I sound the alarm.’

Daryl stuffs the gun behind his belt and turns on the spot, running back to the bike and unlocking it. With a grunt, he pulls it off the standard, backing it up until he can  make the turn. Then he slides into the seat, starting the engine and shifting it into gear.

‘Let’s go.’

Paul doesn’t need to be told twice. He grabs hold of Daryl’s shoulder and slides into the small seat behind him. Heavy boots find the pegs easily, hands on the narrow hips of the teenager before he shifts closer and loops his arm around his waist instead.

‘Good?’

‘Yeah.’ Paul puts one hand on the gas tank so he can brace himself and won’t slide too far into the boy’s frame when they have to break and Daryl immediately knows that it’s not his first time on the back of a bike.

He glances one last time at the body of Fat Joey, at Dwight who takes a step back so he can pass freely, and then opens the gas.

The bike roars.

Paul’s hand tightens on his hip.

Daryl’s foot leaves the ground and they’re gone.

 

 

The ride to Hilltop is shorter than Daryl thought it would be.

That’s a good thing. He barely has enough time to wrap his head around what happened back at the sanctuary. He thinks about Sherry and Dwight, how he hates him and cares about her, about Frankie and Arat, about what will happen when Negan finds out that he’s gone.

It’s not until the gates of Hilltop appear on the horizon that he realizes that he will have to face Maggie now. There’s still a nagging sense of doubt in the back of his head that maybe Paul had been lying to him after all, but it’s slowly fading. There’s no reason why he would lie.

He would have come back for Sasha. For Rick and Michonne, for Carl, for any of them.

For Paul, himself, even.

He would have. Eventually.

As they drive up to the gates, he lowers their speed until the bike is crawling forward with just enough speed to keep it steady. It purrs beneath him and Daryl hopes that it can be mistaken for a car returning by anyone who won’t see him come in.

Paul hops off the back to signal the men on guard duty. The gates open.

Hilltop hasn’t changed a thing in the short amount of time he’s been away. Barrington house looms in the distance and people are milling about as usual. The blacksmith’s hammer clangs onto metal while the chickens in the pens on the side make a racket when a girl walks past them. People sit on the steps of their trailers. A woman is clipping laundry to a line so it can dry in the breeze.

Paul walks beside the bike and directs him to a parking spot next to a couple of cars. He watches how the boy parks and smiles. ‘Maggie is probably in my trailer, so…’

‘Yeah, I don’t wanna see her.’

Paul falls silent.

Daryl avoids his eyes and scratches at his cheek nervously, ‘just – not right now, I don’t… I can’t…it’s late anyway and she should rest, right? So…’

‘Okay,’ Paul says slowly.

‘I can sleep in one of the cars,’ Daryl says with a glance at the vehicles.

‘You’re not sleeping in a car,’ the man says as he folds his arms in front of his chest. ‘People know you’re here. Maggie is going to find out, and soon. She wants to see you, Daryl.’

‘No.’

‘She just wants to _see_ you, you won’t even have to talk to her if you don’t want to but-‘

‘ _No_. Just… tomorrow, okay? I can’t, - just, please?’

Paul sighs and hangs his head for a second. ‘Okay,’ he glances up at the boy. ‘But I’m going to tell her that you’re here. That you’re doing … okay,’ he says after a moment of hesitation, ‘and that you will talk to her tomorrow morning. It’s not fair to leave her in the dark, Daryl.’

The teenager sighs and nods. ‘Yeah. Okay. Tell her that then. Just keep her away from me for now.’

The scout looks like he has something to say about that but just sighs again. ‘I’ll be right back. Stay here.’

 

 

It doesn’t take him long to return.

Daryl sits on his bike and fidgets with Rick’s gun, trying to keep busy and his head down so he won’t notice how many people are gawking. After about fifteen minutes, the familiar sound of Paul’s boots on the muddy earth draws his gaze up.

Paul is not alone.

‘Merle,’ Daryl breathes as he stares at his big brother.

The man is staring right back, eyes wide and mouth slightly open as he stops walking.

Daryl slides off the bike and puts the gun away. He takes a hesitant step towards his blood but stops when he sees that Merle’s gaze is on his clothes. The black boots, the new jeans, white shirt, leather jacket, the red scarf; he’d almost forgotten who he now looked like.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, not knowing what else to say. ‘I-‘m… I’m just – I’m so sorry and…’

Merle strides over to him. Mouth tight, eyes dark.

‘Please,’ Daryl whimpers, ‘I didn’t mean for any of it to happen and – ‘

‘Jesus Christ,’ Merle whispers as he scoops his baby brother up in his arms, burying his hand in the dark hair and hugging him as tightly as he can. ‘Thank God, monster. I… I thought… Oh, _thank God_.’

Daryl throws his arms around his brother’s neck, wraps his legs around his waist and just holds on. He can feel it when Merle’s shoulders begin to shake, when his body starts to get wrecked by silent sobs, the tears hot on his neck when Merle buries his face into the crook. Desperate fingers dig into the leather jacket, into his hair.

‘Thought you were dead,’ Merle says as he tightens his hold, talking in between quiet sobs. ‘ _Shit_ , monster.’

Daryl pulls himself closer to his brother, trying to disappear in his chest. His own tears burn in his eyes. ‘Same,’ he whisper when the first spill over his lashes.

 

 

Merle leads him to Barrington house and up the stairs, an arm curled around his shoulders protectively, keeping him tucked into his side at all times. Daryl keeps one arm looped around his waist, not really seeing where his brother is taking him as he hides into his bigger frame.

‘Sit down, baby bro,’ Merle murmurs into his hair before gently pushing him onto a couch. He sits down next to him. Rough fingers stroke his cheek, forcing his gaze up. ‘Damn,’ the older Dixon mutters, ‘what the hell have they done to you?’

‘I’m fine,’ Daryl says automatically.

‘Like hell you are.’

He doesn’t have the energy to lie anymore but he doesn’t want to tell the truth either. So he doesn’t say anything, just looks back at his brother and hopes that he understands.

He does.

Merle puts a warm hand on the back of his neck and draws him in, guiding his forehead to his shoulder. ‘Come here,’ he says softly, running a hand through his brother’s hair, ‘just come here, monster.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Daryl whispers.

‘I’ll always call you that and it ain’t ever true,’ Merle counters. _‘It ain’t ever true_ , you hear me? That ain’t what you are. You’re good. You’re _so_ good and so strong and… it’s going to be okay. I’ll make this right. Whatever they did to you; I’ll make it right, I promise.’

Daryl closes his eyes.

 

 

It’s late in the afternoon when Daryl wakes up. The soft sunlight makes his room pleasantly warm. He snuggles under the blankets with a content little moan, pulling them higher over his shoulder and nuzzling his pillow.

‘You look like a damn cat.’

Daryl turns towards the sound of his brother’s voice and slowly opens his eyes. He’s in one of the bedrooms at Barrington house. His brother is sitting on a chair next to his bed. Shoulders hunched as he leans on his knees with his elbows. He’s holding a book in one hand. There are bags under his blue eyes, deeper lines on his face than usual. He looks tired but he smiles when Daryl blinks at him sleepily.

He reaches out with one hand and strokes the teenager’s dark hair. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Daryl echoes. He closes his eyes again and moves his hand up to tug his pillow closer. Something scrapes over the sheets as he moves. With a frown, he pushes the blankets back and looks at his forearm.

There’s white gauze wrapped around it.

Dread starts to pool in Daryl’s stomach. It quickly turns into horror when he realizes that he’s not wearing a shirt or his jeans anymore. He doesn’t remember getting to bed last night. The last thing he can recall is curling up next to his brother on a couch somewhere and closing his eyes. With shaking hands, he pushes the blankets down further.

There are bandages on his thighs, too.

He looks up at Merle with wide, horror-filled eyes.

‘Yeah,’ his brother says softly. ‘I saw.’

Daryl twists his hands into the sheets and squeezes.

‘Doctor had a look at them. You were out of it, he just disinfected them and put the gauze over it. He said you’d done it yourself.’

Daryl looks down at his hands. ‘I – it… yeah.’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘Made it easier,’ Daryl says as he draws his knees to his chest, looping his arms around his legs so he can rest his chin on his knees. ‘I won’t do it no more.’

‘I hope that’s true,’ Merle nods. ‘I know this was hard and.. you know, sometimes you need something to get through it, but… Please, don’t do it again. Ever again. We can.. We can talk, now. We can talk about things and maybe that helps, or.. I don’t know.’ He sighs and rubs at the back of his neck.

Daryl nods. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

‘That’s not…’ Merle shifts in his seat. ‘That’s not the only thing I… that’s not the only thing I want to, like, address.’ He winces at his own words. ‘I mean…. The doctor checked you over. And… God,’ he scratches at his cheek before meeting his brother’s eyes again. ‘The scars on your back, your chest… he said they are old. Not from that place or even… they’re from before.’

Daryl freezes.

Merle looks down at the book that’s still in his hand. He tilts it so his little brother can read the title.

 _Treating survivors of childhood abuse_.

‘Doc thought it would help if I… understood.’ Merle scoffs and shakes his head, looking away. ‘I understand, a’right. I just… I didn’t know he…’ He glances at the boy again. ‘It was dad, right?’

Daryl swallows thickly. ‘He didn’t mean to.’

Merle inhales sharply through his nose, fingers going white on the book. ‘No, he did,’ he says. ‘Shit. _Shit_.’ He tosses the book onto the bed and rakes his fingers over his scalp. ‘Fuck, I thought… I thought he would leave you alone after…. I didn’t think he’d do it to you. Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me?’

Daryl stares at where the book has landed, right next to his feet. ‘Weren’t so bad at the start. I just fucked up a couple of times. Broke things around the house.’

‘You were a goddamn kid, of course you break things around the house,’ Merle snarls as he suddenly pushes himself out of the chair, stalking over towards the window. He leans against the frame, breathing hard through clenched teeth. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t change nothing. I just messed up a lot and he taught me good.’

‘Taught ya good,’ Merle mimics with a sneer. ‘Yeah, I know all about him teaching shit. Fuck. I thought he wouldn’t do it to you, that is was enough to…’

The youngest Dixon glances up and frowns, ‘enough to what?’

‘Do it to me.’ Merle’s hands shake against the windowsill. ‘He did the same to me. I thought that would be enough, that he would leave you alone, but… Shit. _Fuck_!’ He turns around to look at his brother. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Dare.’

Daryl stares at his brother. ‘You left.’

The color drains from Merle’s face. He slowly walks back towards the bed. ‘That when he started?’

‘That’s when it got bad enough to…’ Daryl rubs at the scar on his collarbone. ‘He used to toss me around a bit but not… like, with his belt.’

Merle sinks back into the chair. ‘I’m so sorry. I just- I had to leave. I would have killed him otherwise.’

‘Wish you would have.’

The oldest Dixon reaches out tentatively, the tips of his fingers finding his brother’s soft, brown hair. ‘You don’t mean that, monster.’

‘No,’ Daryl chokes on fresh tears. ‘I still want him back. I want dad.’

‘I’m sorry, kiddo,’ Merle says softly, voice almost breaking on the words. ‘It’s just me now.’

Daryl whimpers and presses his face into his knees, sobbing silently.

Merle sits and stares and doesn’t know what to do.

 

 

 


	82. I'm here now

 

* * *

 

 

They talk.

The words feel like they’re dragged from his heart through his throat, painful and raw and bloody when they finally roll off his tongue. His ears hurt from the words his brother spits out, the truth stripping him of the last love he had for his dad while his heart tries desperately to hold on to the memories of soft touches and little kings. Silences ring out between them to allow the hurt to sink in, to let the wounds bleed freely before they bind them up with wary glances and hesitant touches; fingers curling around the seams of shirts and tugging the other closer, awkward arms around bony or muscled shoulders.

He now knows why Merle left. Why he never left a note and just ran. He just couldn’t take it anymore.

Daryl admits that there must be something wrong with him because he sometimes misses that belt on his back, the easy way to learn a lesson, misses the pain as much as he misses the soft touches and he watches how his brother’s heart breaks for him.

They sit next to each other, the infamous Dixon brothers, broken in different ways.

‘I always tried to protect you,’ Merle says. ‘It weren’t enough – I know that, but… I tried. With my friends, too, you know. They looked after you when I weren’t around.’

Daryl nods. There had always been people looking after him in that small town, offering him rides when he’d missed the school bus or Will had forgotten to pick him up, walking him home when they saw him trying to get some cigarettes for his dad late at night. He hadn’t always known them, but most had been familiar faces from the bars.

‘Was a fucked up place to grow up in,’ the older Dixon mutters as he kicks his boots together. ‘That goddamn trailer park. That cabin.’ He shakes his head and narrows his eyes as he looks out of the window. ‘I just tried to keep you safe, but God knows Will made it difficult with his weird ass friends. Were some fucked up people in that group, lemme tell ya.’

‘Like Jerry?’

Merle’s hands curl around the edge of the matrass. ‘Yeah. Shits like Jerry.’

Daryl just looks at his brother because he knows that Jerry pissed blood for weeks but the memory of why is fuzzy. He can piece enough of it together though. His bedroom at night, the man looming over him while he’d been sleeping. He knows what people can do now, what they’ve always been able to do to each other.

‘Just lost it,’ Merle mutters. ‘Beat him to a fucking pulp. Thought I’d killed him but they managed to patch him up just fine in the end.’ He almost sounds sorry about that. He brings one hand to his mouth and bites on a knuckle, ‘I know it ain’t like that but…’ he hesitates for a second, ‘when you told me you liked guys? I just… Fuck, spend half my life trying to protect you from guys like that – I know it ain’t like that,’ he says hurriedly when Daryl opens his mouth, ‘was just all I knew, okay? That and prison. Weren’t ever… normal, to be… Shit,’ he rubs at his forehead and sighs. ‘I talked a lot with Jesus. He’s… he’s a good guy.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters as he swings his legs.

‘I just tried to do what’s best for you. What I thought was best. I’m sorry it weren’t enough. It was stupid,’ Merle huffs. ‘Made Will promise he wouldn’t hurt you – just me. Like his word meant anything, I should have fucking known better.’

‘Maybe.’

Merle looks at him.

Daryl shrugs, ‘at least you got out. That’s a good thing, and it weren’t all bad with Will. Like… he kept me fed and everything. Loved me. Probably would have left my ass if I weren’t home when he packed up but, you know. He loved me.’

‘He did. Doesn’t excuse what he did though.’

‘I know that,’ Daryl nods. ‘I know that now.’

Merle sighs. ‘I’m so sorry, monster.’

‘Yeah,’ he shifts closer to his big brother and leans into his side. ‘Paul said you and Sasha brought Maggie here after…’

Merle curls an arm around his shoulders, puts his cheek on his dark hair. ‘Yeah. Had to get her to a doctor. She’s fine now. Hurting something fierce, of course, but… she’s going to be okay. She’s a spitfire, that one. I get why you like her so much.’

Daryl closes his eyes. ‘Yeah. Thanks, you know? For lookin’ after them.’

‘Of course,’ Merle tightens his hold on him. ‘Owed her. Owed _you_.’ He presses a kiss to his brother’s hair. ‘I was all kinds of pissed at first, when I saw you with them, right? Just didn’t feel right, you treating them like blood. It took me a while to realize that we both could be blood. That, you know,’ Merle looks away, ‘maybe they could teach me a thing or two about being family.’

‘That why you started hanging out with Rick and Michonne? Glenn and Maggie? Carl said you were meeting the family,’ Daryl says with a hesitant smile.

‘Yeah. That’s why. They’re good people. I’m… I’m so sorry about Glenn, monster. You have no idea.’

‘Me too,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Real sorry.’ He bites on his lip and glances up at his brother. ‘I don’t want to face Maggie.’

‘She doesn’t blame you. Nobody does.’

‘Still.’

Merle sighs. ‘I know it’s hard, but sometimes we have to go through these things. Like this,’ he nudges his little brother, ‘this is awkward as fuck, being two little bleedin’ hearts and blubberin’ about things long in the past, but it helps, you know. Sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet.’

‘’s gonna hurt.’

‘Of course it is,’ Merle smirks. ‘But you’re a Dixon. And we don’t run from nothing, tough as nails.’

Daryl worries his bottom lip.

‘Hey,’ Merle grabs his chin and forces his gaze up. ‘She lost her husband. Will you make her lose her son, too, just because you’re too chicken?’

‘No.’

‘Good,’ Merle runs his hand through his brother’s hair. ‘It’s going to be a bloody war, monster. And she’s going to need us before it’s all over. Gonna have to do things…’ he nods, ‘bad things.’

‘I’m ready.’

Merle looks at him.

‘I’m going to be ready,’ Daryl corrects with a slight blush, knowing that his hands and heart are still too shaky to be trusted right now. ‘I will be. Soon.’

‘Good.’

‘I made Glenn a promise: that I would look after Maggie.’

Merle pulls him closer. ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly what we’re gonna do.’

They talk for a while longer, secrets melting away between them until they can see each other much more clearly. Fond memories are shared until Daryl’s heart feels a little stronger and fuller, Merle laughs at the stories his little brother is now willing to tell from all the years he’s missed. The shadows in the corner of Daryl’s eye slink further away, into tiny nooks and crannies. He doesn’t doubt that they will come leaping back in the dead of night, or when he stops watching, but for now; they stay quiet.

It’s late when Merle gets up and tells him goodnight. The door opens and he slips out of the room.

Just before the door closes, he hears Maggie’s voice.

‘How is he? Can I-‘

And the door shuts and all Daryl can hear is the rumbling of Merle’s answer and their fading footsteps.

 

 

He doesn’t sleep much that night.

The first night he’d been exhausted but now he notices all the groans the old house makes as it settles. The footsteps he doesn’t recognize, voices of people he doesn’t know. Thoughts are running wild in his head as he stares up at the strange ceiling.

He thinks about Will and Merle, their mom, that trailer park he’s left behind so long ago now. The first walker he ever killed, the bombing of Atlanta, the first time he’d ever laid eyes on that strange group of people back at the quarry. About the cookie Glenn had snuck him, about Lori who’d told him that he was already too far gone and still cared for him, about Shane spitting at Will and still offering him protection.

About the CDC and how they lost Sophia on the road, how he’d been so sure that he would find her and had failed.

About the farm and Hershel, who had patched him up countless of times and had offered him a home even when the building had burned.

That hard winter of hunger and fear. But also that winter of curling up next to Shane, of playing silly games with Carl and trying to make Beth smile.

The prison with its safety and dangers, of the battles they’d won and lost, of the walls that had come down and Beth’s hand in his as they ran for their lives, leaving it all behind.

About finding it again and losing parts of it, about the church which had been just four walls and a roof. The road, the road, the road and then Aaron and Eric and walls only to have it all come down again.

About Hilltop and the Sanctuary, about Negan and Sherry and Dwight and Frankie. About Lucille.

He thinks about how they’re still here.

They’re still here. Despite of all of that, because of all of that; they’re still here.

Survivors, Abraham had called them.

The walking dead, Rick had said.

Last man standing, Beth had predicted.

Daryl sits up and stares at the windows through which he can see the moon. That can’t be true. He can’t be the last one standing because that would mean that he’d failed them all, again. That he hadn’t been able to keep any of his promises, that he’d ran, probably. Chickened out when they had needed him most.

There’s always a cost, after all.

He doesn’t ever want his family to be the price he has to pay in order to keep his own heart beating. It wouldn’t be worth it. Without them, there’s no point to any of it.

And they’ve come so far. They’ve lost so much already.

He’s got to make that count for something.

There’s a reason why he’s haunted. Why there are shadows hiding in the darkness, why he sees Glenn and Will and Shane. Why he can’t bear to face Maggie, why he gets sick when he thinks about Carl staring at him at the Sanctuary.

Guilt.

Fear.

Guilt, guilt, guilt, _guilt_ and it eats him up.

Consumes him.

Turns him into ashes. Useless and spend.

He can’t let it happen. He can’t be useless when Maggie needs him, when he has promised Glenn.

He remembers sitting on the steps of the church together, his heart too full and tears burning in his eyes when he told Glenn that it would have been easier if everyone stopped being so nice all the time. That it would have helped if someone just said that it was all his fault that Hershel had died, that he could and should have done something, that Shane wasn’t there anymore because of him and that he was all fucked up for killing Gareth and bursting into laughter afterwards.

He gets up and walks to the dresser in the corner. He sits down on the chair and stares at himself in the mirror. Pale due to the moonlight, hair falling into his small eyes. The beauty spot on his cheek, sharp cheekbones. One hand comes up, nails scrape over his jawline. The odd hair, more on his chin.

He will need to learn how to shave soon.

He stares into his own eyes while he thinks about how Glenn had promised to teach him how.

Blue eyes. Smaller than Merle’s, darker, too. They don’t change to green when he tilts his head like Paul’s sometimes do. They don’t change even though he has.

This is who you are now, he thinks.

‘You killed him.’

His voice echoes in the empty room. He narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little to the side, fingers drumming on the dresser.

‘You killed him and you’re sorry and that doesn’t change a thing.’

Get up and go to war, Rick had said in his story, that’s how you survive if you’re already dead.

But Glenn had refused to accept that. We’re not them, he’d said and Daryl had loved him for it when he was younger.

Loves him for it, still. Because he’s not dead. And he’s not going to be useless.

And he’s not going to break his promise.

‘You killed him and you’re sorry.’

He’s got a lifetime to make up for it. It won’t be enough, but at least he gets to try.

 

 

Paul slips into his room with a tray of food. ‘Breakfast,’ he announces.

‘Yeah, I don’t want any,’ Daryl gets up from the chair he’d been sitting on all night and grabs his leather jacket. It’s still early, dawn is just breaking over the high walls. ‘Thanks though,’ he mutters as he stomps his boots on. ‘Where are their graves?’

Paul frowns as he puts the tray on the bed. ‘On the side of the house, but – Daryl, you need to eat something.’

‘No.’

‘ _Daryl_.’

‘I need to see him. Right now – I know,’ he cuts in when Paul opens his mouth. ‘I haven’t even seen Maggie yet even though I promised to do it yesterday. I’m sorry, but I need to see him first.’

‘I know you do, but just sit down for a second and have breakfast with me.’

‘No,’ Daryl zips his jacket up and brushes past the man.

‘Let me walk you there then.’

‘I want to be alone.’

‘Of course,’ Paul opens the door for him and follows him out into the corridor, steering him the right way to the grand staircase leading down. ‘But let me walk you there. I’ll show you where he is.’

Daryl nods because he’s not sure which way he should go. Of course Hilltop is not very big and he’d find the place eventually, but he’s afraid that he’ll bump into Maggie before he’s ready. The house is silent however. There’s no one except for the guards outside. The air is cool as it brushes past his face.

‘To the left,’ Paul murmurs. ‘Behind those trees, next to the wall.’

Daryl can feel that his hands are shaking. Every step is a little harder now that he’s getting closer. He takes a deep breath and glances at the man walking next to him. Paul looks relaxed. He’s not wearing his heavy coat, hat and gloves right now. Just his white shirt and brown pants, heavy boots padding softly over the grass. His long hair frames his face, brushes over his shoulders.

The teenager reaches out and takes the man’s hand in his.

Paul glances down, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

‘Just – ‘ Daryl blushes, ‘it ain’t because… Just until we get there.‘

‘It’s fine,’ Paul says as he twines their fingers together. ‘You don’t have to do it alone.’

Together they walk towards the graves. It’s easier when he can squeeze Paul’s fingers but his breath still hitches when he sees the crosses and disturbed earth. Two crosses next to each other. Green balloons are tied to one of them.

Daryl looks up at Paul. ‘Enid is here?’

‘Yes. That’s Abraham’s grave.’

‘Doesn’t make sense.’

Paul offers him a fragile smile. ‘She made a mistake.’

‘Right. Thanks for walking me over,’ he pulls his hand back.

‘Do you want me to leave or wait for you?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I’ll be here a while.’

‘That’s okay. I’ll wait. Take your time,’ Paul squeezes his shoulder before walking back down the path. He sits down against Barrington House out of earshot but within sight.

Daryl walks over to the graves. Abraham’s first.

‘Sorry it happened like this, man,’ he murmurs, nervous fingers slipping into the pockets of his jeans. He wobbles on the balls of his feet. Abraham had always been a fighter. A soldier. It shouldn’t have ended with him on his knees, helpless to do anything, unarmed and defenseless. That was never him.

 He doesn’t know what else to say and knows that the man would have understood, so he walks on to the next grave.

Two sticks bound together with twine. A small pile of rocks at the base.

‘Glenn,’ he says as he sinks to his knees, bowing his head and taking a shuddering breath. Trembling hands on the cool earth, digging into it just to feel connected to something. Anything. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispers. His throat feels tight, like someone is squeezing it, and tears are burning in his eyes. ‘I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I know that ain’t enough, just words, bull, but – I am. I am really sorry.’

He looks up at the cross. Takes another shaky breath and tells the man everything.

From the moment the bat landed, the blindfold over his eyes, the men he’d killed in that room. That cell. The song. The dog food, the cold, the ghosts messing with his head. He tells him about the Saviors, about becoming Negan, bowing and kneeling and almost breaking. About Alexandria, the bat on his shoulder and the graves. About how much that had hurt, how he’d screamed and raged and nearly died because it had all hurt _so much_.

‘But I’m still here,’ he says as tears roll down his cheeks. It’s harder to tell the rest. He can’t lie to Glenn. He can’t tell him that it had been his plan all along, that it had been fake, that he’d still been thinking about killing that monster when he’d buried his face in Negan’s neck to enjoy the comfort the man had offered. He can’t lie. So he tells the truth; that it’d been easier. That he had been so tired and so scared and it hadn’t mattered anymore that it had been Negan because he just wanted someone to pick him up like Shane had done so often, to comfort him like Glenn would have done. He tells him about the wives he now cares about, about Paul who’d appeared like a ghost and had saved him from himself more so than from Negan.

How he’d almost been too late.

He hadn’t wanted to leave because it was easier to stay. To never face Rick again, never have to see the hurt he’d caused, never have to look Maggie in the eye ever again.

‘I ain’t running no more,’ he says as he digs his hands into the earth, thinking about all the promises he’s made throughout the years. The ones about never kneeling, the ones about asking for help, the ones about being a big brother. The one he’d made while his cheeks had been stained with embarrassment, Paul smiling at him with his kiss still on his cheek; _don’t run_.

 ‘I’ll make this right. As right as I can,’ he promises. He wipes his cheeks dry and gets to his feet. ‘I love you.’

 

 

_Glenn is sitting on a desk in Barrington house while Maggie sits on the chair next to him. They both follow the teenage boy with their eyes as he paces restlessly, fingers fidgeting nervously with the zipper of his jacket. They’re waiting for him to start talking. He’s the one who asked to have this conversation, after all._

_‘I kissed Jesus and I’m bisexual,’ Daryl blurts out when the nerves threaten to make him throw up._

_Maggie’s eyebrows shoot up and Glenn’s mouth opens in surprise._

_There’s a tense silence._

_‘Okay,’ Maggie says slowly, processing the information, ‘I mean – you kissed Jesus?’_

_‘On his cheek. It’s fine. He turned me down, we don’t have to talk about it anymore,’ Daryl says hurriedly as he moves towards the door. ‘Just wanted you to know before Rick runs his mouth or something. It’s just – he kinda figured it out and… well. Now you know, okay?’_

_‘Stop,’ Maggie orders as she gets up. Daryl stops. She smiles and brushes his hair out of his eyes. ‘Thank you for telling us,’ she kisses his forehead._

_Glenn just looks at them._

_Maggie clears her throat pointedly._

_‘What?’ the Korean asks, ‘oh – yeah! Totally. Thanks for telling us, Dare.’_

_Daryl looks at him with wary eyes._

_Glenn smiles back._

_Maggie rolls her eyes and clears her throat again._

_Glenn glances at her, ‘oh! Err… I love you?’ he ventures as he looks back at the boy, a little unsure of what he’s supposed to say._

_‘Are you serious right now?’ Maggie asks with a soft laugh._

_‘What?’ Glenn frowns. ‘Okay, yeah, you like guys and girls, that’s fine. What am I supposed to say about it?’ he demands to know._

_Maggie pulls Daryl into her side. ‘We love you,’ she tells the boy, ‘no matter who you like, okay? We love you, always. He’s just being stupid.’_

_Daryl relaxes against her._

_‘What the hell, are you serious?’ Glenn asks as he jumps off the desk. ‘You thought we wouldn’t be cool with that? That’s what you wanted me to say? Are you crazy?’ he laughs when he reaches for the boy, yanking him into his own chest before playfully trying to poke him in the stomach, causing Daryl to laugh and squirm in his arms. ‘We will always love you. No matter what, Dare. How many times do I have to tell you?’_

_The boy laughs, ‘just once more, China.’_

_Glenn growls as he pulls him close, wrapping his arms around him and putting his head on the teenager’s shoulder. ‘Korean,’ he corrects as a throwback to their first encounters. ‘I love you, you crazy redneck.’_

‘Daryl…’

The teenager finally tears his eyes away from the grave. Cheeks wet with tears once more and vision blurry as he looks at Enid, who is standing behind him. She looks unsure of what to do.

‘Hey,’ he whispers hoarsely as he wipes his tears away. After a beat, he walks over to her and hugs her tightly.

She loops her thin arms around his neck, pulling him close. ‘Hey,’ she whispers into his neck.

They stand there for a few minutes, hiding in each other’s arms.

‘You marked the wrong grave.’

She snorts as she steps out of his embrace.

‘He’d have called ya a dumbass,’ Daryl smiles through his tears.

‘Probably,’ she laughs, reaching up to dry his cheeks. ‘Jesus told me you were here. He said you didn’t want to see us.’

‘So you ignored his ass and snuck in anyway.’

‘Pretty much,’ the girl laughs. She tucks a strand of her brown hair behind one of her ears. ‘He said you were kept at the Sanctuary. Did you – did you see Carl?’

‘He’s okay,’ Daryl says quickly. ‘He mowed down a couple of Negan’s guys with a machine gun and Negan took him back to Alexandria. He won’t hurt him. I saw him while he was at the Sanctuary, he was fine. Tough as nails.’

Her shoulders sag with relief. ‘I thought that was the Dixon tagline.’

‘Well,’ Daryl smiles, ‘he _is_ my brother.’

 ‘Yeah,’ she says softly before she starts to rummage around in her pockets. ‘I got something for you. Maggie gave it to me, but I think it’s yours.’ She pulls her hand back and opens it to reveal Glenn’s pocket watch. ‘Maggie’s dad had given it to him.’

‘Hershel,’ the boy says hoarsely. He reaches out and lets his fingertips trail over the warmed metal. Then he brushes them over her fingers, curling them around the watch again. ‘She gave it to you. It’s yours. Just – just keep it safe, okay? It’s… its important.’

‘It’s yours.’

‘No,’ he smiles, working his jaw a little when he feels fresh tears burn in his eyes. ‘No, it’s… he would have wanted you to have it. And one day, you can give it to his kid, maybe. When they’re old enough, you know? You can pass it on. He’d want his kid to have it.’

‘Daryl…’

The teenager wipes his tears away roughly. ‘Done told you,’ he tries to joke, ‘they adopt you when you ain’t lookin’.’

Enid looks at the watch and then up at him. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers.

‘Yeah.’

Another sad smile. Another hesitant step and then another hug, tight and familiar by now. They hold onto each other, bound together by something more important than blood and genes.

He sighs as he puts his chin on her shoulder, rubbing the space between her shoulder blades comfortingly. ‘I need your help with something,’ he decides.

She pulls back with a curious look on her face. ‘With what?’

‘I need a new jacket and shirt.’

Another smile, warmer now and stronger, too. ‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘You really do.’ She grabs his hand and tugs him down the path, stumbling before they start to run. Faces wet with tears but flushed with excitement when they reach Paul, who smiles at the sight of the two teenagers.

‘Hey Jesus,’ Enid beams, flicking her long hair over her shoulder. ‘Can we raid your closet one more time?’

Paul’s gaze flickers over Daryl’s frame. ‘What do you need?’

The girl squeezes the boy’s hand. ‘Please tell me you have flannel.’

 

 

The flannel shirt Jesus has doesn’t quite fit. The arms are the right length but he hasn’t yet grown into the broader shoulders needed for the shirt. None of that matters in the end. Enid disappears for a couple of minutes while Paul cuts the red scarf up so Daryl has a couple of new rags he can put into his back pocket.

When Enid slips back into the room, she has a needle and thread. ‘Cut the sleeves off your jacket,’ she orders and Daryl uses Paul’s knife to do it.

With her tongue between her teeth for concentration, she starts to sew the sleeves to his leather jacket. It’s obviously something she’s never done before. Whenever Carol, Lori or Beth had mended a piece of clothing for him, they’d always made sure that the repairs were never visible. They always made it look almost new.

Enid screws up her nose when she inspects her own work. ‘Well, I mean – it works.’

‘The sleeves work, yeah?’ Daryl tease as he plucks the jacket out of her hands to look at it. ‘Didn’t sew them closed by accident?’

‘I mean, it will hold,’ the girl says as she rolls her eyes.

‘Of course it’ll hold.’ He tugs at one sleeve and it doesn’t come off. ‘Great. Thanks a lot, Enid.’

‘Sure. Oh, here’s the shirt Merle found you,’ she puts a simple black shirt with short sleeves on the bed. ‘I’ll let you get changed.’

‘Thanks,’ Daryl mutters. He waits until the door closes behind her before shrugging out of the white shirt Negan had given him. He folds it neatly, figuring that it will serve someone else better. At first, he’d wanted to burn it all. His boots and jeans and shirt and jacket, down to scarf, but that would be a waste. The boots are great. Watertight and sturdy, warm when he needs them to be. The jeans fit so he shouldn’t complain and with a different shirt and jacket, he won’t look like Negan anymore.

The black shirt fits perfectly. He puts the jacket on. The chest and back still made of smooth black leather, but the sleeves now checked, red and black, a little faded.

‘You look more like the Daryl I remember,’ Paul says from where he’s sitting on the bed. A fond smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth.

‘Yeah. Listen,’ he tugs at the lapels of the jacket before walking over to the bed and sitting down next to the man. ‘I didn’t even thank you for getting my ass out of that place, so – thanks.’

‘Of course.’ Paul shifts so he’s sitting sideways on the bed, facing the boy. ‘You look better, but this isn’t something you just _decide_ to get over. It’s not some switch you can flip. What happened to you? It will take time to recover, Daryl.’

‘I know that,’ Daryl nods. ‘After my dad - my real dad died? I wanted to die myself. Tried to do it, too. Gun in my mouth, but I couldn’t. I was too scared to pull the trigger, or maybe I just didn’t want it bad enough. After Shane died, I was just angry. Me and Rick both. Made the guy responsible kneel and Rick handed the machete to me. And I just tore him to pieces in the middle of that church and it felt so _good_.’

Paul looks away.

‘Glenn was disappointed too,’ Daryl says with a nod. ‘But I’m – I’m not a good person. I’ve done things. The worst kind of things but I’m still here because of them. And I try, right? I try to be better, to be good, but… I try, for them. And I know that this is going to be with me forever, but that’s the point. Because they changed me and this has, too. When my dad died, Shane was there. And when Shane died, Glenn was there. Maggie is here now. Merle,’ he bites on his bottom lip for a moment. ‘You are.’ He blushes a bit but still meets Paul’s gaze confidently.

The man smiles at him. He reaches out and offers his hand.

Daryl takes it, twining their fingers together again. He knows it’s nothing more than an offer of friendship and comfort, but his heart beat still jumps at the contact.

‘I am,’ Paul nods. ‘And I’ll be here, whenever you need me.’

That makes Daryl smile. He squeezes the hand. ‘Thought you said I was going to find out that you’re never here when I’d need you. Ain’t that what you said?’

‘I finally found something to stick around for, I guess,’ Paul huffs out a breath of laughter. He shoves the boy’s shoulder when Daryl gives him a smug look. ‘ _Maggie_ needs me. She needs us.’

Daryl takes a deep breath and runs his hands through his hair. ‘Yeah,’ he searches around the room and then gets up to pluck the black baseball bat from his pillow. ‘She does. And you were right; I promised Glenn I’d look after her. Ain’t going to chicken out now,’ he hesitates for a second. ‘She wanted to see me, right? Like, for real?’

‘Yes,’ Paul smiles. ‘For real. She’s been asking for you every two seconds. Sasha, too.’

‘Okay,’ he pulls the baseball cap backwards over his hair. ‘Can you take me to her, then?’

‘Of course. You’re keeping the cap?’ the man asks with a hint of surprise in his voice as he gets up.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods. ‘Glenn used to wear one, back when we met. He gave it to me. I lost it a while ago, this ain’t the same one, but… it reminds me of him. That’s why I like to wear one.’

 

 

Maggie is sitting at the table with her back to the door when Daryl steps inside. Her hair is cut short and she’s wearing one of Paul’s shirts. That’s all he can see right now. The scout has left him on the doorstep with an encouraging smile and gentle nudge.

Now he stares at Maggie’s back and he wants to run.

So far and so fast and –

Someone gets up from the couch in the corner. It’s Sasha. There’s so much joy and so much sadness on her face when she sees him, that it almost makes him cry. Her eyes light up as she stands, one hand on her heart as her gaze softens when she sees that his eyes are filled with unshed tears.

Maggie looks up at her friend. ‘What?’ she asks, even that single word warped by her thick accent.

Sasha smiles. ‘Someone is here to see you.’

She turns around. Her eyes go wide, her hands tremble when she pushes her chair back to rise. ‘Dare,’ she breathes.

He nods, biting on his lip as he stares at the floorboards.

‘Would you look at me? Please, Dare.’

He forces his gaze up, so scared of what he will see. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers when he finally meets her eye. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘It was,’ he whispers. ‘I know it was.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Maggie says firmly. ‘It wasn’t.’ She walks over to him and put her hands on his cheeks, forcing him to keep eye contact with her. ‘You’re one of the good things in this world. That’s what Glenn thought. And he would know, right?’ she smiles through her tears, ‘because he was one of the good things, too.’

She hugs him.

He’s tall enough to let his chin rest on her shoulder now.

‘He loved you so much,’ Maggie says with a small sob as her fingers dig into his back. ‘ _I_ love you so much, Dare. Oh, thank God you’re here. I was – I didn’t know what do when they took you, I just – ‘ she’s crying now, holding onto him so desperately.

Daryl takes a deep breath and hugs her just as tightly. ‘I’m here,’ he whispers and he feels her relax into his embrace. ‘I’m here now.’

 

 

 


	83. Not too soon

 

* * *

 

 

 

Paul smiles as he watches how Daryl and Maggie sit on the steps of his trailer. The boy is leaning back to enjoy the rays of sunshine, the black cap clipped to his belt while Maggie runs her fingers through his long hair. They talk quietly, their voices just a soft murmur in the early morning. A smile tugs at the corners of Maggie’s mouth while Daryl laughs, blue eyes just slits as he looks up at the woman, the fondness and love written all over his face.

It’s a rare sight to see them both relax, even though Paul knows it will only last for a couple more moments. Soon, Maggie will push herself to her feet and head out to talk to the men and women working in the kitchen to find out how low their stocks are running and which vegetables they need to start planting first. Daryl, in turn, will jump off the steps and run off towards the blacksmith, the guards, the guys who are in charge of maintaining the wall.

It’s only been a couple of days since Paul brought the boy back to Hilltop but the community has embraced him with a surge of love and protectiveness that has left him grateful. It’s never been a secret that he never considered Hilltop to be his home. He’s fond of the people, of course, but their willingness to follow Gregory of all people has left a sour taste in his mouth. When he speaks of Hilltop, he speaks with pride of all they have achieved, but not necessarily of all that they are.

That might change soon. Hilltop might not be the battle-hardened survivors colony that Alexandria is, the people here are softer, but for once he’s glad of that.

The refugees have been welcomed with open arms and kind words, no-one except for Gregory demanding to know how they were going to compensate for their stay. Even before the attack, with Merle and Sasha making quick work of the threat the walkers posed while Maggie took care of the sound coming from the car, rations had been delivered to Paul’s trailer, along with spare clothes and other items the small group would need.

Enid had been accepted with a barely raised eyebrow. She’d snuck in over the wall, enlisting the help of one of the guards who’d agreed to help because she seemed to know Maggie and Sasha. The girl integrated quickly, learning everyone’s names, who they were, where they’d come from and what their jobs were now. And unlike Gregory, she actually remembered the information.

Of course, the community had already met Daryl Dixon. Quick as a snake and stronger than he looks: the last time they’d seen him was when he’d broken a guy’s arm to come to Abraham’s aid. Of course they also knew him from the day after that: the boy reaching out to pet one of their cows with a hesitant smile on his face, or the laughter that came from Glenn, Maggie and the boy as they exited the medic trailer, Daryl holding a printed out ultra-scan imagine in his hands and running off to show it to Michonne after Maggie’s nod of consent.

It’s clear that the community had remembered both sides of the teenager. Everyone had been a little wary when Paul first brought the boy back, watching with trepidation as he slunk after him towards Barrington house but all fears melted when whispers of Negan’s punishments and the scars riddling the boy’s body had started to drift through the colony.

Paul hates Alex and Harlan for allowing that information to slip between the cracks.

He’s sure they didn’t mean any harm, somebody probably overheard them talking on the way back to the medical trailer after seeing to the boy’s self-inflicted wounds, but he still wishes they’d been more careful.

It doesn’t seem to bother Daryl, however. After hiding the first day in his room, he’d spend the second day reuniting with his family, saving the hardest part of facing Maggie and Sasha for last. Whatever fears he had, they’d quickly been dismissed by Maggie’s embrace. A night filled with tears, of course, the two of them curled up on the bed together, but they both woke up stronger the next day.

By now, the boy is a welcomed sight within the community. And unlike what anyone had expected, he’s not slinking in Merle’s shadow, hurt and traumatized by the events. Instead he walks beside Maggie, shoulders back and head held high before he darts away to take care of business.

Like Enid, he learns everyone’s name and helps people out with all kinds of chores. He likes taking care of the animals, carrying heavy bales of hay for the women before running over to Leon, the blacksmith, and learning how to make the spearheads while helping the man. In the afternoon, he usually stands on guard duty with his brother.

The Dixon brothers get along like a house on fire these days.

It had surprised Paul when Merle had sought him out a couple of times after he’d helped Maggie get to Hilltop. The conversations started out haltingly, Paul himself wary of the redneck and Merle always struggling to find the right words, but he gets the reason now. Whenever he sees Merle joking around with his little brother, sniping playfully at each other during dinner or them having a heart-to-heart in the shadows of Barrington house near Glenn’s grave, he gets it. And he appreciates that Merle is trying to learn instead of holding on to what he’s already been taught.

The Dixon brothers sleep in the corner of the trailer. The room in Barrington house had been too far removed from his family for Daryl’s liking and Paul didn’t mind taking in one more stray. It’s cramped now, sure, but they make do.

Besides, it helps them keep an eye on the boy.

No matter how cheerful and good-natured he looks during the day, smiling and laughing and working hard to help Maggie out any way he can, at night his mind sometimes takes him back to the Sanctuary. Murmuring Negan’s name, tossing and turning, covering his ears in his sleep until he wakes up screaming.

It had broken Paul’s heart the first time he’d heard it, or the quiet sobs in his brother’s chest that followed quickly.

Enid usually pretends to sleep through it even though Paul can see her eyes glint in the dark, but Sasha and Maggie get up to get him some water and provide him with different voices to focus on, instead of the deep rumbling that sometimes makes him flinch, even when it’s his brother speaking.

Paul follows Enid’s example. Some nights he even manages to fall asleep again after one of Daryl’s nightmares.

‘Good morning, Jesus,’ Maggie smiles when she spots him. She pushed herself up, using Daryl’s shoulder to steady herself before walking down the small set of stairs leading up to the trailer. ‘You’re up early.’

‘I had some things to take care of,’ he nods, pushing a couple of strands of his long hair behind one ear.

‘Hey, Paul,’ Daryl greets. He gets to his feet as well and automatically unclips the baseball cap from his belt to slide it over his dark hair. It helps to keep it out of his eyes.

‘You know,’ Maggie says as she considers the boy next to her, ‘Glenn never wore his backwards.’

‘And he looked like a dork,’ Daryl quips easily.

The woman snorts. ‘True,’ she smiles when the boy glances up at her as if he isn’t sure whether he is allowed to crack a joke at Glenn’s expense. ‘I told him that all the time. And I think you look very cute with the cap.’

Daryl’s eyes go wide before he blushes, ears glowing red between the dark strands of hair. He glances at Paul before ducking his head, clearly embarrassed. ‘Stop,’ he mutters, giving her hip a light shove.

Maggie laughs and her eyes twinkle when she meets Paul’s gaze. She throws him a wink. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says even though she doesn’t sound sorry at all. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of Jesus like that. You look handsome, Dare. Very handsome.’

‘ _Stop_ ,’ Daryl moans. The blush sinks from the tips of his ears to his cheekbones, staining his cheeks.

Paul watches with a fond expression on his face. He folds his arms in front of his chest and quirks an eyebrow.

The woman shakes her head and passes him, rubbing his arm as she does so. ‘I’ll see you later, Jesus.’

It’s nice to see her smile again. He ducks his head in a quick nod.

The teenager whirls past him next, ‘later, Paul!’ and starts to run towards the place where the woodworkers gather before their shift.

‘Daryl, wait!’

The words cause the boy to grind to a halt, his heavy boots kicking up some dust as he slides over gravel before stopping. The blue eyes are narrowed when he looks at the scout but the shoulders are relaxed and not curling in defensively. ‘Yeah?’ he asks. His voice is getting deeper still, shaking the last squeaky sounds every teenage boy makes as his body settles into young adulthood.

‘I need to talk to you. Come and sit down,’ Paul nods at the set of steps in front of his trailer. He sits down half-way and is not surprised when Daryl settles down on the ground instead of next to him. While the teenager has no problem crowding Sasha, Maggie or Merle, he’s more reserved around Enid and Paul.

‘’s up?’ Daryl asks as he looks up at the man.

Paul smiles and reaches into one of the pockets of his trench coat.

 

 

Daryl watches as Paul pulls a package out of his pocket. It’s wrapped in a piece of cloth and bound together by twine. The man is smiling as he works on the knots. ‘It’s a gift,’ the scout tells him. ‘I’ve noticed you didn’t have one anymore and – well, Leon owed me a favor.’

Daryl scrunches up his nose. Leon is Hilltop’s blacksmith. The man has been teaching him how to work metal over the last couple of days and how to fix the spearheads onto the spears provided by the woodworkers. It’s only when the twine and cloth falls away that he can see what Paul is holding.

It’s a hunting knife. Almost as big as the boy’s forearm and wicked looking. One side smooth and sharp, the other one jagged like a saw. The handle is made of dark wood, so dark that it’s almost black. Tiny details have been engraved in the material, the lines lighter to make them pop. Flowers. Tiny swirls of wild flowers blooming all over the handle.

Paul holds it out. ‘I showed him your drawing. He used it as a reference.’

Daryl looks at him with wide eyes. ‘That’s amazing.’ He doesn’t make a move to take the knife.

‘It’s yours,’ Paul tells him. ‘I had him make it for you. Merle told me Negan had taken your weapons. Here,’ he reaches into his other pocket and takes out a black sheath. It’s a simple design, complementing the knife’s beauty.

‘Are you serious?’ Daryl asks as he reaches out to take the knife. Then he stops. ‘I can’t. Thank you, but… I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ Paul asks calmly as he slides the knife into the sheath and then holds it out again, eyebrows a bit raised.

The boy is gnawing on the nail of his thumb, eyes on the weapon. There’s longing there, but not just because it’s a beautiful knife. He’s not armed right now, except for Rick’s python. He knows that he will have to give the gun back to its rightful owner and then he won’t have anything to protect himself with.

He misses his bow. He misses his dad’s hunting knife.

‘Why not, Daryl?’ Paul presses when the boy seems lost in thought.

He shrugs. ‘We’re already taking over your trailer, eatin’ all your food, fuckin’ up your clothes.’

The scout sighs as he stands up. ‘If I was emotionally attached to that flannel shirt, I would have fought you before you could tear it up. And you’re two inches tall, you don’t take up much space in my trailer.’

Daryl narrows his eyes.

‘You’re too skinny for you to be eating all our food, so that’s just a lie. Here,’ he holds the knife out again. ‘Take it. It’s yours.’

‘You already got me out,’ Daryl says but he stands up, too, and lets his fingers curl around the sheath tentatively. ‘You don’t owe me nothing.’

‘No. I don’t.’

They look at each other. Almost the same height now, the Dixon boy just half an inch shorter. His dark hair is held back by the baseball cap, spilling out from under it to brush over his ears and shoulders. The pale lips quirk up in a hesitant smile.

‘This for the truck?’

Paul blinks. He’d probably almost forgotten about the truck he’d tried to steal. ‘We just agreed that I didn’t owe you anything.’

‘Changed my mind,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘You made me look like an idiot standing guard while ya climbed out of a third story window like some damn monkey.’

‘You tried to poison me with disgusting oatcake.’

‘It’s the apocalypse,’ Daryl rolls his eyes, ‘nobody taught me that ain’t how ya flirt.’

That causes Paul to snort with laughter.

‘Shane used to do this thing,’ the teenager continues with a thoughtful look on his face, ‘Carl and I were thinking of teaching it to Eugene but… you know, walkers, starvation,’ he waves a vague hand, ‘everything happened, so we didn’t have time. It worked for Shane though.’

Paul leans back against the railing of the steps. ‘What was it?’

Daryl shakes his head and laughs softly, ‘this is gonna be dumb, okay, I’ll do it. Pretend I’m just walkin’ up to people, okay? I’d do this,’ he makes a clacking noise with his tongue and then pretends to pulls two guns from invisible holsters. _’_ _It’s a beautiful fucking day, just as fuckin’ beautiful as you all, ladies_ _,’_ he smiles as he finger guns Paul down. With another laugh, he raises his hands to hide his reddening face behind them.

‘That is _terrible_ ,’ Paul says with a little bit of awe in his voice.

‘But it worked!’

‘Don’t ever do that again,’ the man laughs. ‘That’s embarrassing.’

Daryl snorts, ‘what the hell would you do then?’

‘First, I wouldn’t call a guy _ladies_ , but-‘

‘ _I said_ ; imagine I’m walking up to people, you prick,’ Daryl laughs as he swats at the man’s elbow. ‘And I’m smooth as fuck, you never even saw me comin’ that one time.’

Paul grins, ‘that is _not_ a good thing. People like to be prepared before being kissed, avoids all kinds of embarrassing situations with smashing teeth and missing targets and ‘oh, sorry I punched you out of a reflex’ conversations.’

‘Don’t act like I actually got to kiss you,’ Daryl murmurs as he wipes his nose on the back of his hand. There’s still a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, the blue eyes shine brightly when he meets Paul’s gaze. It’s clear that he still wants to.

Paul smirks back. ‘Okay, to be fair; you snuck one in. Good on you. If I were fifteen, I would have been jealous of your skills.’

‘I think I’m sixteen already,’ Daryl says. He looks a bit hopeful.

That makes the scout laugh. ‘Even if you were, you’re not going to be an adult until you’re twenty-one.’

‘That’s just five more years.’

‘It’s only been three years since the end of the world. A lot can change in five years.’

‘Fine,’ Daryl sighs. ‘If I can’t have a real kiss, I’ll take the knife.’

Paul snorts, ‘what a trade.’

‘It’s not really a trade if you don’t get nothing in return.’

‘It’s enough to see you smile like that again.’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘That’s really cheesy, Paul.’

‘Doesn’t make it less true.’

The teenager reaches out and takes the knife, inspecting the handle more closely now. The bridge of his nose has a couple of freckles now that he’s outside all the time again, even though the beauty mark on his cheek is still stark against pale skin. His fingernails are dirty, black except for where he bites at them nervously. ‘Yeah, well,’ he huffs as he turns the knife around to check on the miniature flower on the other side of the handle. ‘It was just a dumb crush anyway. I’m over it now. You ain’t that cute no more.’

Paul laughs. ‘Tell it to that blush you’re sporting, it didn’t get the memo.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl grins but he rubs at his cheek with his knuckles as if trying to wipe the blush away. ‘Seriously, though. This is…’ he nods at the knife and then looks up at Paul again. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, Daryl. I think everyone will sleep a little easier knowing you have a new one. I was surprised Merle didn’t give you one of his.’

Daryl puts the knife on his belt and looks out towards the house. ‘He was scared I’d use it on myself.’

The smile melts from Paul’s face instantly. He pushes himself away from the railing, ‘oh shit, Daryl. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about – I can keep it with me, until…’

‘Ain’t gonna do it,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘Least of all with _your_ knife. Just did it back in the Sanctuary because there weren’t no other option. It’s easier to deal with that kind of pain than knowing you killed your own damn dad. Couldn’t talk about it with no-one so it kinda… sometimes my mind just spins out of control a bit. Doing that? It made me feel more in control.’

‘I understand that,’ Paul nods, ‘but if it’s too soon - I promise it’s yours, I can just keep hold of it until –‘

‘ _No_.’ Daryl puts a protective hand over the knife. ‘It’s not too soon. I shouldn’t even have said anything. Don’t worry about it, okay?’

‘Too late,’ Paul admits with a guilty little smile.

‘I’m fine. I promised Merle I won’t do it again.

‘And your word is your bond, right?’

It sounds skeptical.

‘All I have,’ Daryl shrugs as he turns away. ‘You’re not getting it back anyway, no take-backs.’

Paul smiles and gets up to join the teenager. ‘Okay. Just…’

‘I know,’ Daryl cuts in as he rolls his shoulders back, tilting his chin a little higher. ‘I’m fine,’ he assures the guy before setting off to head towards the blacksmith to thank him for the beautiful job he’s done on the knife. It might have been Paul’s idea, but the execution is truly stunning.

It shouldn’t matter so much to him that it’s almost a work of art and later Merle will tease him about the fact that he’s wearing such a _pretty_ thing, but Daryl will flash the blade, sharp and lethal, and dare his brother to say another word that would imply that he has a girly weapon.

But the flowers on his hip are his own; the poisonous wildflowers he could have found just behind his trailer. And more so; it was Paul’s gift. He glances at the man out of the corner of his eye and smiles.

‘ _Sasha! Enid!_ ’

Maggie’s voice cuts through the moment. Daryl stops walking to look at Paul sharply, their eyes meeting with a hint of fear, but there was no alarm in Maggie’s voice. The bells of their system stay quiet. No Saviors then, and she didn’t call for Paul and Merle, so no walkers either.

‘Let’s check it out,’ Paul nods when Daryl frowns quizzically.

When they walk down the path leading to the gate and round the last building, Daryl feels nerves surge in his belly and chest, tingling along his spine. The gate is open and Maggie is talking to none other than Rick Grimes.

They’re surrounded by other members of their family. Beth is leaning against her big sister, skinny arms around her waist and blonde hair dancing in the breeze while Tara is standing on the side, smiling at her friends. Michonne is there, Rosita, too, and Carl with his distinctive sheriff’s hat.

Rick’s gaze finds him almost immediately.

Daryl watches how the eyes go big, mouth slightly open, as he lobes down the hill towards them, feeling a little unsure. He watches how Rick tears himself away from Maggie and takes a step towards him.

The teenager nods. Just a tilt of his head, really, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

Except he does when Rick breaks out in a run towards him. He meets him half-way. Crashing into each other, Rick’s hand in his hair as he presses his face into the man’s shoulder, clinching to the narrow waist.

‘Dare,’ Rick croaks as he pulls the boy close. ‘I’m so sorry. I had to-‘

‘I know,’ Daryl mutters as he squeezes his eyes shut.

There’s a warm hand in his neck, and Ricks private whispers in his ear. How he’s sorry, so sorry, how he’s so glad to see him, that he’d been so strong. _My boy_ , Rick whispers, _oh my boy_. And then he’s stepping aside reluctantly and Daryl is suddenly hugging Tara.

He holds her tightly, reeling with the realization that she now knows about Denise, about Glenn, about Abraham. That she came home to three more graves and a large part of her family wiped out. He can feel her breath hitch and doesn’t know whether that would be better or so much worse; to not have been there.

And then she moves aside and it’s Michonne who cradles his face. He doesn’t know when he started crying, but his cheeks are wet. She presses a kiss to his forehead.

Beth is next, barreling into him but lighter than the rest. His arm around her waist as they spin, her feet leaving the ground for a second as she holds onto his neck and shoulders. ‘Never have I ever been so scared for you,’ she tells him with a shaky laugh, kissing his cheek before letting their foreheads rest together. Blonde mixing with his dark hair, blue eyes bright when they meet.

‘Same,’ he admits. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Hush,’ she pulls him close again for another fierce hug. Over her shoulder, Daryl can see how Merle strides towards Rick from where he’d been standing guard. Powerful steps until their hands clap together, yanking each other into a one-armed embrace. Rick thanking him for keeping Maggie and Sasha safe but Merle shakes his head when their leader thanks him for getting Daryl out. He nods at Paul, who is watching from a small distance, arms folded in front of his chest and a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

‘Rick…’ He gently pulls out of Beth embrace, squeezing her hand before he walks back towards their leader. From the small of his back, he pulls the python and holds it out to the man, handle first.

Rick stares at it for a couple of moments. And then his longer fingers curl around the familiar grip. He checks the chamber and finds it fully loaded and recently cleaned. With a decisive nod, he puts it back into his holster, where it belongs.

‘Let’s go talk to Gregory,’ he says as he looks at his family before leading them over to Barrington house.

Everyone follows. Except for Carl and Daryl.

They are facing each other now, both a little wary and unsure of how the other is going to react. Carl takes a step forwards and Daryl flinches. Carl stops. He raises his hand and opens it.

His necklaces. The wedding rings and the number 22. Safe and sound.

‘You left them behind,’ Carl says. His voice is emotionless when he demands, ‘Why?’

He could make something up. He could say that’s all he wanted to do; keep them safe. They’re important to him, everyone knows it. Carl would probably believe that. It doesn’t explain why he had left them on his brother’s pillow instead of hiding them somewhere in his own room or somewhere in the house.

And Carl deserves the truth.

‘I needed you to keep them safe,’ he says, staring at his brother’s boots. ‘I could have just hidden them in my own room, but…’

‘But what?’

‘Means I could have snuck in, snatched them and just ran. I know how to get in and out of that place without being seen. I could have done it,’ he says with a nod. ‘Could have just ran but… I knew you wouldn’t let them out of your sight.’

‘So?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I’d have to see you before getting them back,’ he finally looks up at his brother. ‘And you wouldn’t let me leave. No matter what I’ve done.’

The _right?_ dies between them as Carl’s expression softens. There’s no accusation in his eye, no disapproving curl of his lips. Instead he takes another couple of quick steps towards the youngest Dixon to close the distance between them.

‘Here,’ he holds his hand out again. ‘Take them back. They’re yours.’

Daryl swallows with some difficulty. ‘Did he hurt you? Negan? Did he…’

‘No,’ Carl answers. ‘But he killed Spencer and Olivia.’

The boy makes a little noise of hurt at the names. There’s always more, he remembers.

‘We’ll make this right,’ Carl promises. ‘We’re ready to fight him.’

Daryl nods.

‘We need you,’ Carl insists as he shakes the necklaces. ‘Whatever he did to you back at the Sanctuary, when I saw you there it… it wasn’t you. We need _you_.’

‘I’m here,’ Daryl says as he takes the jewelry from his brother, presses the rings and the number into the palm of his hand. ‘I’m with you.’

‘Good,’ Carl gives him a relieved little smile. ‘Let’s go then.’

Daryl quickly puts the necklaces on. They jingle as they fall to his chest, a familiar weight resting against his breastbone. He tugs at his shirt so they slide beneath the fabric, warming against his skin. ‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘Let’s go.’

Together, they walk to where the rest of their family is waiting. After a couple of steps, Carl slings his arm around his shoulders and Daryl loops his around the boy’s waist, settling a hand on his belt near his hip.

‘You’re my brother,’ Carl tells him, squeezing his shoulder, ‘no matter what you think you did.’

 

 

Daryl hates Gregory.

He’s sure the feeling would be mutual if the guy actually knew he existed. During his time at Hilltop, he’s hardly ever seen Gregory leave Barrington House. He’s always holed up in his office, pretending to lead while relying on Paul to pull strings and keep things running smoothly within the community. Apart from that one disgusted glance he’d shot Daryl when they’d first come to the new colony, he’s never laid eyes on him again. He probably has no idea that the boy has been living here for a couple of days now.

Right now he’s balking at the idea of helping Alexandria in their fight against the Saviors.

He’s a coward, Daryl thinks as he watches the man sit behind his desk and fight with Rick, Maggie had been right.

‘In fact, you owe me,’ Gregory tells Rick when he sits down behind the desk, ‘for taking in the refugees.' He nods at Maggie, Sasha and Merle but ignores the boy lurking behind his brother. ‘At great personal risk,’ he adds.

‘Oh you were very brave,’ Paul cuts in sarcastically. He’s standing next to Maggie, head tilted a little to the side as he continues, ‘staying inside while Maggie, Sasha and Merle saved this place. Your courage was _inspiring_.’

‘Hey,’ Gregory shoots back, ‘don’t you work for me? Aren’t we friends?’

They’re not friends. Daryl knows Paul can’t stand the guy.

Rick tries to reason with the man but there’s no point. Gregory doesn’t want to fight and doesn’t want to hear any of their arguments. He’s convinced that no one at Hilltop will or could fight, not even after Sasha and Rosita jump at the chance to train them. The former cop just gets angrier and angrier until Michonne has to take over the negotiations, a gentle hand on the belly of her boyfriend, pushing him back as she focusses on the man behind the desk.

‘So what will you do to fix the problem?’ she asks.

‘I didn’t say we had a problem. You did.’ He turns away from them, ‘and what happens outside of my purview, is outside of my purview.’

‘What the hell, man,’ Daryl growls as he pushes himself away from the bookcase he’d been leaning against. He steps up next to Tara. ‘You’re either with us, or yain’t! You sit over there, talkin’ out of both sides of your mouth!’

Gregory agrees they’d be better off without the Saviors. And he still doesn’t want to fight them.

‘I think I made my position very clear,’ Gregory states as he stands up. ‘I will thank all of you for not being here today and not having this meeting with me or being seen on your way out. In other words; go out the back.’

After a nod from Rick, their family leaves the room. Disgruntled and some fuming, all ready to leave that man to the walkers and Negan. Merle puts a warm hand on Daryl’s shoulder to tug him along. ‘Come on, monster,’ he mutters, ‘we don’t need him anyway.’

‘That’s right,’ Rick nods out in the hallway, ‘because we’ve got Maggie, Sasha, you and Jesus here.’

‘And Dare and Enid,’ Maggie says, her gaze lingering on Rick as she pointedly steps closer to the youngest Dixon boy, counting him as one of the Hilltop members.

Rick tilts his chin a little higher but doesn’t argue as his attention is drawn to the front door.

Enid slips inside for a second, before leading them all out towards the steps where a group of people from Hilltop are waiting for Paul and Maggie. They want to fight.

It doesn’t surprise Daryl that Enid found them. He doubts she had to do very much convincing, but she’s good at seeking out people, hiding in plain sight and behind a pretty face to ensure that hardly anyone ever knows what she’s really up to. She has rounded them all up and only gives Carl a shy smile when he beams at her with pride.

About a dozen of them are willing to learn how to fight. Daryl recognizes some of the men, most have become quick friends with Merle due to shared guard duties on the wall. It’s not enough to beat the Saviors, not nearly enough, but it’s a start.

‘Daryl knows the complex,’ Rick says as they walk down the hill a little while later. ‘Maybe we can sneak in, take Negan out…’

‘Lernaean Hydra,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘It’s not just him. Others will take his place.’

‘Lerne what?’ Carl asks with a frown.

‘Lernaean Hydra,’ the Dixon boy repeats a little slower, just like Shane had done when he’d told him about it, years ago. ‘The sea monster with many heads. You cut one off, two more grow.’

‘If we find the right shit,’ Merle says, ‘we won’t need the damn numbers. Blow ‘em up. Burn ‘em to the ground.’

Tara frowns. ‘Dare said there weren’t just soldiers with the Saviors. That there were workers there. People didn’t have a choice.’

‘We gotta win,’ Merle shrugs.

‘Yeah,’ Rick nods at the oldest Dixon. ‘But we need more hands, another group. Negan has outposts. The geography, the distance works against us. We’ve got to get back. They’ll come looking for Daryl; we need to be there.’

‘You don’t have to get back,’ Paul says as he stops walking, causing the rest of the group to halt, too. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ He unclips a walkie-talkie from his belt. The one Dwight had given him. ‘It’s one of theirs, long range. We can listen in, keep track of them.’

‘So,’ Michonne shifts her weight to her other foot, ‘if we’re not going back, what are we doing then?’

‘I think it’s time I introduce you to Ezekiel,’ Paul tells them. A smile breaks through on his face. ‘ _King_ Ezekiel.’

 

 

Maggie and Paul are talking to each other in the shade of Barrington House. The woman has a hand folded over her mouth, one arm curled around her stomach protectively. She’s upset. She shakes her head when Paul talks and refuses to meet his eye, even when he ducks his head.

The man is talking quickly, with a lot of gestures to the north and then the south.

Daryl watches with Rick. They’re sitting side by side next to Paul’s trailer.

‘She doesn’t want you to go,’ Rick says softly.

‘I know. But Merle will stay here, look after her. He can start trainin’ some of these people, just like you said,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Beth and Enid, too. Tough as nails, those girls.’ Daryl pluck sat his fingernails. ‘Is Beth okay? I didn’t see her at Alexandria and –‘

‘She was with Judith and Tyreese. Enid warned her that Negan was coming, that you were – we had to keep them safe.’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl rubs at his cheeks and frowns when Maggie walks away from Paul, only to have the younger man dart after her. ‘After the kingdom, we can stop at Alexandria on the way back, right? Wanna see Ass Kicker.’

Rick looks away. ‘Sure,’ he mutters, never meeting the boy’s eye. ‘We can stop there.’

 

 

‘You stick to Jesus, okay?’ Maggie asks with tears in her eyes as she adjusts the boy’s jacket. ‘Or to Rick, or Michonne, right? Sasha.’

‘Or Carl, or Rosita,’ Daryl laughs as he pushes her hands down, ‘I’ll stick to someone, promise. I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself, anyway.’

‘I know that, but you don’t have your bow and we don’t have a gun for you.’

‘Paul gave me a knife. I’ll be fine.’

‘You sure there’s nothing going on there?’ Merle asks from where he’s leaning against the wall. ‘The guy sure is sweet on you, baby brother. Showerin’ ya with all these gifts, savin’ your little ass all the time. One might wonder what he plans to do with that ass.’

‘ _Merle_!’ Maggie says, a little shocked and outraged but the older Dixon just laughs and throws his brother a wink.

‘He’s just messin’ with ya,’ Daryl laughs.

‘’course I am,’ Merle smiles as he walks over to them. ‘That guy knows he’ll end up in the same place as our lord and savior did, should he ever try something I don’t approve of. Take the name, bear the cross, is all I’m saying. Now quit your fussin’. They’re gonna leave his ass behind if you keep stallin’ like this. Don’t think we don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, lady.’ He puts a gentle hand on Maggie’s shoulder and squeezes. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Daryl smiles, ‘and back before you know it.’

Maggie takes a shuddering breath and closes her eyes.

Merle works his jaw before offering the boy a horribly fake smile. ‘That’s right,’ he says.

‘What? What’s wrong?’ Daryl asks as he steps closer to Maggie, ‘I will be, I promise. And I’m with Paul and Rick, so…’

‘I know,’ the woman opens her eyes again and smiles, one hand coming up to wipe tears from her cheeks. ‘I’ll just miss you while you’re gone, that’s all. I worry about you, you know,’ she playfully shoves his shoulder before bringing him in for a hug. ‘I worry about you, so much.’

‘Don’t. Enjoy your peace and quiet while it lasts. I’ll be back before you know it.’

Maggie’s hands shake as they tighten their hold.

‘Okay, enough,’ Merle laughs as he pushes them apart. ‘I don’t want you to get the pregnant lady all riled up and all this emotional blubbering is making me want to –‘ he growls when he pounces on his little brother, grabbing him by the waist and lifting him clean off the ground. Face buried in the crook of his neck. ‘Fuck, monster,’ he breathes, ‘be careful, okay? Don’t pull nothing. Listen to Rick. Stick to Jesus.’

‘This ain’t my first rodeo, okay? Paul said we wouldn’t run into any Saviors on the way there,’ Daryl smiles as he hugs his brother. ‘I’ll be fine. We’ll probably be back tomorrow or the day after. Stop acting like I’m going away for weeks.’

‘I love you, monster.’

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ Daryl laughs as he falls to his feet again, shoving his brother away from him. ‘Stop sayin’ that like I ain’t comin’ back! See you tomorrow. Both of ya.’

Maggie nods. ‘That’s right. See you tomorrow, Dare.’

 

 

Carl frowns when he pulls the door of the car open. He looks at Daryl. ‘What’s wrong?’

Daryl looks back at Maggie, Beth, Merle and Enid. His brother is just a dark shadow against the horizon, sitting on a platform on the wall. He’s picking at his fingernails with his knife, seemingly bored but Daryl knows differently. He knows the position allows his brother to get up in a second and watch until the car disappears over the horizon.

Beth and Enid are standing near the platform. The young woman has a comforting arm wrapped around the teenager, offering some comfort as she has to watch how her boyfriend leaves once more.

Maggie is crying.

Daryl can tell by the way her shoulders curl.

‘Dare,’ Carl says. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’

Paul is standing on the other side of the car. ‘She’s just worried about you leaving, Daryl. Can you really blame her?’

‘Ain’t blamin’ her,’ Daryl murmurs because he knows that’s not it. He’s terrified about leaving her himself but he knows he needs to do this. They need to find more people, they need this new community to join them and he needs to help Maggie win this fight.

She’s not scared for him.

She’s sad.

‘Come on,’ Paul opens the door on the other side. ‘Rick’s waiting, guys.’

‘Yeah, let’s go,’ Carl breathes before he ducks into the car as well, sliding to the middle seat to sit next to Paul.

Daryl raises his hand at Maggie one last time before slipping in, too. He closes the door with a bang and doesn’t look back, not even to see his brother’s silhouette on the wall when they are a long way away.

 

 

He doesn’t yet know that he won’t return tomorrow. Or the day after that.

He doesn’t know they won’t see each other for a very long time.

 

 

But they did.

 

 

 


	84. The Kingdom

 

* * *

 

 

Carol left.

She just _left_ and Daryl’s head is spinning.

Rick looks at him via the rear view mirror with a concerned expression on his face. ‘She’s a fighter,’ he tells the teenager. ‘She’s going to be fine. She knows how to survive out there.’

‘Stop sayin’ that like you don’t believe it,’ Daryl says softly as he stares out of the window.

The corner of Rick’s mouth quirks up in recognition of the line. ‘Don’t think I won’t find a cell to put you in so you can cool off,’ he warns. Then he turns serious again. ‘Morgan went after her. They might already be back at Alexandria for all we know.’

‘She won’t be back,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘She wanted to leave, hell, ain’t nobody is gonna change her mind if she done made it up. You know that.’

‘Maybe,’ Rick allows. ‘But people leave and come back. _You_ know that, too.’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl sighs and shifts in his seat so he can lean forward and put his chin on the shoulder of Michonne’s seat. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and then reaches back between the seats so he can hold her hand. He twines their fingers together. ‘’s Judith walkin’ good now?’

‘Still stumbling around a bit,’ the woman smiles as she squeezes his fingers, ‘but it’s getting better.’

‘Being carried like that on the road all the damn time made her lazy,’ Daryl huffs as he falls back into his own seat, ‘just like all them Grimes’.’

Carl punches him in the shoulder while Rosita sniggers. ‘Hey, don’t call her that!’

‘What? It’s true!’ the Dixon boy laughs as he shoves his brother away from him and into Paul, who is sitting next to him. ‘Get your paws off of me. Pssh. Just wait ‘til she can walk properly, I’m gonna show her the ropes in them woods, teach her how to hunt. Lord knows y’all suck at it.’ He looks out of the window, ‘except Beth. Beth learned good.’

‘As long as you don’t teach her how to talk,’ Michonne quips as she shares a look with Rick. The man laughs and reaches out to squeeze her knee for a second.

‘I can set traps,’ Carl argues. ‘I can!’ he insists when Daryl scoffs under his breath.

‘Yeah but they don’t catch nothing,’ Daryl murmurs. He tunes Carl’s outraged objections out and watches how the world flashes by. One of his knees digs into the back of Michonne’s chair as he slouches but she hasn’t yet asked him to stop. She will, before the ride is over.

He thinks about Carol, who is strong and fierce, and he thinks about how he might have taken her for granted. She’s always been there, in the background. Always right there when they needed her, quiet resilience and a flashing knife. He’d always been jealous of her knife because he’d thought it looked so cool with the knuckle guard. It’s too late to tell her that now. It’s too late to tell her anything anymore.

If he could, he’s probably tell her that he’d felt better knowing she was there. That he had taken her for granted because he could, that she –

He sighs and closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter anymore. She’s gone.

The voice of his brother causes his eyes to snap open again.

‘So you don’t have a boyfriend right now?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Paul answers and Daryl can _hear_ how uncomfortable the man is.

The Dixon boy shifts in his seat immediately and punches his brother’s shoulder, ‘what the hell, man? Shut the fuck up!’

Carl chuckles as he tries to escape his brother’s wrath, almost climbing into Paul’s lap before Daryl yanks him back into his own seat. ‘What?’ he laughs, ‘I was just making conversation with your crus-‘

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ Daryl hisses, pummeling the other boy’s side. ‘I ain’t tellin’ you shit no more, you fuckin’ asshole!’

‘ _Boys_ ,’ Rosita’s voice strikes down like a whip, silencing the two teenagers immediately. They sit up with wide eyes, cowering a little when she glares at him. ‘You’re going to sit there, quietly and peacefully. No more kicking, stumping, hitting or cursing. And leave Jesus alone.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Daryl says quickly.

‘Sorry, Jesus,’ Carl mutters.

‘Good,’ Rosita says with a huff as she turns around again. Tara is shaking with laughter beside her, desperately trying to hide her giggles when the other woman rolls her eyes. The Spanish words under Rosita’s breath are foreign to the rest of them but everyone knows what she’s saying all the same. The _stupid teenagers_ rings through loud and clear.

There’s a long moment of silence in the car. Rick and Michonne share a smirk when they catch sight of the two sulking boys in the back while Paul inspects his gloves, plucking at the leather a bit before running a hand through his long hair. He hums under his breath as he glances out of the window and then leans forward. ‘Take a left at the next crossing, Rick,’ he orders. ‘It’s a straight shot from there.’

Daryl suddenly remembers something and sits up. ‘My bike,’ he says. ‘It’s still in the parking lot, what if Saviors come by-‘

‘Merle took care of it,’ Sasha cuts it. ‘He hid it somewhere outside of the walls.’

‘He still has the key?’

‘Yeah.’

Daryl gives a sigh of relief, ‘okay, good.’

At least, if something happens, Merle has some transportation nearby. He knows how to ride, of course, so operating the bike shouldn’t be a problem. It’s probably best that he doesn’t know where the vehicle is stashed away, should he ever fall into the hands of Negan again.

He shivers at the thought.

‘Daryl built that bike himself, you know,’ Carl tells Paul. ‘From scratch. And he’s a really good driver.’

Paul lifts an eyebrow.

‘He’s seen me ride it before, asshole,’ Daryl hisses, jabbing Carl in the side with his elbow. ‘He knows it’s mine.’

‘I’m just _saying_.’

‘Well, fuckin’ don’t. Shut the fuck up.’

‘Give it a rest, Carl,’ Rick warns.

‘I didn’t even do anything!’

‘The hell you did!’

Rosita twists around in her seat, glaring at the both boys again. ‘ _Do not_ make me come back there. Seriously, Jesus, how much further is it?’

‘Perfect timing,’ Paul says as he leans forward again, ‘slow down, Rick. See that parking lot on the side, in between those taller buildings? You need to park there,’ he glances at the sun, ‘it won’t be long. These are the outskirts of The Kingdom.’

The car slows down, coming to a halt at the end of the parking lot. Rick seems relieved when he opens the door to hop out, glancing at Paul as the man does the same thing, ‘it’s called _The Kingdom_?’

‘Yeah,’ Paul says with a little smile. He joins the leader of Alexandria at the front of the car. ‘I didn’t name it.’

Rick looks around. ‘So where is it?’

‘Well, technically we’re already here. I mean, we’re always here, but here we are – at The Kingdom. Well, the outer edge.’

Rick narrows his eyes. There’s nothing surrounding them but abandoned buildings. His hand slowly slides to the python on his hip, suspicion and wariness creeping onto his face as he sets his jaw.

The rest of the group piles out of the car as well. Rosita stretches, her shirt riding up as she yawns, and Tara gazes up at the tall buildings surrounding them. Most of them have broken windows. There’s graffiti on the brickwork. Sasha’s keen eyes search the surroundings and Daryl thinks that everyone wishes the woman had her sniper rifle in her hands now. With only Rick and Carl carrying, everyone feels a little more on edge in these strange surroundings.

Daryl jumps out and slams the door, stepping up beside Rick for a second before crossing to stand beside Paul. He looks up at the scout. ‘So what are we waitin’ on?’

Rick relaxes a fraction.

Paul shoots him quick smile before raising his hand and pointing at a path that leads between the buildings. ‘We’re waiting on them.’

The sound of hooves on concrete comes ghosting down the slight slope even before the horses and their riders come into view. Two men, wearing armor which reminds Daryl of the prison’s riot gear, on sand-colored horses. One of them has a machete raised while the other shouts;

‘Who dares to trespass on the sovereign land of the -,’ the man stops abruptly and lets his horse slow to a gentle trot until he stops in front of them. Tall on his beautiful horse, the man stares down at them. ‘Oh shit,’ he says, ‘Jesus, is that you?’

Paul raises his hand in greeting.

The man tightens his hold on the reins as he glances at the group who has gathered around the car. He’s pale with dark hair and darker eyes that narrow. ‘Who are all these people, Paul?’

‘Hi, Richard.’ The smile on Paul’s face is fond as he steps forward, ‘it’s nice to see you.’

 

 

Paul manages to convince Richard to take them back to The Kingdom for an audience with King Ezekiel.

It takes them a while to reach the gates on foot, but the car is not allowed inside the sovereign land. Daryl scoffs at the words but doesn’t say anything as Richard leads them through the strong gate. Several guards in protective gear eye them curiously while two raise their hands to greet Paul, welcoming him back warmly.

‘This way,’ Richard tells them as he hands the reins of his horse to a younger man, who leads the animal over to the stables. ‘Follow me.’

The Kingdom is massive.

Daryl stares in awe at the well-maintained buildings. Richard is now walking between Paul and Rick, telling the leader of Alexandria about his community after the scout’s gentle nudges to get the conversation going. The complex used to be part of a college campus. It consists of various buildings, protected by a wall made of compacted metal and stacked cars. They’d claimed the land during the first winter after the outbreak. At the time it had just been a small group of survivors, but they took people in, put up the wall and survived together.

Unlike Alexandria, however, they didn’t hide behind their wall.

Groups of young men and women run past, their shirts drenched with sweat, the gray fabric of their shirts discoloring under the light armor that they’re wearing while they work out. They are fit and look ready. At least some of them are battle-hardened, Daryl thinks as he looks at the deep lines on Richard’s face and the ease with which he rests a hand on his gun.

The biggest area seems to be used as a garden. Daryl recognizes some of the plants thanks to Beth’s lessons. Medicinal herbs and vegetables grow side by side on large patches of the land. Men and women shovel the earth, pick flowers and fruit, water the plants.

The sheer number of people is intimidating. It’s a bustling community, there are people everywhere and the low murmur of voices reminds him of the market place inside the Sanctuary.

He steps a little closer to Sasha.

‘Well, they have the numbers,’ Michonne says.

‘But can they fight?’ Rosita asks with her hands on her narrow hips.

Paul nods. ‘Oh, they can fight,’ he assures them.

It’s Tara who wanders away from the group, gazing at the buildings that probably used to be dorm rooms and lecture halls, until her eye falls on a figure exiting the building Richard went into just a couple of minutes ago to warn his king of their arrival. Her voice is riddled with disbelief when she asks, ‘Morgan?’

Morgan is shadowed by Richard, who looks surprised that they seem to know each other.

The black man laughs as he spots the group and hugs the woman first. ‘Hey,’ he squeezes her shoulders before hugging Sasha, too.

‘How do you know each other?’ Richard asks from the side.

‘We go back to the start,’ Rick explains. It’s technically true. Every story of two people is now riddled with goodbye’s and reunions and they knew each other at the beginning even though they didn’t recognize each other in the middle of their own story.

Richard shifts his weight. ‘Well, the king is ready to see you.’

The rest of the group follows the guard while Daryl lingers behind, keeping an eye on Rick. He’s glad that the man steps closer to Morgan immediately, lowering his voice a little as he grabs hold of Morgan’s arm. ‘Did you find Carol?’

‘Where is she?’ Daryl asks, ‘is she okay?’

Morgan nods. ‘she was here and then she left. You know,’ he glances at Rick, ‘she wasn’t too happy, me following her. She wanted to get away from us, from everyone. But when I found her, she was shot. It was just a graze,’ he tells the teenager, who’d sucked in a sharp breath. ‘I got her back here, they got doctors. They’re good.’

‘Was it them?’

‘It was,’ Morgan answers. ‘She had crossed with some of them and one of them followed her, tried to kill her, but I stopped him. I killed him. I had to.’ He looks away for a moment. ‘Carol was here, she got help,’ he says with a decisive nod. ‘Now she’s gone.’

Rick reaches out again and squeezes his upper arm. ‘Thank you, for trying. For helping her.’

‘Of course.’

Daryl nods, ‘yeah. Thanks, man.’

Morgan looks at him with a fond smile. He puts a hand on top of Daryl’s baseball cap. ‘You look different from the last time I saw you.’

Daryl resists the urge to wince. The man has no idea about Glenn, about Abraham, the whole line-up, the Sanctuary – he doesn’t know a thing. ‘Yeah,’ he manages to mutter after a quick glance at Rick. Then he shoulders past him. ‘Growin’ boy and all, or so Maggie keeps tellin’ me.

He doesn’t want to be the one who tells Morgan what happened. This isn’t the right place, anyway. Here, in the bright sunshine and bustling town, amidst the laughter of children and chatter of couples.

Richard is waiting for Rick in the lobby of the building. When they rejoin the group inside, he leads them down a corridor towards a large hall. The doors open to reveal a theatre. Rows of chairs, a stage, big lights pointed at a simple throne.

A man is sitting on the throne. A staff in one hand, a big chain in the other. Graying dreadlocks spills over his broad shoulders, though Daryl suspects that the man is younger than he looks in this light. There’s an easy smile on his face, revealing straight white teeth. His voice rings out, strong and proud.

‘Jesus! It pleases me to see you, old friend.’

One of his guard raises a hand, ‘it pleases him indeed!’

‘Jerry,’ the man chides with a look of exasperation before he turns back to his guests. ‘Tell me, what news do you bring good King Ezekiel? Are these new allies you’ve brought me?’

‘Indeed they are, Your Majesty,’ Paul smiles as he lobes down the aisle, clearly taking being addressed as an invitation. He gestures behind him. ‘This is – oh.’

Nobody has moved.

Everyone is still staring at the stage, frozen in place.

Next to the simple throne stands a tiger.

A _tiger_.

Daryl stares and doesn’t care that his mouth is hanging open in amazement. He watches how the big cat prowls around the thrones, nudging at the King’s knee before moving on, tail twitching. The animal growls, shakes their head to make the heavy chain rattle noisily before settling down on the floor, staring at the group from Hilltop colony.

Daryl stomps Carl. ‘It’s a fuckin’ tiger!’ he hisses under his breath.

‘I can see that,’ Carl hisses back, voice trembling a bit as he stares at the animal.

‘Amazing,’ the Dixon boy breathes because he’s never seen a real tiger before. He’s never been to any zoo, has only seen flashes of nature documentaries he could watch while his dad was passed out on the couch. Their coat red and orange and yellow and brown and streaked with black, so beautiful that it takes his breath away.

Excitement tingles along his spine. He can feel his heartrate picking up.

‘Right, I forgot to mention that-,’ Paul says with a small wince when he sees the looks of shock on most of their faces.

‘Yeah,’ Rick cuts in. ‘A tiger.’

Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet, peeking over Rosita’s shoulder to try and get a better look. He’s glad when Paul leads them down the aisle, closer to the stage. The rest of the group is a little hesitant, wary of the wild animal, but Rick just squares his shoulders and the rest follows.

When Rick stops, Daryl ducks into one of the aisles, passing some chairs so he stands in the middle of the theatre. This way, he’s right in front of the tiger.

‘I welcome you all to The Kingdom, good travelers,’ Ezekiel says once he’s been introduced to Rick Grimes of Alexandria. ‘Now, what brings you to our fair land? Why do you seek an audience with the King?’

‘Ezekiel,’ Rick starts but then corrects himself. ‘ _King_ Ezekiel, Alexandria, the Hilltop and the Kingdom – all three of our communities have something in common. We all serve the Saviors. Alexandria already fought them once, and we won. We thought we took out the threat but we didn’t know then what we know now. We only beat one outpost. We’ve been told you have a deal with them, that you know them. Then you know they rule through violence and fear.’

‘Your Majesty, I only told them of the-‘ Paul starts.

Daryl tears his gaze away from the tiger’s twitching ears to see that Ezekiel stares down the younger scout, tilting his chin a little higher to show his disdain for the man’s actions. ‘Our deal with the Saviors is not known among my people,’ he says sternly, ‘for good cause. We made you a party to that secret when you told us of the Hilltop’s own travails, but we did not expect you to share-‘

‘We can help each other!’

‘ _Don’t_ interrupt the king.’

Paul glances at Jerry but stays silent, bowing his head a little to show his respect.

‘We brought you into our confidence,’ Ezekiel says gravely. ‘Why did you break it?’

‘Because I want you to hear Rick’s plan.’

‘And what plans have you, Rick Grimes of Alexandria?’ the King demands to know.

Rick takes another step closer to the throne. ‘We came to ask the Kingdom, to ask you, to join us in fighting the Saviors, fighting for freedom for all of us.’

The look on the King’s face darkens. ‘What you are asking is very serious.’

‘Several of our people,’ Michonne says even though her voice breaks a little on the words, ‘good people, were killed by the Saviors, brutally.’

Morgan’s head snaps up. He’d been standing on the side of the stage. Not joining the Kingdom and not standing with Alexandria. ‘Who?’ he asks, a hint of fear bleeding into the word.

Behind Daryl, Rosita shifts her weight. ‘Abraham,’ she says. ‘Glenn. Spencer. Olivia. Eugene was taken. They took Daryl but he escaped. Every second he’s out here, he’s a target.’ She swallows thickly. ‘You gonna say you were right?’

‘No,’ Morgan answers with a shake of his head. ‘I’m – I’m just real sorry they’re gone.’

Daryl stares at the tiger to not have to meet anyone’s eye while the discussion is unleashed around him. Morgan is ducking his head to catch his eye and he can feel that Tara is watching him, both for different reasons.

Rick wants to fight.

Paul is with him, Sasha, too. The deal the Hilltop had with the Saviors is not something they can live with any longer. This could be the decisive moment, Paul tells the King, they could change their entire world with this.

‘I want to be honest about what we’re asking,’ Rick says. ‘My people are strong, but there’s not enough of us. We don’t have guns – not enough, at least. Not a lot of weapons, period.’

‘We have people,’ Richard cuts in, almost eager. He looks at his leader, who looks very troubled. ‘And weapons. If we strike first, together, we can beat them. Your Majesty, no more waiting for things to get worse; beyond what we can handle. We set things right. The time is now.’

Morgan is asked to speak next by the King but Daryl already knows what he’s going to say. The fact that he has killed for Carol has not affected the way he tries to cling to his mantra. All life is precious.

‘People will die,’ he says. ‘A lot of people, and not just the Saviors. If we can find another way - we _have_ to. Maybe it’s just about Negan – just capturing him, holding him. Maybe I-‘

Rick closes his eyes. Angered, annoyed, frustrated, all of that.

Morgan shakes his head and folds his arms in front of his chest before looking down at his boots.

He wasn’t there, Daryl tells himself to keep calm. He didn’t see.

‘The hour grows late.’ The chain rattles as the King rises. And with him, the tiger. The animal growls at the visitors, tail flicking behind them before curling around one of their legs. ‘You have given the King much to ponder.’

Rick must have sensed that the odds are not in their favor right now. Morgan is right, people will die, everyone knows that. But you get up and go to war anyway because sometimes there is no choice. ‘When I was a kid, my mother told me a story,’ Rick says.

He tells the story now. To his people and to the King.

About a road to a Kingdom, how there was a rock right in the middle of it. People avoided it, but horses would break their legs on in, wagon wheels would come off. About the little girl and her poor family, how their cart broke and they lost the things they wanted to trade in the Kingdom. How that was all they had. About the tears and then the plan; to dig out the rock from the road. Not for herself for it was already too late, but for others. Bleeding hands and then the rock was gone, pushed aside, only to reveal a bag of gold left by the good King.

‘The King had put that rock in the road because he knew the person who dug it out, who did something, they deserved a reward,’ Rick says. ‘They deserved to have their life changed for the good, forever.’

King Ezekiel is quiet for a moment. Then he rolls his shoulders back. ‘I invite you all to sup with us and stay till the morrow.’

Rick hangs his head. ‘Yeah,’ he mutters. ‘We need to get back home.’

The King gives him a stern look. ‘I shall deliver my decree in the morn.’

And with that, Paul takes a quick bow before ushering the rest of the group back out of the theatre. Rick strides past everyone, eyes flashing angrily at being dismissed while Tara just looks amazed. ‘Is he serious?’ she asks Sasha with a thumb jabbed at Ezekiel on the stage. Michonne curls an arm around Carl’s shoulder to prevent him from doing anything stupid while Rosita just scoffs and walks away.

‘Daryl,’ Paul says. ‘It’s time to go.’

Daryl nods and walks back to the main aisle. There, he turns back to the stage. ‘What’s their name?’ he asks.

The King stops and turns around. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The tiger,’ Daryl says. ‘What’s their name? Your Majesty,’ he adds hastily when Paul clears his throat pointedly.

The corner of Ezekiel’s mouth twitches. He looks down at his tiger and smiles warmly. ‘Her name is Shiva.’ Then he looks at the teenager. He watches how amazement and curiosity flickers over his young face, how he smiles when Shiva sniffs the air in the boy’s general direction. ‘And what is your name, young man?’

‘Daryl Dixon, Your Majesty.’

Ezekiel’s smile fades. ‘You are the one they took.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl nods but his eyes roam over Shiva’s body, from the twitching ears to the massive paws, to the tip of her tail. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘I agree, Daryl Dixon,’ the King says softly. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night,’ the boy answers, taking a couple of step backwards so he can look at the tiger for a couple more seconds. Then he turns and beams up at Paul.

Paul smiles back and curls an arm around his shoulders, tugging him into his side. ‘Pretty cool, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl laughs, hesitating a second before slinging his arm around the man’s waist. ‘Pretty damn cool.’

 

 

Dinner is served on a basketball court. There are long tables set out so everyone can have a seat. Bowls are passed around, overflowing with bread and meat and fruit and vegetables. There’s laughter all around them when Rick’s group is led to one of the bigger tables at the end, where the King is seated. There’s a woman sitting at his left hand, her dark hair hidden by a colorful headscarf, and Richard sits at his right hand. One of the younger guards leads them to their seats, blond hair a mess of curls.

‘Take whatever you want,’ he tells them. ‘Just don’t waste anything.’

‘Of course not,’ Michonne says with a smile. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘Thank you, Benjamin,’ Paul nods as he takes a seat next to Rick. The two of them converse quietly, heads bend together as they plan their next move. It’s clear that the scout has been here often. He’s greeted everywhere by his name and welcomed with warm smiles and open arms. He knows everyone’s name, asking after their family while promising to stop by before he leaves.

Daryl sits down next to Tara.

Rosita slides in the seat opposite Daryl. She looks around at the people of the Kingdom, laughing, eating, living so carelessly. Very few of them are armed. Those who are wear their armor and have either just returned from their watch shifts or they’re planning to head out right after dinner. Children run around between the tables, chasing each other until their parents tell them that their food is ready.

‘Can you believe this place?’ Rosita asks as she takes her hat off and smooths her hair back before putting it on again with a huff. ‘First that coward from Hilltop and now this… this _joke_?’

‘This is not the same thing,’ Tara says. ‘Gregory was scared for himself. Ezekiel, he… he seems different.’

‘Yeah,’ Rosita rolls her eyes. ‘Who the hell keeps a tiger on a leash? There’s something wrong with this place, with these people.’

‘I don’t think there is,’ Tara murmurs. ‘They just don’t know. Ezekiel told us that his people don’t even know about his deal with the Saviors.’

‘So what? Half of their stuff disappears and they’re just fine with that? You know; who the hell cares half our shit goes missing every three weeks! _Please_.’

Tara shrugs.

‘There’s someone behind this,’ Rosita nods. ‘This whole thing, it’s _fake_. Someone is pulling strings around this place and it’s not that damn king, okay? Same thing at Hilltop,’ Rosita clacks her tongue and shakes her head. ‘Gregory thinks he’s in charge but Paul is pulling the strings there. I know he is.’

‘He ain’t,’ Daryl says as he pushes some fresh vegetables around on his plate. ‘I mean – yeah, he solves a lot of shit around Hilltop and everyone comes to him first, but… he doesn’t want to be the leader, I think.’

‘So he just doesn’t want to take responsibility?’

‘No, I just mean that… I don’t know. Like, Shane _could_ have been the leader of our group before but he was Rick’s right hand man, okay? He liked that better, I think. He was good at it. Paul’s good at it.’

‘He’s good at being Gregory’s errand boy?’ Rosita asks. She raises an eyebrow.

‘Right-hand man,’ Daryl corrects pointedly because anyone who thinks that Paul is just an errand boy is in for a big surprise. ‘And it’s not going to be Gregory much longer, I think.’

‘Why’s that?’

The boy shrugs. ‘’Cause Maggie is there now.’

 

 

There is a girl sitting at one of the tables. She has dark hair, wild due to her curls, and a smile that makes Daryl want to be the cause of it. Her long hair tumbles over one shoulder though she pushes it back often, her pink lips twisting in a grimace when she does so.

She’s surrounded by smaller kids. One of the girls climbs onto the back of her chair and starts to braid her hair so it stays back.

They laugh and tell stories and laugh some more.

‘Stare any longer and Paul might get jealous. Is that your new tactic?’

Daryl watches how the girl mimics an explosion with her hands. The kids around her giggle and shove each other in their excitement.

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Rosita laughs, moving to her right to block his view for a second. ‘You’re drooling.’

With a horrified expression, Daryl brings his hand to his mouth to wipe at his chin.

‘Oh my God,’ Rosita giggles while Tara snorts. ‘That was a joke, but good thing she didn’t see that, doofus.’

‘Who the hell uses that word anymore,’ Daryl mutters as he glares at his plate.

‘Why don’t you go talk to her?’ Tara asks. ‘She seems nice.’

‘I don’t wanna talk to her.’

Tara cocks an eyebrow. ‘You just wanna stare at her creepily from across the room? Yeah, that sounds like a great tactic. Good luck with that. Oh, it looks like you don’t need luck _because you’re already doing that_!’

Daryl narrows his eyes at her. ‘You’re _so_ lame.’

‘At least I’ve had girlfriends,’ Tara grins back, ‘how many have _you_ had?’

‘I’m fifteen and you’re ancient,’ Daryl says loudly before glancing at Paul with red ears. ‘I mean, I’m _sixteen_.’

The scout doesn’t even hear. He’s sitting next to Ezekiel now, elbows on his knees as he leans in close to talk to the King. The long hair is tied into a bun but a few strands have escaped. He scratches at his beard while he listens thoughtfully, only occasionally making a quiet comment.

‘I’m the same age as Jesus,’ Tara laughs.

‘But not as good looking.’

‘Oh my God,’ Rosita giggles. ‘You’re still not over that?’

‘No. Well – no,’ he leans to the side again to catch a glimpse of the girl.

‘Seriously,’ Rosita says, putting her hand down on the table and tapping with her nail on the wood. ‘You’re being a creep. Go talk to her.’

‘What the hell am I supposed to say?’

Tara grins, ‘ _hi, I’m Daryl and I’m not as creepy as I look_.’

‘Fuck you.’

The woman sobers a bit and puts a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing circles over the flannel. ‘Okay; you just walk over to her, tell her you’re from a different community and introduce yourself. Maybe she can give you a tour tomorrow morning before we leave. Or you can talk about the tiger. Either is cool.’

‘Shiva,’ Daryl perks up. ‘Yeah, I mean – that won’t be weird, right? If I just go over and…’

‘No,’ Rosita assures him with a smile. ‘Not weird.’

‘Totally not weird,’ Tara nods.

Daryl narrows his eyes again. ‘Are y’all fucking with me again?’

‘No!’ Rosita snorts. ‘No. It’s just – that’s how you make friends, Daryl. It’s not always getting locked into a train car together, you know?’ she smiles at him. ‘It’s saying hi. Go on. I promise you; it’s not weird at all.’

‘Okay,’ Daryl gives her a small smile and stands up. He looks over to the other table.

But the girl is getting up too. One of the kids jumps up to grab a pair of crutches, a small boy with raven black hair. He hands them to the girl once she’s swung one leg over the bench she’d been sitting on.

She’s missing a leg, Daryl realizes when she stands up. What she says makes the little boy grin and dance around her.

Daryl falls back into his seat with a sigh.

‘What?’ Tara asks as she tries to spot the girl, ‘is she leaving? You can run after her!’

‘ _No_ , that _is_ freaky,’ Rosita warns. ‘Gotta be faster, lover-boy.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl scratches at the wood of the table with his fingernail. He watches how the girl walks away, leaning heavily on her crutches. ‘Maybe I’ll see her tomorrow though,’ he says hopefully.

 

 

He does see her the next morning. He spots her just as they walk up to Ezekiel, who is waiting to deliver his decree. She’s sitting on a stool, back perfectly straight as she pulls the string of a bow back. One eye closed, her knuckles grazing her jawline before she releases her arrow.

It lands a little to the left of her target.

The girl turns to another girl standing next to her, says something, mimics breathing calmly and then takes another arrow out of her quiver. She cocks it, pulls it back and releases it in one smooth move.

It hits the target perfectly.

‘See?’ she asks the girl next to her. ‘That’s the difference. If you do that, you won’t miss. Try again!’ She smiles and hands the bow to her friend.

‘Dream girl alert,’ Tara says under her breath and Rosita sniggers.

Daryl blushes furiously when Carl looks at him sharply.

‘This is life here,’ King Ezekiel says, silencing the group led by Rick, ‘every day, but it came at a cost. And I wanted more of this. I wanted to expand, to create more places like this. Men and women lost their limbs. Children lost their parents because I sent them into battle against the wasted when I did not need to.’

‘This is different,’ Rick cuts in.

‘It isn’t.’

‘It is,’ the leader of Alexandria insists. ‘The dead don’t rule us. The world doesn’t look like this outside your walls. People don’t have it as good, some people don’t have it good at all.’

Ezekiel tilts his chin up a fraction. ‘I need to worry about _my_ people.’

Daryl frowns angrily, his hands curling into fists. ‘You call yourself a damn king,’ he scoffs, ‘but you sure as hell don’t act like one.’

The king looks at him sharply. Slow steps and the man is towering over him, the kind face twisted by disapproval. It softens when Daryl glares right back. ‘All of this came at a cost,’ he points at the group of younger people who are shooting their bows. ‘It was lives. Arms. Legs.’

Daryl looks at the group. The girl isn’t the only one who is missing a limb. There’s a boy there too, and his arm is made of metal. Another girl is missing fingers while a teenager misses the bottom half of his left leg.

‘The peace we have with the Saviors is uneasy,’ Ezekiel admits as he turns back to Rick, ‘but it is peace. I have to hold on to it. I have to try.’ He sighs and faces the group, ‘although the Kingdom cannot grant you the aid your desire, the King is sympathetic to your plight. I offer our young friend Daryl asylum for as long as he requires it. He will be safe here. The Saviors do not set foot inside our walls.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘How long do you think that’s gonna last?’ he asks as he walks away. They’re done here.

He doesn’t see that Rick steps forward to shake the King’s hand, thanking him from the bottom of his heart.

 

 

Daryl walks next to Paul. He looks up at the man. ‘You come here often on runs and stuff?’

‘When I need to.’

‘Think I wanna be that, you know?’ the boy says, ‘like, a scout. Later. After the war.’

Paul looks at him. He stops walking and touches the boy’s cheek, running a gloved thumb over his jaw. ‘I think you’d be really good at it. People like you.’

‘Only sometimes.’

‘Most of the time,’ Paul smiles. Then he leans forward and kisses his forehead. ‘I’m really sorry, Daryl.’

A whirl of his coat and he’s off, jogging a little to catch up to Tara.

Daryl blinks. He can feel the blush coming on full-force again. His ears feel like they’re on fire.

Michonne squeezes his shoulder as she walks past.

A little dazed, Daryl follows her to the gate. ‘Hey,’ he shouts up to the guard. ‘Open it up, we’re going.’

The rest of the group sets off.

‘You’re not.’

Daryl turns to look at Rick. At first he thinks that the man is joking, but the look on his face says it all. ‘ _What_? I ain’t stayin’ here!’

‘You have to,’ Rick tells him. ‘It’s the smartest play, you know it is. Ezekiel has offered you asylum, the Saviors don’t come here; you’ll be _safe_.’

‘I can’t, man, I – I need to get back!’ Daryl objects. ‘Maggie is waitin’ and I promised her I’d be back today. And Merle’s there, and-‘

‘They know,’ the cop says. ‘They know you’re staying here for a while.’

Daryl stares at him. And then his gaze snaps to Paul, who is standing on the other side of the gate, next to Tara. He doesn’t meet the boy’s eye but the guilt radiates from his posture. ‘This was your plan!’ the teenager shouts. ‘You’ve set this up. You’ve set _me_ up!’

‘Dare,’ Rick grabs his upper arm, ‘calm down. I need you to stay here. You need to try and talk to Ezekiel, get him to join us. Or try staring him into submission – whatever it takes.’

‘No,’ Daryl breathes as he looks at the cop. ‘You can’t leave me here.’

‘I’m sorry, Dare.’

‘No! You can’t!’

‘Morgan,’ Rick says before he takes a quick step backwards.

Morgan grabs the boy by his shoulders, yanking him into his chest so he can curl his arms around him, pinning him into place effectively.

‘The hell? Fuck you, no! I need to get back! Maggie is – Please. Rick – Rick please!’

The cop shakes his head, presses his lips together and walks away. ‘We’ll be back soon,’ he throws over his shoulder. Head bowed, shoulders curled inwards but his stride confident as he joins the rest of his family on the other side of the gate.

Panic causes Daryl to scream. He tries shoving Morgan away but the man is too strong. ‘No! Rick! Michonne, what the hell? Tara. _Carl_! You can’t leave me here! _Paul, please_!’

Rick steps close to Michonne, putting his forehead on her shoulder. He’s saying something softly to her and the woman strokes his hair before covering one of his ears. The man’s shoulders shake.

‘ _Rick_!’ Daryl screams as he fights against Morgan. ‘ _Rick, please_!’

The gates still close with a bang.

 

 

 


	85. A kindness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warnings; References to, and explicit, self-harm

 

* * *

 

 

‘Give me the knife, Daryl.’

‘No.’

Morgan sighs. ‘Daryl, please.’

The boy glares at him. ‘I said; _no_. It’s mine, you can’t have it.’

‘You will get it back, but Paul said-‘

‘If Paul were so worried I’d slit my fuckin’ wrists, he shouldn’t have left me here,’ Daryl snaps. He looks around the small room. It’s the same room he’d slept in last night, curled up with Tara on the bed, sharing a pillow and whispering to each other about everything that has happened since they’d last seen each other. Voices low to not keep Rosita and Sasha up.

It had been late in the evening when Tara told him about the glasses she’d found in some abandoned store, the bobble-head of the doctor. He’d nestled in closer while whispering how sorry he was about Denise. Rosita had already told her how it had all happened, about Dwight and his crossbow, how that, too, could have been his fault. But Tara had brushed his hair out of his eyes, smiling through her tears as she whispered that Glenn would have been proud that he’d tried to help the man and women instead of letting them die.

They’d fallen asleep with their legs entangled. Soft, sad smiles on their faces.

The room feels empty now.

Daryl is sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to his chest so he has something to hide behind. There’s a nightstand and a small desk with a chair. Nothing more. A window right next to the door allows the last rays of sunlight to filter into the room. The day is ending. He has refused to eat the dinner Morgan has brought to his room.

There’s resentment clawing at his nerves. He hates Rick. He hates Paul. Hates them all for what they did this morning. It’s not just the fact that they left him, chaining him to this place like some dog left by the side of the road, it’s the fact that they had all known it would happen. None of them seemed surprised when Rick had said he wouldn’t be leaving that place, and while they’d all looked very sorry when the gates started to close, none had looked shocked.

He feels stupid. He should have realized something was wrong when he’d seen Paul argue with Maggie. The fact that the woman had put up a fight to keep him at Hilltop does little to warm his heart now. It’s all Paul’s fault anyway. And Rick’s, of course.

‘They want you to be safe,’ Morgan says as he wrings his hands. The man is sitting on the chair, shoulders hunched as he leans on his knees with his elbows. Dark eyes search the teenager’s face. Sometimes his hands twitch like he wants to reach out but Daryl is glad he doesn’t.

During their time at Alexandria, they’d gotten friendly enough for Morgan to teach him some martial arts but he’s not comfortable with the man touching him casually. Morgan seems to understand that, at least.

‘Maggie is safe at Hilltop,’ Daryl answers. ‘I could have been, too. If the saviors come, she will have to hide anyway and I could have done the same thing. This is such bullshit.’ He scratches at his cheek.

‘So it’s bullshit to want your family member to be safe?’ Morgan cocks an eyebrow.

‘I could help them _be_ safe,’ Daryl snaps back. ‘Hell, you don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about. What the fuck are you here for, huh? Just hidin’ behind them thick walls while we all…’ He stops himself and looks away.

‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to-‘

‘To _watch_? ‘cause that’s what we had to do,’ the teenager growls. ‘We had to watch while he smashed Glenn’s head to pieces and they took pictures and made me watch for days after!’ He takes a calming breath, ‘but I ain’t talkin’ about the damn line-up. Why are you here now? You could have gone with Rick back to Alexandria. You could have helped.’

Morgan shakes his head. ‘This isn’t my fight. I tried to get Rick to talk to the Saviors instead of-‘

‘So you _are_ sayin’ you were right,’ Daryl sneers. ‘You don’t have a fuckin’ clue about what these people are. What they do. They ain’t here to _talk_. What, you think you can just stroll up to Negan’s damn gates and expect him to listen to anything you say? Pssh. Even if he lets you finish, he’ll have Lucille answer for him. How’s that for a damn conversation?’

‘There just has to be another way.’

‘There ain’t.’

The man sighs and rubs at the back of his neck with his left hand. ‘It’s getting late,’ he says with a glance at the window. ‘My room is three doors down, on the right. I’ll come and get you for breakfast. Is that okay?’

The teenager glares at him. ‘Don’t go actin’ like I got a damn choice now.’

‘Daryl,’ Morgan stands up, hands lingering on the back of his chair. ‘This is a good place. High walls, trained soldiers to guard them. There’s plenty of food and they have even given you a soft place to lay your head down. A little more gratitude might be in order. The king has been very kind to you.’ He walks to the door but pauses on the threshold. ‘I’m really sorry about Glenn, Daryl. Abraham, too. I know they meant a lot to you.’

‘You don’t give a shit,’ Daryl snaps at him. ‘Stop pretending ‘nd leave me alone.’ He scowls and plucks at his fingernails. Just when the man pulls the door open to leave, he looks up again. ‘Think they’re coming back? Like, I know Rick said he would, but…’

Morgan closes the door again. He walks back to the boy, sitting next to him on the bed this time. ‘You’re right,’ he says, ‘we don’t know each other well, but I know Rick. I don’t always agree with him, we see things differently but,’ he nods, ‘he’s a good man. If he said he would be back for you, he will be.’

‘Right.’

‘Is that what you’re afraid of? That they’re just going to leave you here?’

Daryl shrugs. He scratches at the back of one hand. The skin turns red, angry.

‘Don’t do that,’ Morgan says softly as he places his hand over the boy’s to still it. ‘You’ll draw blood.’

‘My dad left,’ Daryl says before he can stop himself. Morgan isn’t his family but they used to be friends. And he’s all he has here. ‘Way back in Atlanta, he left me behind. Like, he got locked – chained to a roof and … he got out, right? And he stole the van and… he just didn’t come back,’ Daryl says with a huff of laughter even though he doesn’t even know what’s so funny about that. He doesn’t know where to look. He doesn’t dare to meet Morgan’s eyes now. ‘But it don’t matter ‘cause he weren’t a good man anyway, so,’ he jumps off the bed and walks over to the desk wanting to create some more distance. He sits down on the dark wood, heavy boots kicking against the leg of the chair.

‘Rick is.’

‘Yeah.’ Daryl looks at his boots, ‘and he always said that we were – you know, that we were blood, too, so… That I’m… We’re family,’ he says as he looks at the man, fingers going white from pressure on the desk. ‘He said that.’

‘He meant it,’ Morgan assures him.

‘I know,’ Daryl scoffs even though the tension only bleeds out of his frame after the man’s affirmation. ‘And what I fuckin’ meant was; you think they’re comin’ back _in time_?’

Morgan folds his hands, finger twining together as he hides his smile behind them. The skin around his dark eyes wrinkles with mirth for a second. ‘Of course,’ he nods, face smoothing out once more. ‘I’m sorry for misunderstanding, Daryl. In time for what?’

‘For the war. Do you think they’ll come back to get me for the war?’

‘Maybe there isn’t going to be a war.’

Daryl groans as he looks at the ceiling. ‘Don’t start again. There _is_. And I want to be there for it. I can fight.’

‘I know you can. You and your brother led that raid on the outpost. You killed those two men at the front door.’

The teenager scoffs as he pulls one leg up, boot resting on the desk and his chin on his knee. ‘Killed a whole bunch of them. What? You think they put me in here with you so you can teach me more of your spiritual mumbo-jumbo? All life is precious? Pfft. That ain’t true. Some people just don’t deserve to live.’

‘Like Negan?’

‘Like Negan,’ Daryl nods. ‘Like Gareth. Like Joe. The Governor. And anyone they called theirs.’

‘I heard Negan called you his.’

The boy freezes. He stares at the man with wide eyes. A couple of strands of his dark hair have escaped the baseball cap and frame his face. ‘Who the hell told you that?’

Morgan frowns. ‘Rick said Negan paraded you around Alexandria. Paul told me he found you in a room and not a cell so-‘

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl breathes. ‘Get the fuck out of my room.’

‘I didn’t mean-‘

‘ _Get out_!’

Morgan raises his hands in surrender and stands up quickly. ‘Okay,’ his voice is soft when he speaks; soothing. ‘Okay. I’m leaving. I’m sorry.’

‘Then shut up and go!’ the teenager snarls as he jumps to his feet, heavy boots thumping on the concrete floor. ‘I don’t want you here. Get out. Get the fuck out!’ He watches how Morgan slips out of the room, the door closing softly behind him.

He stares at the door, chest rising and falling in time with his rapid breath. There’s sweat dripping down his neck even though it isn’t hot in the room anymore. Slowly, he looks at the palms of his hands. They’re itching. With one sharp fingernail, he follows his lifelines to try and distract himself.

He knows he shouldn’t have snapped at Morgan. Shouldn’t have snarled and screamed, but he just can’t bear the thought that the man had been right, even though he hadn’t meant it like that. Rick thought it had been an act. That he’d been forced. That he’d never wanted to bury his hands in that leather jacket and rest his forehead on Negan’s shoulder to just _sleep_ for a little while, safe in the knowledge that Negan would be able to keep even Merle’s ghost at bay.

He knows that Carl thought it had all been an act.

He wonders whether Paul had seen or noticed that there hadn’t been any guards at his door, that the door hadn’t been locked, that he could have left even before the scout came to get him. That Fat Joey had greeted him with a cheerful ‘Hey Daryl’ instead of immediately alarming Wade that their prisoner had escaped. That he knew Dwight and had owed him for all those nights the man had walked him back to his room, keeping him safe and keeping promises to his ex-wife.

It hadn’t been an act.

It had been real. He _had_ been Negan’s.

The life lines on his hand burn. He digs the nail in a little deeper.

‘Stop,’ he tells himself even though he can’t. ‘It don’t matter no more,’ but he knows it does.

With a snarl, he slaps his hands against the wall, palms open and skin now stinging due to the impact. He leans against them, pinning himself in place.

He’s made a promise but everything in his body is just itching for _something_. A beating, a knife, a scratch, a-

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl breathes. Sweat is soaking the collar of his shirt. His arms tremble. Another snarl and he pushes himself away from the wall, yanking his door open and stalking down the corridor. The third door on the right. He knocks.

Morgan looks surprised when he opens the door.

With shaking fingers, Daryl gets the knife out of the sheath. Wild flowers on the handle: poisonous.

‘Just for tonight. I want it back in the morning,’ Daryl says as he holds it out.

The man takes it. ‘You can stay here, or I can come and sleep in your room. You shouldn’t be alone.’

That startles a painful laugh out of the boy. ‘Yeah, well,’ he mutters, rubbing at his eyebrow. ‘That might be part of the fucking problem: they won’t leave me the hell alone. Look, it doesn’t matter. Just keep it safe, okay? I promised him I wouldn’t use his. Can’t break that promise, even though he’s an asshole.’

‘I will keep it safe,’ Morgan nods.

‘Thank you,’ Daryl mutters before walking back to his own room. He bites at his fingernail, the sharp canine occasionally biting into the soft flesh right next to it. An hour later, he falls asleep with the taste of blood on his tongue.

 

 

Breakfast is served in a cafeteria in one of the main buildings. Plastic trays and plastic chairs but steaming hot food and real eggs instead of the powdered one he’d gotten used to at Alexandria. Most people don’t pay any attention to him when he slinks after Morgan to get his own tray, barely looking up from his boots. He asks for water when it’s clear that he has to make a choice what he wants to drink but Morgan cuts in and orders a glass of milk for him instead.

‘Growing boy,’ Morgan says. ‘That’s what Maggie said, right? When’s the last time you’ve had milk?’

‘The Hilltop has cattle,’ Daryl mutters.

‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ the man tells him with a pointed look.

‘Fine, I’ll take the milk. Good Lord.’ He thanks the guy behind the counter and takes his tray, following Morgan to one of the tables at the very back. Back during his first days at the Sanctuary, he’d lost a lot of weight due to the dogfood diet, but the time with Negan’s wives had made up for it. They’d fed him constantly, trying to put some meat back on his bones while also slipping him candy when they’d discovered his sweet tooth.

Back at the Hilltop, he’d skipped meals again in an attempt to not strain their resources too much. He’d already been an uninvited guest, after all.

The food here is good but it does little to cheer Daryl up. He hasn’t slept well, the night riddled with blood and screams, and he’d woken up with a gasp, uttering the wrong name in desperation. There are new scratch marks on his arm and leg as punishment. Dull but just as painful.

‘Good morning, Morgan,’ someone says as they slip into the seat opposite the man. It’s one of the younger guards of the king. He’d been there when Rick had proposed the plan, standing on the right hand of his king. Blond curls tucked behind his ears, lips curling into a smile. ‘Morning, Daryl.’

Daryl looks at him warily and then glances at Morgan.

‘Good morning Benjamin,’ the man says easily. ‘Where’s your brother?’

‘Oh, I let him sleep in,’ the guard smiles. He looks at Daryl for a second, ‘we don’t have too many guests here, so he was pretty riled up. He kept me up all night.’

Daryl pushes his eggs around on his plate.

‘Benjamin has a younger brother,’ Morgan tells the teenager next to him. ‘I’ve been teaching them Aikido, just like how I taught you.’

‘Yeah, I don’t care,’ Daryl mutters. ‘And you didn’t teach me shit. Anyone can jump over a damn stick if they can see it comin’.’

‘But the trick is to see it coming,’ Morgan says with a raised eyebrow.

‘That’s the hard part,’ Benjamin laughs. He’s maybe a couple years older than Daryl, in his late teens, though the Dixon boy doubts that he has been outside of the walls much. The smile is too quick and easy. If it’s just him and his brother, he knows heartache, but he hasn’t let it harden him. Daryl doesn’t know what to make of that.

‘Hey,’ Benjamin’s eyes light up, ‘maybe we can train together. Morgan is always kicking my butt.’

The man smiles and shakes his head. ‘It wouldn’t be training if I went easy on you.’

‘No, I know,’ Benjamin nods, ‘but Daryl is-‘

‘Yeah, I don’t want to,’ the Dixon boy cuts in.

Benjamin’s shoulders droop slightly as he glances at Morgan before smiling again. ‘Okay. Well if you want, I can give you a tour of this place later. I know Jesus must have told you some but I can show you some neat –‘

‘Will you just leave me the hell alone?’ Daryl asks as he stands up abruptly, shoving his tray away from him. ‘I don’t wanna train with you, I don’t want no damn tour, okay? I don’t want anything to do with you!’

Morgan looks at him sharply. ‘He’s offering to be your friend.’

Daryl sneers, ‘don’t want that neither,’ before walking away.

 

 

The building is pretty high. Daryl is standing in some kind of courtyard, one of the gardens off the beaten path and he’s staring up at the roof of one of the bigger buildings in the kingdom. It’s also the one that’s closest to the wall. One side of the roof is level with it, even. He’s pretty sure he could make the jump from one to the other.

If he can find a way up to that roof.

It’s still early in the morning but he has already walked a lap around the Kingdom. The wall is impenetrable. There are guards stationed all along it on small platforms. Daryl had hoped to find one that wasn’t manned so he could use it to jump the wall, but he hasn’t been lucky so far.

This might be his best shot.

It doesn’t really matter that there’s a guard stationed right next to the building. Once he’s on the roof, all he has to do is run and jump and then get the hell out of there. He doubts anyone in the Kingdom would set up a search party for him anyway. They don’t even know him.

So he stares at the pillars and the fences and thinks about how Enid would have probably found a way up ten minutes ago. Climbing the walls of both Hilltop and Alexandria had been easy for her and the promise to not do it hard to keep.

Daryl had tried to do what he normally does at his own communities: just demand the gates to be opened for him. This time, however, the guards had just glanced at him before refusing to do so.

‘It’s further than it looks,’ a deep voice rumbles behind Daryl. ‘The eyes can be blinded by such daring endeavors. Another boy tried once, older than you and taller. He did not make the jump. Broke his legs. The screams we heard that night have kept anyone else from trying.’

Daryl frowns as Ezekiel steps up next to him. The man is wearing a simple white shirt and brown jeans, black boots. He bends over to put a heavy-looking bucket down at his feet. It’s filled with dead chickens.

‘You have not heard them,’ Ezekiel says as he looks at the teenager, ‘so you might be tempted to try. Don’t. My guards informed me you requested the gates to be opened. They refused.’ The King smiles, ‘I assure you, my young friend, you are not held captive here. You are unarmed. You did not have any provisions with you at the time. They will not allow anyone to leave so unprepared to face what is out there.’

‘I have a knife,’ Daryl argues because Morgan had given it back to him as promised.

‘If you insist upon leaving, nobody will stop you, but the road is long and filled with more dangers than mere wasted. You should not face it before you’re ready,’ the King tells him before grabbing the bucket again and heading towards the building Daryl had been thinking of climbing.

The teenager bites on his lip and presses his fingernails into the palms of his hands but still can’t stop himself from asking: ‘what’s up with the chickens?’

The King throws a smile over his shoulder, ‘you are most welcome to join me, Daryl Dixon of Alexandria, though I’d urge you to follow my every command and stay very quiet once we go in.’

They cross the garden and enter the building. A left turn, down a long corridor towards the back, a right turn and then another hallway. Two guards are sitting on chairs next to a steel door.

‘At ease,’ the king smiles when they jump up. ‘This is our friend and guest, Daryl. He will be accompanying me today.’

‘Of course, sir,’ one of the guards, a Chinese woman, says with a curt nod. ‘Good morning, Daryl. It’s been a quiet night,’ she pulls the heavy door open. ‘But she’s getting restless now.’

‘She is well aware of what time it is,’ Ezekiel answers. ‘Thank you, Howin. I always rest easier knowing you are watching over her,’ he puts a hand on the guard’s shoulder and squeezes it before moving on. ‘Stay close to me, Daryl, and remember what I said; my every command. Now be quiet and try not to move too sudden.’

Daryl’s heart starts to beat faster when they walk through a small corridor that’s paved with white stones. The paved walls echo the sounds from the next room. The shuffling of big paws, ragged breath coursing through a powerful set of lungs, the panting, the soft growls. They turn a corner and Daryl huffs out a breath of amazement himself.

Shiva.

The tiger is prowling behind a set of bars. She’s locked in a cage, the floor bare just like everything else. It’s dark in here until Ezekiel lights an oil lamp near the door. The soft light causes the eyes of the tiger to glimmer. Nervous steps, nails now scraping over concrete, lips pulled back to reveal her teeth. The shoulder blades shift under her coat as she paces back and forth, eyes on Ezekiel at all times.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ Ezekiel greets the animal. ‘Remain by the door, Daryl.’

Daryl halts and watches how the man approaches the cage. There’s a ring of keys right next to the door and Shiva growls loudly when the king reaches for it. ‘I know,’ Ezekiel laughs as he grabs the ring and opens the door. ‘I’m hurrying. Hello,’ he wastes no time but upturns the bucket. The chickens fall onto the floor and Shiva jumps on one of them, just an orange flash as she darts forward to grab one with her sharp teeth.

‘You may speak,’ Ezekiel tells the teenager by the door. ‘But do not approach yet. Food makes her wary of strangers. She knows I bring it, she does not yet know you will not try to take it.’

‘Where did you find her?’

‘Out there,’ Ezekiel says as he kneels beside Shiva, not touching her, but watching contently how she rips the feathers from the chicken.

‘And what?’ Daryl frowns, ‘you just… you just _took_ her? Chained her up like this?’

‘It keeps both her and my people save if I lock her up at night, yes,’ the King nods. ‘Who knows what would happen, should someone stumble upon a tiger’s tail in the middle of the night, hmm?’ He reaches out now and touches one the fluffy triangle ears. ‘It is yours,’ he assures her in his deep voice when she looks up. ‘It is all yours.’

‘But she was out there and you put her in a cage. You – what? You _broke_ her just so you could have a cool pet?’

Ezekiel turns on his heels but remains crouched next to the large animal. One hand between her shoulder blades, fingers disappearing in the rich fur. ‘You are upset,’ he says with a small frown. ‘Why?’

‘Ain’t right.’ Daryl scowls as he folds his arms in front of his chest. ‘She should be out there, where she belongs.’

‘Where she will be eaten or where she will surely starve,’ Ezekiel says as he rises. ‘She was born into captivity. We tried to teach her how to hunt, tried to hide her food in her enclosure so she would have to track it, hid it up trees so she would learn how to climb. It was not enough. She was never meant to be out there. It was not part of our program to release her back into the wild,’ he tells the boy. ‘She has been locked up for too long to just be set free. She would not have survived if it wasn’t for the Kingdom. You might not like it, but she belongs here, behind walls. It is how she survives.’

‘Your program?’

‘I was a zookeeper.’

The frown melts away. The boy’s eyes light up, ‘really?’

‘Really,’ Ezekiel says with a soft laugh. ‘Shiva and I, we were friends before all of this,’ he smiles at the animal next to him. ‘She would never hurt me, but you are right, Daryl. She is a wild animal. I wish she had been born in the mangrove forest of the Ganges Delta, the jungle of Cambodia, or that she would have grown up tasting the Amur River of Siberia. I am sorry she didn’t, though I was proud of the life we could give her in our zoo.’ He walks over to the bars so he can look at the boy while the animal behind him rips into its prey. Bones crush between powerful jaws. ‘Jesus has told me your story,’ the man says softly. ‘I am very sorry that happened to you, Daryl. We have all lost people we cared about greatly. There were times we all wanted vengeance. On those who took them from us, on the almighty spirit who caused all of this, even. It does not help,’ Ezekiel tells him. ‘It will not heal the hurt.’

‘So we should just let it be? They will hurt someone else.’

‘Are your motives that pure?’ the man questions. ‘Do you not want to fight because they killed your friends?’

‘My family,’ Daryl corrects sharply. ‘And the rest of my family is not safe as long as Negan rules them.’

Ezekiel sighs. ‘Perhaps it is not my place to offer you advice, or perhaps it is pointless. Morgan and Jesus speak highly of you. Daryl Dixon of Alexandria, they said, strong and loyal, a bowman unlike Morgan has ever seen, as quick with his knife as he is with his smile. And stubborn as a mule.’

Daryl snorts.

‘You are free to leave,’ the King tells him. ‘The kitchens will give you provisions for the long road and Richard will provide you with a weapon. The gates will open on your next request. This is not your cage, Daryl. And you were not abandoned.’

‘No?’ Daryl scoffs. ‘They left my ass behind. What would you call it?’

‘A kindness.’ Ezekiel wraps one hand around the bars. ‘They are gearing up for all out war with the Saviors. It will be bloody. It will be long. And Rick Grimes will need you by his side before it ends, as much as it pains him to admit. He will come back for you. You will have to be ready.’

The teenager straightens his back. ‘I am.’

The King gives him a sad smile. ‘Rumors about a boy screaming in the night have reached my ears this morning. There are marks on your arms, bags under your eyes.’ He closes his eyes for a brief moment, ‘people are wondering whose name you have been calling so desperately.’

‘Don’t,’ Daryl breathes as he takes a small step back.

‘They ask me…’

‘No,’ Daryl whispers.

‘They ask me who Negan is,’ Ezekiel tells him softly. ‘ _Was he his father_?’

Daryl feels sick. He puts a hand on the cool white tiles to not fall. The world is spinning and his heart is pounding. Sweat slickens his neck and gathers on the palms of his shaking hands.

‘The Kingdom has offered you asylum and Rick Grimes has offered you time. Both are a gift. Do not mistake them for captivity or rejection. Use them,’ Ezekiel urges him, voice gentle and kind. ‘Make sure you will be ready when he calls on you. And he will call on you, Daryl, before this is all over. When it happens, meet him a new person. Unbroken and free from these chains they have given you.’

 

 

Benjamin looks surprised when Daryl sits down opposite him at breakfast the next morning. The light eyes search for Morgan, but the man is not there. The curious gaze settles on the younger boy and a hesitant smile is conjured onto his face. Fingers tighten their hold on his utensils subconsciously.

‘Good morning,’ Daryl says, not quite daring to meet the gaze. He looks at the bridge of Benjamin’s nose instead.

‘Morning,’ Benjamin greets cautiously.

‘I’m – I’m sorry about… I just… I’m Daryl Dixon, I’m from Alexandria.’

‘I know.’

Daryl winces. ‘Yeah – I… I’m not very good at makin’ friends.’

Benjamin seems to be suppressing another smile. ‘I know.’

After another flash of embarrassment, the Dixon boy recognizes the words for the gentle teasing that they are. When he finally dares to meet the young man’s eye, he sees the mirth there.

‘I’m sorry,’ the guard laughs, ‘just giving you a hard time after yesterday. Don’t worry about it. Morgan told me you haven’t met too many friendly people lately. It’s okay to freak out, I guess.’

‘Didn’t freak out,’ Daryl says, affronted.

‘Sure you didn’t,’ Benjamin smirks before shoveling some of his beans into his mouth. ‘Did you get water? Man, you should try this stuff,’ he switches their glasses. ‘It’s milk but with honey. They say it’s really good for you. They usually give it to the kids, because it’s so sweet, right? But,’ he laughs again and looks at his plate, cheeks staining a little red, ‘the girl behind the counter sometimes gives me some, too. Samaira. She’s nice.’

‘Bet she is.’

Benjamin looks up and Daryl lifts an eyebrow.

Both boys grin.

‘Yeah,’ the guard chuckles, ‘anyway…’

‘Yup,’ Daryl laughs as he reaches out and takes the glass, tasting the milk. ‘Ahw, that’s really sweet.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘Fuck you, it’s mine now,’ Daryl mutters as he leans back in his seat and takes a couple of swallows. When he’s downed half of the glass, he puts it back in front of Benjamin’s plate. ‘We can share. No need to look like I kicked your puppy.’

‘I didn’t –‘ Benjamin starts before he shakes his head and laughs. ‘Fuck you,’ he echoes, adding a wink at the end of it.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daryl dismisses with an easy wave of his hand. ‘Hey, I don’t know if you got time or anything, but if you’re still offerin’ that tour then… yeah. I’d… I’d like that.’

The young guard perks up, eyes bright and grin wide, ‘yeah! I’ve got time after breakfast, but I’m on duty in the afternoon. I can show you around, introduce you to people - no problem.’

‘Great,’ Daryl nods. ‘Thanks, man.’

He eats his food hungrily. Shoveling the eggs into his mouth and savoring the taste. Benjamin laughs at him, tells him to take it easy and that he can actually ask for more if he’s really that hungry, but Daryl just kicks him beneath the table and steals the apple from his plate.

 

 

Benjamin’s tour takes him through every building inside the Kingdom, along the wall and through the gardens down to the stables. He tells stories about the people in charge, pointing out the men taking care of their food supply, the woman who makes the best strings for their bows, the guy who trains their horses. There’s Richard, in charge of the King’s guard, as well as several lieutenants who are training the soldiers on the outer fields.

There’s no point system here.

You take from the well. You replenish the well.

Like Alexandria, everyone seems to have a job and that is enough to keep their small world from falling apart.

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Daryl asks as he watches how a woman shoots her bow from the back of a horse.

‘Oh, I don’t give out the jobs,’ Benjamin says hurriedly. ‘And there’s plenty of time, we’re not – we’re not keeping track of what you take or anything, it’s just, if you’re planning on staying, you should probably… you know, contribute. But you’re a guest now. Ezekiel said so.’

‘I can hunt,’ Daryl mutters. ‘I’m strong, so I can work in the gardens and stuff. If you got cars, I can fix them up good, too.’

‘Ezekiel told us you would be taking it easy,’ Benjamin tells him as they walk back through the gardens, heading towards the wall where Benjamin’s watch will start in a little while.

‘That right, huh? He said that?’

Benjamin nods. ‘He said you were recovering.’

‘Yeah, well, that ain’t what he meant.’ He spots Richard walking towards the King’s quarters. ‘Listen, I gotta go. Thanks for this, see you later.’

‘At dinner?’ Benjamin asks. ‘I usually eat at Ezekiel’s table with my brother, we can make room for you, if you want.’

‘What? Oh. Yeah, sure,’ Daryl says a little awkwardly. ‘I mean - cool.’

‘Cool,’ Benjamin grins back. ‘See you tonight.’

 

 

Richard lifts a eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’

Daryl nods.

‘We won’t go easy on you just because you’re thirteen and a guest.’

‘Sixteen,’ Daryl corrects, straightening up a little and pushing his shoulders back, ‘and I wouldn’t want you to. I can take it.’

Richard eyes him for a moment and then shrugs. A smirk settles around his mouth, the blue eyes twinkle when he nods at the group behind them. ‘What the hell are you waiting for then? I’ll get you an uniform later, but nobody died from running in jeans. Go on, catch up with them.’

Daryl grins before turning on his heels and running after the group of soldiers, catching up quickly.

‘Victor,’ Richard booms across the training fields. ‘Little one is yours!’

The lieutenant at the front of the group looks up and then over his shoulder. ‘Keep pace,’ he tells the girl next to him before slowing down until he’s running next to Daryl. ‘First day?’

‘Yup,’ Daryl pants.

‘Try to breathe in through your nose, out via your mouth, it’ll help. Head high, shoulders back, light on your feet, come on,’ Victor urges, picking up the pace again.

Daryl follows his lead.

 

 


	86. 86

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to personal circumstances I wasn’t able to finish today’s chapter. This is the opening scene I’d written earlier.  
> There won’t be an update next week. Not on Tuesday, not on Friday. I will do my best to be back on the 30th.  
> If anything changes, I’ll post an update on my tumblr; https://jamesjohneye.tumblr.com/  
> I’m really sorry.
> 
> Thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

One of the classrooms on the first floor has been converted to a laundromat. On one side of the room, people sit hunched over small tubs with soapy water, agitating the clothes before scrubbing them clean on washboards. It’s a hard and laborious task, only made easier due to the fact that there are often several people sitting in a circle, talking about their day and lives while scrubbing the clothes. Laughter mixes with the sound of sloshing water, bubbly like the soap in the tubs.

The soapy clothes are passed to another station, where they’re rinsed in clean water and then thrown into another tub, one that’s warmed by fires underneath it. People stand on little platforms, pushing clothes around with wooden sticks before fishing the items out and letting them cool off in a pile before they’re hung outside on long lines to dry.

It’s a good system which would have been even better if a stream ran through the Kingdom. They’re working on it right now, digging a channel so the water will flow past the building, but the work hasn’t yet been completed and until then, water has to be gathered in big containers and brought back. It’s done by horse and carriage every morning.

Daryl always helps unloading the carts, carrying the heavy containers into the building and emptying them into the tubs. It’s hard work but he doesn’t mind doing it. And while it’s true that he never minds helping people out or working hard, it’s not entirely for unselfish reasons or out of the goodness of his heart.

The girl works in the laundromat.

Every morning, she comes in with a group of men and women, sits down behind one of the washboards and works until noon. Curly hair tied into a messy bun on the top of her head to keep it out of her eyes, her own clothes soaked by the splashes by the time she’s done. Sometimes she will take short breaks, allowing one of her friends to help her up, balancing on one leg until someone hands her her crutches before slipping outside. She’ll sit on the porch, basking in the sunlight and drying her clothes a bit, allowing her hands to warm after the assault of the cold water.

Daryl hasn’t yet dared to talk to her, though she always flashes him a smile when he makes his rounds filling the tubs. She does that with anyone and he tries not to imagine that the smile meant for him is a little wider, a little brighter.

Her name is Jayla.

And Daryl thinks she’s very pretty.

Every morning, he will tell himself that this is the morning he will talk to her. That he will walk up to her, copying Rick’s determined stride while borrowing Paul’s winning smile and Aaron’s easy charm. It hasn’t worked yet. There’s always an excuse to not do it this morning; she’s talking to someone else, one of the other guys already filled her tub so there’s no reason for him to walk past her, or he greets one of the people in her circle and his tongue already betrays him so he stumbles over his every word and just stops talking to save face.

It doesn’t really work. The people from the morning shift often poke fun at him, trying to make him trip up on purpose and the guys carrying the water will snort when he comes running out of the building with his tail between his legs and cheeks stained red.

This morning, he’s filling up one of the tubs next to her, nervously repeating _hi, I’m Daryl and I’m from Alexandria_ , in his head in preparation when one of the women bursts out into laughter.

‘He did not,’ she snorts, shaking her head. ‘A pomegranate? Come on…’

‘He did!’ another woman insists though her voice is light with laughter. ‘I’m telling you; he brought her a pomegranate. Apparently she’d said she didn’t like them much when they met and he, I don’t know, thought it would be this cute thing to do.’

‘To bring her fruit she hates?’

‘To seduce her to eat the fruit she thought she didn’t like but now kind of _desires_ ,’ the woman says, wiggling her eyebrows before laughing again.

‘Oh my God,’ her friend reaches out to shove her shoulder. ‘This did _not_ happen. Who’s been telling lies about our King?’

‘They’re not lies! Henri told me! He was on guard duty that morning.’

‘Yeah right. He saw the King walk through the gates with a pomegranate in his hand and hearts in his eyes? Come on. He goes outside the walls all the time. Did he bring Shiva?’

The woman rolls her eyes, ‘yes.’

‘See? You know how she gets when she’s cooped up in here for too long. He was just patrolling with her, not visiting his secret lover.’

The canister nearly slips out of Daryl’s hands. With a soft curse he adjusts his grip, feeling how some water splashes onto the ground near his boots. The man sitting behind the washboard quickly moved his feet, trying to keep them dry for as long as possible.

‘Sorry, man,’ Daryl mutters.

‘It’s fine,’ the guy says easily. ‘I know they’re heavy.’

‘Hey, you!’

Daryl looks to the side and the canister almost slips out of his hands again. He puts it down before he can spill anymore. When he straightens, he wipes his hands nervously on his shorts. Paul’s winning smile feels more like a grimace on his own face, so he must be doing it wrong. ‘Yeah?’ he asks, tilting his head to the side like how Rick would have done.

Jayla is talking to him.

‘Aren’t you one of the King’s guards?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘But you’re wearing their uniform.’

‘Richard gave it to me. I just – I just train with them while I have to stay here.’

She frowns, ‘why do you _have_ to stay here?’

Daryl shrugs and picks the canister up again. ‘I just do. King’s orders. My name is Daryl, by the way. I’m from Alexandria.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jayla nods. ‘ _Everyone_ knows that,’ she laughs when he frowns, ‘what? We don’t get new people very often.’

The boy scratches at his cheek, ‘right. Okay – well, I’ll just….’ He desperately searches for anything else to say to her. ‘I don’t know nothing about no secret lover anyway, so…’

The women chuckle when he blushes fiercely and Jayla bites her lips to keep her laughter in.

‘I just thought you’d know if you were one of his guards,’ she says.

‘Well, I ain’t, so…’

‘Okay, sorry about that.’

‘No worries.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

Jayla raises her eyebrows.

Daryl wants to drown himself in one of the buckets. He swears that he can see Tara from the corner of his eye, laughing while Rosita rolls her eyes at him. He snaps the fingers of his left hand and finger guns Jayla down. ‘See you later.’

He turns around and can’t believe what he just did.

 _That is embarrassing,_ Paul laughs from his memories.

He slaps his hand over his eyes, groaning in mortification.

‘Bye, Daryl,’ Jayla laughs behind him.

She’s still within earshot.

‘Oh my fuckin’ God,’ Daryl moans, shaking his head and turning around. ‘Sorry about that, I just – Yeah. Bye, Jayla.’

Her smile grows a little wider as she narrows her eyes suspiciously, ‘I didn’t tell you my name.’

‘Oh my God,’ Daryl laughs, feeling how his blush spreads from the tips of his ears to his cheeks and even down his neck. He shakes his head. ‘Stop talkin’ to me, you’re just makin’ it worse.’

The girl laughs, ‘I’m not even doing anything!’

‘You are!’ Daryl argues. He puts the canister on his shoulder with a grunt and bites the bullet. ‘You’re being so goddamn _pretty_ all the time, making me look like a blundering mess.’

Jayla rolls her eyes. The smile fades from her face as she hunches over the washboard again, lips just a thin line. ‘Must be something wrong with your eyes then.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Hey,’ he says, taking a step back to her. When she meets his eye, he smiles at her. ‘The people back in Alexandria? They’re my blood, so… and there ain’t no girls there anyway, like, none who… just my family, you know? And… Well, I just…’ He laughs a little shyly, ‘get a little nervous around pretty girls, I guess. Didn’t mean nothing bad and don’t mean anything, like – I’m not saying it to… I just think you’re really pretty, okay?’

A hesitant smile creeps onto the girl’s face. ‘Okay,’ she nods, glancing at the other women and ducking her head. ‘Thank you.’

‘Yeah,’ he grins. ‘No problem. See you around.’

 

 


	87. Her name is Jayla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
> 
> I've included the opening scene I'd already posted to complete this whole chapter. Just skip to the first set of white lines and start at the second scene for the new stuff. 
> 
> Additional chapter warning; mentions of suicide.

 

* * *

 

 

One of the classrooms on the first floor has been converted into a laundromat. On one side of the room, people sit hunched over small tubs with soapy water, agitating the clothes before scrubbing them clean on washboards. It’s a hard and laborious task, only made easier due to the fact that there are often several people sitting in a circle, talking about their day and lives while scrubbing the clothes. Laughter mixes with the sound of sloshing water, bubbly like the soap in the tubs.

The soapy clothes are passed to another station, where they’re rinsed in clean water and then thrown into another tub, one that’s warmed by fires underneath it. People stand on little platforms, pushing clothes around with wooden sticks before fishing the items out and letting them cool off in a pile before they’re hung outside on long lines to dry.

It’s a good system which would have been even better if a stream ran through the Kingdom. They’re working on it right now, digging a channel so the water will flow past the building, but the work hasn’t yet been completed and until then, water has to be gathered in big containers and brought back. It’s done by horse and carriage every morning.

Daryl always helps unloading the carts, carrying the heavy containers into the building and emptying them into the tubs. It’s hard work but he doesn’t mind doing it. And while it’s true that he never minds helping people out or working hard, it’s not entirely for unselfish reasons or out of the goodness of his heart.

The girl works in the laundromat.

Every morning, she comes in with a group of men and women, sits down behind one of the washboards and works until noon. Curly hair tied into a messy bun on the top of her head to keep it out of her eyes, her own clothes soaked by the splashes by the time she’s done. Sometimes she will take short breaks, allowing one of her friends to help her up, balancing on one leg until someone hands her her crutches before slipping outside. She’ll sit on the porch, basking in the sunlight and drying her clothes a bit, allowing her hands to warm after the assault of the cold water.

Daryl hasn’t yet dared to talk to her, though she always flashes him a smile when he makes his rounds filling the tubs. She does that with anyone and he tries not to imagine that the smile meant for him is a little wider, a little brighter.

Her name is Jayla.

And Daryl thinks she’s very pretty.

Every morning, he will tell himself that this is the morning he will talk to her. That he will walk up to her, copying Rick’s determined stride while borrowing Paul’s winning smile and Aaron’s easy charm. It hasn’t worked yet. There’s always an excuse to not do it this morning; she’s talking to someone else, one of the other guys already filled her tub so there’s no reason for him to walk past her, or he greets one of the people in her circle and his tongue already betrays him so he stumbles over his every word and just stops talking to save face.

It doesn’t really work. The people from the morning shift often poke fun at him, trying to make him trip up on purpose and the guys carrying the water will snort when he comes running out of the building with his tail between his legs and cheeks stained red.

This morning, he’s filling up one of the tubs next to her, nervously repeating hi, I’m Daryl and I’m from Alexandria, in his head in preparation when one of the women bursts out into laughter.

‘He did not,’ she snorts, shaking her head. ‘A pomegranate? Come on…’

‘He did!’ another woman insists though her voice is light with laughter. ‘I’m telling you; he brought her a pomegranate. Apparently she’d said she didn’t like them much when they met and he, I don’t know, thought it would be this cute thing to do.’

‘To bring her fruit she hates?’

‘To seduce her to eat the fruit she thought she didn’t like but now kind of desires,’ the woman says, wiggling her eyebrows before laughing again.

‘Oh my God,’ her friend reaches out to shove her shoulder. ‘This did not happen. Who’s been telling lies about our King?’

‘They’re not lies! Henri told me! He was on guard duty that morning.’

‘Yeah right. He saw the King walk through the gates with a pomegranate in his hand and hearts in his eyes? Come on. He goes outside the walls all the time. Did he bring Shiva?’

The woman rolls her eyes, ‘yes.’

‘See? You know how she gets when she’s cooped up in here for too long. He was just patrolling with her, not visiting his secret lover.’

The canister nearly slips out of Daryl’s hands. With a soft curse he adjusts his grip, feeling how some water splashes onto the ground near his boots. The man sitting behind the washboard quickly moved his feet, trying to keep them dry for as long as possible.

‘Sorry, man,’ Daryl mutters.

‘It’s fine,’ the guy says easily. ‘I know they’re heavy.’

‘Hey, you!’

Daryl looks to the side and the canister almost slips out of his hands again. He puts it down before he can spill anymore. When he straightens, he wipes his hands nervously on his shorts. Paul’s winning smile feels more like a grimace on his own face, so he must be doing it wrong. ‘Yeah?’ he asks, tilting his head to the side like how Rick would have done.

Jayla is talking to him.

‘Aren’t you one of the King’s guards?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘But you’re wearing their uniform.’

‘Richard gave it to me. I just – I just train with them while I have to stay here.’

She frowns, ‘why do you have to stay here?’

Daryl shrugs and picks the canister up again. ‘I just do. King’s orders. My name is Daryl, by the way. I’m from Alexandria.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jayla nods. ‘Everyone knows that,’ she laughs when he frowns, ‘what? We don’t get new people very often.’

The boy scratches at his cheek, ‘right. Okay – well, I’ll just….’ He desperately searches for anything else to say to her. ‘I don’t know nothing about no secret lover anyway, so…’

The women chuckle when he blushes fiercely and Jayla bites her lips to keep her laughter in.

‘I just thought you’d know if you were one of his guards,’ she says.

‘Well, I ain’t, so…’

‘Okay, sorry about that.’

‘No worries.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

Jayla raises her eyebrows.

Daryl wants to drown himself in one of the buckets. He swears that he can see Tara from the corner of his eye, laughing while Rosita rolls her eyes at him. He snaps the fingers of his left hand and finger guns Jayla down. ‘See you later.’

He turns around and can’t believe what he just did.

That is embarrassing, Paul laughs from his memories.

He slaps his hand over his eyes, groaning in mortification.

‘Bye, Daryl,’ Jayla laughs behind him.

She’s still within earshot.

‘Oh my fuckin’ God,’ Daryl moans, shaking his head and turning around. ‘Sorry about that, I just – Yeah. Bye, Jayla.’

Her smile grows a little wider as she narrows her eyes suspiciously, ‘I didn’t tell you my name.’

‘Oh my God,’ Daryl laughs, feeling how his blush spreads from the tips of his ears to his cheeks and even down his neck. He shakes his head. ‘Stop talkin’ to me, you’re just makin’ it worse.’

The girl laughs, ‘I’m not even doing anything!’

‘You are!’ Daryl argues. He puts the canister on his shoulder with a grunt and bites the bullet. ‘You’re being so goddamn pretty all the time, making me look like a blundering mess.’

Jayla rolls her eyes. The smile fades from her face as she hunches over the washboard again, lips just a thin line. ‘Must be something wrong with your eyes then.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Hey,’ he says, taking a step back to her. When she meets his eye, he smiles at her. ‘The people back in Alexandria? They’re my blood, so… and there ain’t no girls there anyway, like, none who… just my family, you know? And… Well, I just…’ He laughs a little shyly, ‘get a little nervous around pretty girls, I guess. Didn’t mean nothing bad and don’t mean anything, like – I’m not saying it to… I just think you’re really pretty, okay?’

A hesitant smile creeps onto the girl’s face. ‘Okay,’ she nods, glancing at the other women and ducking her head. ‘Thank you.’

‘Yeah,’ he grins. ‘No problem. See you around.’

 

 

It’s easy to integrate in The Kingdom. The people are kind and friendly like their King, always willing to lend a hand to share the load. The news of the visitors from new communities had spread like wildfire, just like the news a day later that one of them would be staying behind. Despite the reasons being hidden behind _an order of the King_ , the people just shrugged and welcomed Daryl in their midst.

At first, Daryl stuck to Benjamin’s side. He’d sit with him at dinner, head ducked and shoulders curled in, quickly retreating to Morgan’s side when the other teenager had to report for his guard duty or other obligations.

It wasn’t until the third day that Daryl started to wander around the Kingdom on his own. Despite his initial nerves, he struck up conversations with various people. The guy who looked after the horses, asking him what breed they were and learning a bit more about how to take care of the animals. The woman who had designed the gate, studying the schematics and asking her a million questions about the architectural features. A group of men in the auto shop teach him how to weld. And older woman is happy to tell him the secret of the bread she bakes if he’ll knead the dough for her.

He learns a lot. He uses every second of every day to learn more.

Every morning, he meets Ezekiel at dawn. The King had seemed surprised the first couple of days but then just passed the bucket with meat to the boy with a bemused smile. A quick reminder of the rules, _my every command_ , and then they’ll enter the room with the cage.

Every day, he gets to move a step closer to the bars while Ezekiel feeds Shiva. The tiger barely notices him anymore these days. She just pads around her enclosure, slinking around Ezekiel’s legs and nearly knocking him over before rubbing her side against the metal bars.

They don’t talk about the Saviors anymore. There’s no point, Daryl thinks. Ezekiel isn’t going to change his mind as long as the system keeps his people safe. And it does. Every couple of days, Daryl watches how a truck leaves for a nondisclosed location, the back filled with produce, weapons or materials. It comes back empty.

He tries not to get angry whenever he sees Morgan hop out of one of the trucks, along with Benjamin and Jerry, Richard and the King, as well as several other guards. He shouldn’t feel like the man betrays them all whenever he joins Ezekiel on the offerings, but he does.

He takes the anger out during his training. Victor, one of the lieutenants, makes him run mile after mile in the burning sun. Daryl had always thought he’d been in pretty good shape. He could walk through the woods for hours and hours, run faster than Carl and Rick, but he didn’t have the stamina to keep up with the guards of the Kingdom for miles. Victor makes him run a little slower so he can keep going for longer, though with every training he makes the teenager pick up the pace.

Daryl likes these training session. He just runs and runs until Victor tells him it’s been enough and sends him to the next instructor. Sometimes it’s Morgan, teaching him aikido he gets to practice with Benjamin, other times it’s a woman teaching him hand-to-hand combat.

One time it was even Jayla, sitting on her stool in the courtyard and shooting her bow. It had been a while since he’d shot anything other than a gun or his own crossbow, but he’d remembered Will’s lessons for a recurve bow all too clearly.

He’d felt proud when she’d looked at him with raised eyebrows as he stepped up to the line, not needing her instructions on how to cock the arrow. His shot didn’t hit the target like his crossbow would have done, not dead center and certainly not with the same amount of force behind it, but he’d hit the target and that had been enough.

Most nights, he’s too tired to worry about his dreams. His head will hit the pillow and he won’t remember a thing until he wakes up the next morning. No nightmares. And no sore throat from screaming.

There are other night, too. Riddled with memories that turn dark in ways even reality hadn’t. Nights during which Merle dies, Rick puts the python in his mouth and blood drips from Beth’s wrists. Nights when he himself is already dead but Maggie is still screaming his name like she’d done after the line-up. After Negan. Before Negan. After the beginning and before the end: always.

During those nights, he stays awake after the first dream, too afraid to go back to sleep. He counts the seconds and the minutes and the hours until dawn. Ezekiel will look at him gravely, and while he usually gets away with helping the guys fill up the water at the laundromat in the morning, Victor won’t let him train too hard in the afternoon. No drills and no fighting.

It doesn’t matter. By the time night falls, he’ll be too tired again, falling into a dreamless sleep to reset the cycle.

Days pass.

This is life now.

One morning, when he’s exploring the outer buildings of the Kingdom, he comes across the art department of the college. The walls of the long hallways are decorated with portraits and landscapes created by students. Little plaques proudly displaying their names and majors. Fine arts, photography, media arts, studio arts, architecture. He doesn’t know what some of it means, but he stops at every display to look at the art. Some pictures have faded but others are still as vivid as the day they were made.

He wanders into one of the classrooms. It’s not like any of the bigger lecture halls on the other side of the Kingdom, or even like the rooms they had had at his old school. There’s a whiteboard, wiped clean, and the desk of the teacher pushed to the side, but the rest of the room is filled with large tables. There’s a mechanism on the side of them and he fidgets with it until he figures out that he can pull the tabletop up at the end of it. It creaks.

There are old stains of paint on the surface, smudges where someone’s paper ended and the table began. Names are carved into the side, complete with dates.

He sits at the table and wonders whether he might have ended up in one of these places. He would have liked that. Maybe he could have convinced his dad that he’d needed a degree in the arts before becoming a tattoo artist, that practicing at home just wasn’t enough. Maybe then his dad would have approved.

Probably not though.

But he’s here now and he smiles as he leans onto the desk. He imagines people his own age sitting at the other tables, working on their art. The smell of paint, the whispers of paper being moved around, the soft murmur of people talking quietly.

He wonders what that would have been like, leaving that small town and moving to a big city full of strange people. A year ago the idea would have made him shudder, but he’s not so repulsed now. Meeting everyone at Alexandria had freaked him out at first, anxiously trying to keep all his secrets close to his chest, but meeting the people at Hilltop Colony had already been easier.

He’d liked Leon, the blacksmith, instantly, and had even managed to trade hard work for a cigarette. Everything had been easier still when Paul brought him back from the Sanctuary. It had felt like part of his duty to quickly get to know everyone, trying to figure out where and how he could help the Colony and by extend Maggie. He’d wanted to be like Enid, who could seemingly blend in anywhere, and like Paul, who was greeted with a kind smile everywhere he seemed to go.

He looks around the room and thinks that he could have fitted in here, too. The world doesn’t need artists right now and that’s okay, because Daryl has already decided what he will become after the war.

Rosita might sneer at the term _errand boy_ but he wouldn’t mind claiming the title. Not if it means he gets to travel between the communities, delivering messages and news. Maggie won’t be able to travel far from the doctor for a while, and once the baby is born it would be best for her to stay at Hilltop. They’re going to need someone to send out to the Kingdom and Alexandria to negotiate on her behalf, to deliver their news and gather new intel.

He could do that.

The people here like him. Alexandria is a part of him and Hilltop is his home for the time being. It could work. And it’s not like it’s an easy job, Daryl thinks as he looks around the room. The roads are dangerous and will be dangerous still even after they’ve taken care of the Saviors. There’s always more, after all.

They’re going to need someone strong and capable. Someone who will make it.

He gets to his feet and walks over to the other side of the room. There are three bookcases there. Reference books are stacked on the shelves, some almost falling to pieces and others quite new. A note is written on one of the shelves with red marker. _Free to take_.

One of the books catches his eye.

He looks around the room again and spots a door that leads to a storage room. It’s locked. He takes a second to inspect it like how Shane had taught him. It’s a push door, which is good, but it’s also hallow which means he’ll have to be more careful of where he kicks. Next to the knob, right on the locking mechanism, or he’ll go straight through.

  After a deep breath, he kicks it in. It slams against a shelving unit inside the room but that doesn’t matter. With a chuckle, Daryl walks into the dark area. One hand finds his knife easily, just in case, but every building in the Kingdom has been cleared already. On the shelves, he finds what he’s looking for.

It takes him longer to find a bag to carry everything, but in the end he snatches the book off the shelf and makes his way out of the building again.

 

 

There hadn’t been enough time. Or there had been but he got lost in details and now his hands are still wet while he frantically throws his supplies into the backpack again, green and yellow and orange smudges on the dark fabric. Cursing under his breath, he grabs the book and runs towards the exit.

‘Daryl Dixon.’

With closed eyes he slows down again, shoulders slumping in defeat. Two more steps and then he stops, tilting his head back so he can look at the ceiling and not at what he’s done.

‘Explain yourself.’

He stares up at the dark ceiling, chest heaving. ‘I can redo it tomorrow. I’m sorry.’

‘ _Explain yourself_ ,’ Ezekiel demands as he steps into the room. The chain of Shiva rattles softly. Her nails scrape over the concrete floor as she automatically pads over to the cage in the middle of the room.

Daryl can’t help but turn and look at her. Even in the near-darkness, she’s beautiful. Muscles shifting under her coat, shoulder blades sharp and eyes shining like gems. The white tuffs of fur along her jaw are wet, she must have drunk from the bucket of water Ezekiel usually keeps near her. ‘You said you wanted her to grow up in the jungles of Cambodia,’ he wipes some sweat from his brow. ‘Couldn’t give her that but… this is pretty close. Ain’t never been of course, don’t know what the fuck a jungle looks like or nothing, but… I used a book.’ He gestures a little helplessly with the book in his wet hands. ‘Found it in one of the outer buildings, found the paint, too. I’m sorry.’

Ezekiel looks around the room. There’s amazement in his dark eyes and a smile softens his features. ‘It’s wonderful, Daryl,’ he breathes. ‘Stunning.’

Every wall is covered in paint. Green, yellow, flashes of orange and blue and red in the flowers peeking out from beneath bushes and behind trees. There’s moss and dead leaves, trails snaking away into the distance or ending at crumbling buildings of what must have been an old temple with long-forgotten gods. Roots of trees disappear into the soft ground, a monkey clings to one of the tree trunks while a spider crawls over a leave that bends under its weight. Ancient trees and a brooding sky, hints of the smoldering heat of the tropics.

It all still smells like drying paint now, but the scent is being washed out due to the doors Daryl had opened. He’d wanted it to be gone by the time Shiva came back home, not wanting to agitate her senses even though he’s not sure how sensitive the nose of a tiger is. The smell lingers now because he wanted to add shadows and the hint of a retreating elephant between some trees.

‘Absolutely stunning,’ Ezekiel says with a laugh as he turns around to inspect every wall. ‘I was unaware we were harboring an artist. Every story that has reached my ears tells the tale of a strong and selfless young man, a hard worker indeed. A charmer, even,’ the man shoots him a smile. ‘But nobody told me you could paint. Truly, we are blessed.’

Daryl shrugs the backpack onto his shoulders, the cans of paint clinking together. He looks at his boots before glancing up at the King. ‘You like it?’

‘It doesn’t seem too strong a word,’ the King answers. ‘It is truly mesmerizing. How long did it take you?’

‘Started just after you left,’ Daryl says as he wobbles on his feet. ‘Victor had given me the day off and Morgan and Benjamin went with you, so I didn’t have anything to do.’

‘Sunrise to sundown,’ Ezekiel says softly as he looks around once more. His hand comes to rest upon Shiva’s back, fingers sinking into the thick fur. Then he frowns. ‘Have you not eaten?’

‘Weren’t hungry.’

The King gives him a look of disapproval before he leads the tiger towards the cage, opening the door for her and closing it once she has settled on the floor, yawning while her tail sweeps over the concrete. ‘Did you do it because you were bored?’ he asks as he checks whether she has enough water for the night.

‘No,’ Daryl admits with a sigh. ‘Just – felt bad about her being locked up here. Pretty depressing room, right? She might belong in a cage, might keep her safe like ya said, but… don’t have to look like a damn prison.’

‘I understand. Clean your hands.’

The boy frowns but grabs his water bottle and wets his rag before scrubbing his hands clean. ‘Why?’

‘Approach,’ Ezekiel beckons him over. He opens the door of the cage. ‘Inside.’

Daryl feels a nervous tingle run up his spine as he steps inside the cage. He’s never been so close. Sometimes up against the bars, watching how the King feeds the wild animal in the morning, trying to memorize the way she moves because he can’t wait to draw her, but he’s never been past the barrier.

‘Yes, Shiva,’ Ezekiel says as he kneels down beside the animal, voice just as deep and rumbling as her usual growls. ‘You remember our friend, Daryl Dixon of Alexandria. You have seen him many times. He is a friend of the realm,’ he scratches the tiger’s neck before unshackling her. ‘He is a friend of the King.’

Daryl watches with wide eyes how the chain falls away. Shiva pulls her lips back to reveal her teeth and his heart skips a beat but she just yawns and pushes her face into Ezekiel’s stomach, nuzzling him before settling down again, tail flicking once, twice, before she closes her eyes.

‘You may approach,’ Ezekiel says with a smile. ‘Give me your hand.’

His hand shakes when he holds it out to the man. Warm fingers curl around his wrist before guiding him to even warmer fur. It’s coarser than he’s imagined, not as soft as it looks, but he can feel the tiger’s heartbeat.

He breathes out a shuddering breath, looking at the King with blown pupils and the widest smile, ‘ _amazing_.’

‘Gently,’ Ezekiel warns as he moves the boy’s hand up and down the tiger’s flank. ‘And do not take this as a standing invitation. We have discussed it before but I will stress it once more; she is wild. She allows it now. She might not allow it tomorrow.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl smiles as he runs his fingers over the stripes and shadows of the huge animal. ‘Of course.’

‘We will let her rest now,’ Ezekiel says as he rises again. ‘It has been a long day, for the both of you.’

 Sure,’ reluctantly, Daryl gives her flank one last stroke before he stand up again. Just when he straightens, Shiva opens her eyes sleepily, turning her head to look at him. With baited breath, Daryl stares back.

The tiger blinks slowly, licks her lips.

Daryl feels his heart hammer in his chest.

‘Good night, Shiva,’ Ezekiel says, his hand finding Daryl’s shoulder and squeezing gently before pushing him towards to door. ‘Sleep well.’

Daryl lets himself be guided out of the cage and watches how the King locks the door, the key disappearing into his pocket. It feels like his face might split from smiling so much. ‘Thanks, that was – that was really great.’

The King gives him a fond look. ‘You are welcome, though your words of thanks should not be aimed at me.’

‘It’s weird talking to something that can’t talk back,’ Daryl grins but he still turns half-way. ‘Thanks, Shiva.’

Ezekiel locks the door, ‘walk with me, Daryl Dixon.’

‘Yes, your majesty,’ the boy answers with a short bow as he  pulls at the straps of his backpack, securing it. The title rolls off his tongue easily after so many days. While he’d hated it at first, too much like bowing, too much like he’d given his own power over again, he now doesn’t mind. Ezekiel is kind and generous. He’s patient even when dealing with the teenager but never flinches from reasserting his power over his kingdom. The flashing dark eyes silence people as easily as Shiva’s snarls do.

People follow him out of loyalty and love. Nobody is afraid of the King, they only fear the flash of disappointment in his eyes.

‘Word has reached me that you’ve been taking on more training sessions,’ Ezekiel says as he looks at the boy from the corner of his eye. ‘Jayla is good teacher.’

Daryl smiles, ‘she is, sir.’

‘Though Morgan has told me you have always been a bowman.’

‘Different kind of bow,’ the teenager points out. ‘It’s been a while since I shot a barebow like that. She’s been teaching me a lot.’

Ezekiel hums under his breath. ‘It has not escaped the King’s notice that you enjoy spending time with her. You often sit with her during dinner.’

‘Miss me loads, huh?’ Daryl laughs because the first couple of days he’d been glued to Morgan’s and Benjamin’s side and they always ate at the King’s table. Gradually, he’s moved to different ones so he can chat with the hunters, with the soldiers, with the farmers. He sits at the children’s table to spend time with Jayla, not minding how the younger ones first eyed him nervously before gathering the confidence to climb onto his back and into his lap while he tries to eat.

The boy shoots the king a look. ‘It ain’t like _that_ though, sir. She’s real nice, is all.’

‘Is it not like _that_ because you intend to leave this place?’ the King asks.

‘I do intend to leave,’ Daryl nods, ‘but that ain’t the reason why. Kinda…’ he huffs out a breath of laughter and kicks a small rock out of his way. ‘Kinda hung up on someone else, back home. And with the war coming and everything… I dunno.’

‘You don’t have to fight.’

‘I do.’

It’s a discussion they’ve had dozens of times already.

The King frowns with dismay. ‘You want to,’ he says and his tone heavy with accusation.

 ‘Yes,’ Daryl grabs the straps of his backpack and looks up at the man. ‘I want to fight for my family. They are going to do it anyway. This war? It’s going to happen. And I’m not going to let them fight it alone. They need me.’

‘I am aware.’ The King stops walking and puts his hand on the teenager’s shoulder. ‘The girl you want to return to, she is very lucky.’

Daryl laughs. ‘Yeah, ain’t no girl.’ His hand curls around the knife. ‘And it ain’t like that. We’re not… He’s just…’

The King’s eyebrows shoot up at the pronoun.

Daryl cringes, curling his shoulders inward defensively, ‘pfft,’ he scoffs, ‘ain’t none of your business anyway. Jayla knows it ain’t like that, so… And it ain’t like I’m secretly bringing her pomegranates or whatever the fuck it is you’re bringing that woman outside of the Kingdom. Yeah,’ he smirks when Ezekiel looks surprised. ‘People talk.’

The King laughs. ‘People do little else. I did not mean to pry. I’m merely looking out for my people.’

‘You’re snoopin’,’ Daryl accuses with a laugh. ‘But that’s okay. I ain’t one of your people, so I can tell you to fuck off.’

The skin around Ezekiel’s eyes wrinkles when he smiles. ‘You could be.’

Daryl looks around. They’ve wandered into the courtyard where the people are finishing up their last duties, watering the plants and putting their tools away in a small shed on the side. Their voices drift back to them, just a cheerful murmur due to the distance. ‘This is a good place,’ the teenager nods. ‘Good people. And I know I weren’t before but… I’m grateful you let me stay here a while. I feel better now. More…’ he waves a hand. ‘Calm. But it’s time for me to go home. I belong with my family.’

Ezekiel nods his understanding. ‘Your brother must be anxious to see you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like I assured you before; the gates will open for you any time. Whether it’s for your departure,’ he reaches out and squeezes the boy’s shoulder. ‘Or for your return.’

 

 

It doesn’t take Morgan long to find him the next morning. He approaches the teenager slowly, a bit wary, as if he’s unsure of what to say. Daryl is sitting on the steps leading to the laundromat. Water has spilled onto his boots and he’s drying them in the sun.

‘Ezekiel told me you were thinking about leaving soon,’ he says as he reaches him.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says as he plucks at his bottom lip, eyes darting away from the man.

‘You could stay.’ His tone is almost pleading.

‘Nah,’ Daryl looks up at him with narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve seen you go out there, meeting them. That part of our deal here?’ He scoffs. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? I’ve seen you come back, fuckin’ bleedin’. He did that to you. You know what they are.’

‘I do,’ Morgan nods.

‘You know, if Carol were here? She saw all that? She knew about Abraham. And Glenn. She’d be leadin’ us right to them, ready to kill them all.’

‘She would,’ the man agrees. ‘And that’s why she left, Dare.’

Daryl mulls that over. ‘Maybe,’ he nods. ‘Sometimes people get scared of what they can do, right? They run. Hell, I ran a dozen times, that ain’t no damn secret, but I ain’t runnin’ now.’

Morgan shakes his head. ‘You ran because your dad forced you to, yeah, people told me that story,’ he says when the teenager glares at him. ‘And you ran because you didn’t have choice when the prison fell. That’s different. You never ran because you were scared of what you could do. What you would do, for your family.’

‘Because they’re my family,’ Daryl says as he stands up. ‘I’d do anything for them.’

‘Anything?’ Morgan asks with a frown. ‘They ask you to go to war? They ask you to kill another person, other people, and you just…’

‘I’d do it. I will do it,’ Daryl nods. ‘Because they wouldn’t ask if it weren’t us or them, but it is. And it’s going to be us, always.’

Morgan shakes his head. ‘The deal works here. If Rick would just –‘

‘What, bow? If he’d just _break_? He did, man, and we lost more people because Negan is batshit crazy! You think they’re not going to change the rules on you whenever they feel like it? One day it’s going to go to hell because they just wanna see you _bleed_ ,’ Daryl nods. ‘One day all of this is enough and the next day it ain’t no more and people are still going to die. And you will watch them die and you’ll know that you fucked up. That you’re fucked either way!’

‘If that happens, then –‘

‘You’ll be too late,’ Daryl snaps. ‘And it’s gonna be on _you_ , because you turned your back on your friends. But hey, if you can live with that? Fine. Do it. Stay here and hide behind that holier than thou attitude you’re rockin’. But you’re wrong. And I’m gonna stick with my family. I ain’t runnin and I ain’t scared of nothing!’

He walks away without waiting for Morgan’s response. There’s anger coiling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t blame Ezekiel for staying out of the fight to try and protect his Kingdom, but he blames Morgan for staying here. The man has spent a lot of time at Alexandria, claims to care for everyone there, but he just walks away when they need him. Hides behind his walls and his morals without realizing that they both shatter easily in this new world.

He will find out soon enough, Daryl thinks bitterly as he stalks away. He will regret this before the end.

 

 

‘I have something for you,’ Jayla says when Daryl returns from his riding lesson with Julia. She walks along next to him, leaning heavily on her crutches. ‘It’s in my room.’

The boy slows his step slightly so she can keep up. ‘Really? What is it?’

‘A surprise,’ she laughs as they pass the larger buildings to head over to the room she shares with one of the older girls. ‘You smell, by the way.’

‘Hard work,’ the teenager laughs as he wipes the sweat from his brow. ‘And Julia made me clean the stables as payment for the lesson.’

‘I thought you knew how to ride.’

‘I do,’ Daryl mutters as he grabs his canister with water and takes a couple of gulps. ‘But the last horse I was on tried to fuckin’ kill me, throwing me down some ravine. Michonne wanted to teach me but we never got around to it at the prison. Thought I could do with some lessons.’

Jayla hums even though she doesn’t know the places or the people. ‘Are you ever going to tell me what you’re training for?’ she asks.

‘Ain’t training for nothing, just – you know… gotta be ready.’

She looks at him sharply. ‘You never tell me anything.’

‘The hell you talkin’ about? I tell you shit all the time.’

‘Why are you here?’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘Shit that _matters_ , I mean. I’m here. Fuckin’ deal with it, girl.’

‘But _why_?’ Jayla insists, ‘you talk about your family all the time, you say they live in other communities, so why are you here?’

He can’t tell her without telling her about the Saviors and Ezekiel has forbidden it. He jumps over the banister to avoid her curious eyes for a couple of seconds while she walks onto the ramp, crutches clicking on the wood. ‘Ain’t your problem.’

‘It is because you keep hanging out around me, smelling up the place,’ she laughs, deciding to drop the subject once more. ‘Open the door for me?’

‘Sure thing,’ he ducks in front of her and opens it. Then he helps her put the crutches into the corner, offering his shoulder for her to hold onto as she hops to the bed. It’s become an easy routine. She doesn’t like to use the crutches inside the small place and normally she’d just use the furniture to move around, but it’s even easier to use the teenager’s broad shoulders. It doesn’t even make him blush anymore, they do it so often now.

‘Your present is on the table,’ she says as she sits down.

With a frown, Daryl walks over to the table and picks up a dark blanket, ‘the hell you givin’ me a bla- oh.’

‘Yes,’ Jayla laughs. ‘ _Oh._ I’m not giving you a blanket, you idiot. It’s a PS-‘

‘PSE Fang crossbow, yeah,’ Daryl breathes as he stares at the weapon. ‘I know.’

It’s beautiful. Mat black so it doesn’t reflect the sunshine and gives away position, compact enough to be able to wield it in the woods and with a quiver that holds all new bolts. The fletching black and dark green and shafts black to match the bow. He slowly reaches out and touches the cold metal.

‘Well, it’s for you,’ Jayla says as she folds her leg under her and sits up, pulling a pillow in her lap and hugging it. ‘You said you used to have one, so I figured… you know. Everyone here prefers the recurve bows, they’re quicker to reload, but if you prefer this then you can have it.’

Daryl frowns and looks at her. ‘You sure? You won’t get into no trouble just giving it away?’

‘I asked Richard. He said it was a good idea to give it to you.’

‘Really?’ He lets his fingers curl around the weapon. ‘Sure?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Jayla rolls her eyes and waves an impatient hand, ‘go on.’

With a grin, he grabs the weapon and swings it up against his shoulder, peering through the scope at the floorboards, careful not to aim it at the girl even though there’s no bolt in place. ‘Fuckin’ A,’ he breathes as he closes one eye and let his finger rest upon the trigger. Then he looks up, lowering the bow a bit, ‘could fuckin’ kiss ya, thank you, Jayla.’

‘Too bad you’d rather kiss Jesus,’ the girl giggles.

He scoffs and aims at one of the paintings, ‘shut up, ya promised not to tell anyone.’

‘There’s no-one here,’ she laughs. ‘I’m just teasing you. Will you go see her now?’ She hugs the pillow tighter, ‘were you scared of going outside the gates before? You know, without a bow? You could have asked for one. We even have a couple of guns, I’m sure Benjamin would have given you his own for a while.’

Daryl throws her a smile, ‘what do you mean? Who am I supposed to go see? Maggie? I’ve told you; the Hilltop is _far_.’

‘Not Maggie,’ Jayla rolls her eyes. ‘Carol, of course.’

Daryl freezes.

‘You always talk about them, your family, but you haven’t even tried to go see her. Ezekiel told you; the gates will open for you. She is part of your family, right? Morgan told me she’s from Alexandria, that she was with Rick from the start and so were you, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl breathes. ‘I was.’

‘She lives in a small house on the outskirts of the Kingdom. Everyone knows that.’ She frowns.

‘Morgan said she had left.’

Jayla shrugs, ‘I guess, but she didn’t really. The King visits her often.’

Daryl closes his eyes, setting his jaw.

‘Nobody told you she was there?’

‘No. Nobody told me.’

 

 


	88. Perfect sense

 

* * *

 

 

‘That’s pretty fucked up, right?’ Daryl asks as he walks through the woods. The sun is steadily rising, driving the temperature back up after a chilly night. There’s a hint of fog ghosting between the trees. The vaporized water mixes with the sweat on his brow, soaks the backwards baseball cap and the couple of strands of hair that have escaped to frame his face. He’s thankful that his boots are watertight when he walks through the tall grass. The decorated knife is in his hand, flowers leaving soft imprints on the palm of his hand as he searches for tracks.

‘He could have just told us she were living in some damn house down the road, safe and sound,’ Daryl grumbles as he stops to kneel in the tall grass, pushing some of it aside to inspect a boot print. It’s old. Too small to belong one of the guards of the king or the king himself. ‘He lied to us. That’s fucked up,’ he decides as he gets up again and heads north.

Jayla had refused to tell him where Carol’s house was. She had told him he needed to talk to Morgan first, but Daryl had scoffed at that. He doesn’t need the man’s permission to see his friend, his family, and he doesn’t need the girl’s help either. The Kingdom is big, sure, but he’ll find her.

‘What is it to him, anyway?’ Daryl asks as he lets the knife slide through the tall grass. A machete would have done the job better but he’d refused to take any more weapons from the Kingdom. The bow is a comforting weight on his back once more. The strap dark gray, almost black, and not frayed enough to seem to belong to any Dixon, but it’s his. Nobody had asked for it back when he walked through the Kingdom with it, none of the guards had even looked particularly surprised this morning when he ordered the gates to be opened for him.

‘He don’t even know her. Not really. What the fuck was Rick thinking, letting Morgan go after her anyway?’ he grouses as he crosses a road and walks past some buildings. There’s a fire escape there. It’s high up and he won’t be able to jump up to grab the ladder on his own. With a frown, he looks around the area.

There are couple of big shops here. Most of them have been looted of course but some have been left alone. There’s a garden center that looks pretty untouched and a place where you could buy building materials. He checks the sun so he can find his way back to this place later. If he ever gets bored, he might as well check them out.

His gaze lands on a dumpster. ‘Yup,’ he says happily, walking over to it and kicking the locks off the wheels. It smells something awful. The wheels creak when he pushes it towards the fire escape. Then he climbs on top of it. It’s easy to jump up now and grab to lower rung of the ladder, pulling it down all the way. ‘Suppose so,’ Daryl mutters as he climbs to the rooftop of one of the buildings. ‘I mean, I know Rick had to go back in case the Saviors came, but _still_. That’s some bullshit, sending Morgan after Carol like that.’

He hops over a ridge and walks onto the roof carefully. There are no signs that it’s weakened anywhere, but he stays on the edges anyway. From here, he can see over the tops of the trees. He’s not sure what he’s looking for. A sign of Carol, sure, but she knows better than to let her fires form trails of smoke against the blue sky. Maybe he hopes to just spot her walking down a road somewhere, silver hair catching his eye from far away. She knows better than that, too.

‘Ain’t just being angry to be angry,’ Daryl sighs as he sits down on the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling down. He grabs his canister with water and frowns unhappily. ‘Fuck you,’ he mutters but doesn’t mean it.

Shane doesn’t answer anyway.

‘He _lied_ to me. To Rick, too.’ He puts the canister back on his belt and puts his bow against his shoulder, peering at the woods through the scope. ‘Ain’t childish,’ he mutters. ‘And I ain’t talkin’ to you no more. I look like a damn fool.’ He laughs. ‘I don’t care there’s no one here to see me, ya pig. Why the fuck are you so talkative today anyway?’

He sighs and puts the bow down beside him, laying back onto the hot surface so only his legs dangle down. He stares up at the blue sky. It’s been weeks since he’s seen Shane, and he knows even that hadn’t been real. While the memory had been kind, it hadn’t been new, just old images reused, his mind trying to protect itself. He should stop pretending, he thinks. Shane is gone and so is Glenn and Will longer still.

Just him, now.

And Merle, he admits. Maggie. And Rick. Carl. He smiles. All the others.

There’s Paul, of course, but Leon, too. And now Benjamin and Jayla, serving Ezekiel who doesn’t force him to bow.

The world is getting bigger.

There’s so much more to protect now.

Daryl wipes the sweat from his brow and frowns. He wonders where Rick is, whether he’s working on plans or finding guns or searching for more people to join their cause. Maybe this was just the first stop, maybe Paul had just led them here to drop him off so they wouldn’t be bothered by the target on his back. It doesn’t sound like him, but Daryl never expected him to leave him behind either, so he figures he doesn’t really know the guy after all.

He sighs. That’s not true. He knows Paul and he knows they all left him behind in a misguided attempt to protect him. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It doesn’t even make him very angry anymore. The last glowing embers of anger will fade once he’s reunited with his family. Should he find one of them harmed, however, it will ignite into an inferno again. If one of them is harmed while he could have been there, while he could have helped…

It doesn’t help to think about that now.

He scoots further onto the roof when his feet start to tingle. With a yawn, he stretches, enjoying the sunshine like a lizard would have done. He’d seen documentaries on the television about them when he was younger, how they would soak up the sunshine and could only move when they’d warmed up enough. Small creatures with yellow skin, green, blue, red, orange, any color at all. When he’d protested loudly when Merle switched the channel to watch some NASCAR race, his brother had clipped him over the back of his head, telling him to just go outside and find the animals himself.

He’d spend days searching for them. And finding some. Not quite as colorful, not quite as big as in their close-ups, but still cool. He’d chased them with his notepad, trying to draw them and only figuring out that they are slower after cold mornings than they are during hot Georgia afternoons.

When he got bored of the browns, blacks, of the dark green colors the native animals had, he just made some combinations up. Red with blue and neon yellow, but still so detailed that they might have been real.

Merle would narrow his eyes while studying the paper, calling him a damn liar for claiming to have spotted one like that, but he’d still pin the drawing to the wall above his bed.

Daryl sighs. He folds one arm under his head as a pillow, his other hand covering his belly. Paul had done the same thing with his drawing, he realizes. When he’d stayed in the man’s trailer, he’d seen it on the wall above the desk.

‘ _Great_ ,’ Daryl groans because he really doesn’t need any more evidence that Paul thinks he’s just a kid. He closes his eyes. It isn’t fair that the man still makes him nervous, that he sometimes wakes up with a gasp instead of a scream, his hand already gliding over his stomach and under the waistband of his boxer short because of him. He’s heard Merle talk about all the girls he’d ever liked, knows all about Shane’s girlfriends in high school and college.

He knows that Rick and Lori were high school sweethearts, married right after college, and he knows his parents had been the same. He hopes he won’t be the same. He hopes he’s like Merle, like Shane; that he moves on.

Merle always had a lot to say about Dixon hearts. Small. Or Daryl’s in particular; softer than it ought to be.

While he doesn’t hope it ever hardens enough to be like Will’s, he hopes his can be like Merle’s, one day. Tough enough to hold on to some while letting others go, and going by the way he’d looked after Maggie and Sasha, even flexible enough to begrudgingly let people in these days.

His body has already decided that it can do without his heart, anyway.

Everything still short-circuits sometimes when Jayla smiles at him, after all.

‘She’s really pretty, right?’ he asks the sky. ‘Yeah. Like, _really_ pretty.’

He likes that she laughs a lot, even though he often ends up as the butt of the joke. It’s never mean-spirited though, and she stops when he asks her to. He likes how easy-going she is, bubbly and happy despite the hardships she has no doubt faced since the world practically ended. She’s sweet when she talks to the kids and kind to the elderly, witty when bantering with Benjamin and their friends.

It’s still confuses him a little bit, though.

He likes all of that about Paul, too. The quick smiles and the wit, the calming effect his presence has on the people around him, but with Paul he also thinks about strong muscles and sharper hips, the roughness of his beard and hands. It would be softer with Jayla he imagines, with her curves and gentler hands.

He shifts and puts both his hands behind his head, just so he won’t reach down to the buckle of his belt.

It’s okay, he reminds himself. It _does_ make sense.

They’re both witty and clever, kind and quick to smile. They’re strong with fierce hearts.

He takes a deep breath and smiles while he waits.

It makes _perfect_ sense.

 

 

It turns out that he doesn’t have to wait for very long, but instead of Ezekiel and his guards or Carol, Daryl spots Richard walking down the road. The man is alone.

With a frown, Daryl grabs his stuff and heads over to the fire escape, silently making his way down again so he can follow the man. Jayla hadn’t told him which direction he should head in to find Carol after figuring out that he probably wasn’t allowed to know that she was around at all. And while he’s very good at tracking people, it’s very hard to track people on concrete roads.

But everyone knows that Ezekiel visits her often, so Daryl had decided to just wait at the nearest crossroads and try his luck.

He hadn’t expected Richard to be the first to come across his path.

None of the guards are allowed to go out on patrol on their own. Sometimes one of them will take off by themselves to practice their skills, like Benjamin sometimes does, but they usually go out in teams of two or three to be safe.

And Richard doesn’t need to hone his skills.

Daryl smirks. Or maybe he should, because he doesn’t realize that he’s being followed.

After a couple of blocks, the man heads into the woods. That makes it even easier because Daryl has grown up here while Richard only pretends to belong. His boots make too much noise, his clothes and armor sometimes catch on bushes and low branches. The heat seems to bother him, too. The temperature rises quickly even under the shade of the trees and pretty soon after leaving the concrete, Richard is panting.

Daryl makes sure to keep enough distance between them, easily stepping over branches that could snap under his weight. He’s surprised when Richard leads him to a trailer of sorts. It’s hidden relatively well by bushes and camouflage. A sign marks the entrance though.

The teenager is pretty sure that any hunter would have found that entrance, especially given the tracks on the ground. Richard has come here often.

Daryl doesn’t approach since there’s only one exit and no windows, so he just waits in the shadows until the man steps out of the trailer again. It doesn’t take long.

When he comes out, however, he’s carrying an automatic rifle and backpack.

Daryl frowns.

The Kingdom has an armory filled with weapons. Guns and rifles, knives and machetes, their bows and a couple of spears that were bought from the Hilltop Colony. While they have ammunition, there is of course a limited supply. A lot of the guards prefer their bows and throwing knives over the danger of ever hearing that terrifying clicking sound of bullets running out.

Richard had a gun, before the Saviors took it.

He could just get a new one and leave it behind whenever he goes to meet them for the offerings. Daryl never thought him to be the hiding type.

But the man shoulders the backpack and starts to head West.

Daryl follows.

 

 

They pass the sign for the cemetery. Daryl walks through the woods while Richard walks on the road. His footsteps echo softly but there’s nobody but the teenager to hear it, so it doesn’t matter. They’re at the edge of the Kingdom now. Usually the guards stay within the more urban areas, closer to the walls. Only occasionally they wander father out but even then they prefer to ride into the direction of Washington. Even so many years after the initial outbreak, most walkers still pour out from the city.

That is where the danger lies, according to Ezekiel. Nobody doubts him. Only some know that the Savior’s complex is in the other direction, after all.

Richard knows. He’d tried to persuade his King to join Alexandria’s fight but had failed. He hasn’t spoken about it since and Daryl wonders whether Ezekiel has forbidden the topic all together.

There’s a truck parked on the side of the road. A car, too. The two vehicles create a good hide-out should anyone pass on the road. Richard must think so too, because he leaves the concrete behind and lets his footfalls be silenced by the grass and mud. He puts the backpack down once he’s behind the truck.

He zips it open and reveals several Molotov cocktails.

Daryl closes his eyes for a moment. He knows exactly what is going on now. He’d feared it when he’d seen the automatic gun but the bombs leave no doubt.

It’s something he thought about doing himself.

Part of him wants to just turn around and melt back into the shadows, to just leave the man to it and see what happens. He can’t, though. The odds of him never coming back to the Kingdom are too great.

It’s not worth it.

It doesn’t help, in the long run.

So he shrugs his bow higher and steps out of the bushes. He makes sure that Richard’s hands are empty when his boot finally crushes a twig to announce himself. He doesn’t want to get shot by accident.

‘The fuck are you doing?’ Daryl asks.

Richard whirls around, hand going to the gun on his belt but he recognizes the teenager before he draws it. The man’s eyes are wide in genuine fright. ‘Nothing,’ he says, taking a step aside so he’s hiding the backpack behind his right leg. ‘Go back to the Kingdom, Daryl.’

‘Nah,’ the boy says. ‘I’ve been following you for over an hour now. The fuck are you going to do with them bombs?’

‘Nothing that concerns you.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘You think I didn’t think of this? Setting up some trap some place, picking them Saviors off one by one? It won’t work, man. And it won’t be enough. Sure, you got them bombs and everything, maybe it works this time. There’s more of them. A fuck-ton more of them and they’ll all come and find ya. And if they don’t?’ Daryl shrugs and looks around, ‘they’ll pin it on Ezekiel, man. We’re at the border of the Kingdom, you smacked one of their soldiers around some earlier. He’s going to know. He ain’t no fool.’

‘I’ve got a plan,’ Richard says, ‘to lead them away from the Kingdom.’

‘Yeah?’ Daryl asks as he grabs the strap of his bow. ‘And what’s that, huh?’

‘I made a trail. It leads back to the weapons cache.’

‘So? That spot is closer to the Kingdom than this place.’

Richard looks away. ‘It goes further,’ he nods, ‘the trail, it leads away from the Kingdom to this other place. When the Saviors come and find their buddies dead, if they know their elbow from their asshole and can follow an obvious trail, they’re gonna go the weapons cache and then to this... this other place, okay? We need something to move Ezekiel. This is it. It’ll work.’

Daryl frowns. ‘What’s kind of place? Are there people there? Why didn’t you tell Rick abou-‘

‘There aren’t any people there,’ Richard cuts in. He turns around to grab the backpack and get the Molotov cocktails ready. ‘Just one.’

It takes Daryl a second to realize why there’s fear pooling in the pit of his stomach. ‘A woman?’ he asks. ‘Or some guy?’

 Richard slowly gets up and looks at him. There are deep lines on his face, bags under his eyes. He looks old, far older than he did yesterday. ‘What does it matter? Go home, Daryl,’ he says.

‘No. Tell me.’

‘This was her choice,’ Richard says, ‘she lives out there, she dies out there!’

‘A woman,’ Daryl breathes. ‘Her name. Tell me her name.’

‘Just go,’ the man pleads. ‘This isn’t your fight. She’s tough, okay? Maybe she’ll live.’

Daryl snarls as he steps forward, ‘say her damn name!’

Richard hangs his head. ‘Carol. I hoped you didn’t know her, but she arrived together with Morgan and he told me to keep it quiet around you. But I didn’t think you’d care, ‘cause you know what needs to happen. Maybe she’ll live. She’s tough, right? Maybe she’ll make it.’

‘No,’ Daryl whispers.

‘This how we can get rid of the Saviors, how we can all have a future! She’s living out there on her own, just waiting to die.’

‘No!’

‘Don’t you understand?’ he asks the teenager who now pushes past him to grab the Molotov cocktails, ‘give those back, Daryl. This isn’t your fight. If we don’t do anything, a hell of a lot more people are gonna die, people who _want_ to _live_!

Daryl puts the bottles into his own backpack and shrugs it back onto his shoulders before stepping into Richard’s space, ‘you stay the hell away from Carol, you hear me?’ He makes sure to stand tall, posturing like Merle would have done.

The sound of engines nearly causes his blood to freeze. The backpack slides off his shoulders again. He throws it aside gently before grabbing his new bow. Two cars are coming. He watches how Richard backs up against the side of the truck before peeking out from behind it.

‘It’s them,’ he says as he turns back to the teenager. His eyes are wide and he speaks quickly, ‘look, we can wait for things to go bad, we lose people, or we can do the hard thing and choose our fate for ourselves.’

‘No,’ Daryl says.

Richard shakes his head before grabbing the automatic rifle off the ground. ‘Sorry,’ he says, before he moves towards the end of the truck.

Daryl throws his bow into the grass. He can’t shoot the man, not after all he’s done for him, but he can’t let him go through with this either. So he grabs the back of his armor and yanks him back behind the vehicle. With a grunt, he manages to throw the man into the grass and follows him down, pinning his hips to the ground with his weight and grabbing his wrists, trying to pin them in place, too.

Richard is stronger than him though.

It doesn’t matter. He just needs to keep him down until the Saviors pass.

The cars are already close when he feels his grip slip. The man has recovered from the fall and now pushes the teenager aside. Daryl rips his hand free, balls his hand into a fists and just slams it into his face. Right, left and right again, as hard as he can.

There’s blood spouting from Richard’s nose.

The cars pass.

Richard reaches for something and Daryl is too slow with noticing, with blocking it. He’s not even sure what it is, but it’s hard and it hits him on the head. Pain flashes and causes him to roll out of the way, scared of another hit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees how Richard scrambles to get to his rifle. The cars have passed.

The next bullet might be for him.

So he pushes himself up and away, stumbling to his bow. He brings it up just in time to meet Richard’s rifle.

They stare at each other.

The teenager panting and the man breathing heavily.

‘There will be more,’ Richard says. ‘Or those – they’re gonna ride back this way later. I’ll have another chance, but we’re running out of time. If you and your people want to move against the saviors you need to do it soon, and you need the Kingdom. What we have to do requires sacrifice one way or another. Daryl,’ the man’s fingers twitch on the rifle. ‘We’ve already lost _so much_.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘I know that Carol, living on her own like that? She might as well be dead right now.’

Daryl drops the bow to his side. He lifts his chin a little higher. ‘She gets hurt,’ he says, stepping closer to the man. ‘She dies? If she catches a fever, if she’s taken out by a walker, if she gets hit by lightning – anything – _anything_ happens to her…. I’ll kill you.’

Richard slowly lowers the gun. He swallows with some difficulty, eyes filled with sorrow. ‘I would die for the Kingdom,’ he says.

Daryl scoffs. ‘Why don’t you?’

 

 

The man had been right about one thing at least; anyone who knows their ass from their elbow could have followed the trail from the weapons cache to the cabin where Carol lives now. He follows it through the woods and nearly laughs when he spots one of his own snares. A simple trap for rabbits. There’s nothing in it now but it’s placed on a fresh trail and he doubts that it will take long before it snaps shut.

He spots the wires, too. They’re well-hidden but he taught her how to put them up, so they might as well have been made with red wire. He jumps over them easily, avoiding a couple more before he reaches the clearing. From here, he can see the side of the house as well as the entrance.

There’s no movement inside the house or in the surroundings.

The trees around here are younger than then ones deeper into the woods, but he manages to find one with branches that will hold his weight. He runs up it, booted feet against the bark, before jumping up and hoisting himself onto the branch. He puts the backpack one branch higher still but keeps his bow in his lap as he lounges and waits.

He wants to see her before she sees him.

He wants to be sure.

It’s late in the afternoon when one of the wires is tripped.

Only a minute later, Ezekiel walks up to the front door with some of his personal guards. One of them is being shoved around by Dianne and it wouldn’t surprise Daryl if he had been the one to set off the alarms by accident. The way they all walk to the front door, weapons lowered and not shielding their King, tells Daryl that they’ve done this routine a couple of times before.

The door opens before they come close enough to knock.

Daryl leans forward and smiles when Carol steps out of the house, hands on her hips. There’s no weapon in her hands even though he can see the glint of her knife on her belt. She knew it had been them. From this distance, he can’t hear what they’re saying but he can see right through Carol’s annoyed act.

She looks good, he decides as he narrows his eyes. Healthy.

Jerry takes something out of his backpack and hands it to her.

She takes it after a short debate.

Daryl smiles. The King really does bring her food.

They leave after that.

Daryl hurriedly grabs his backpack again from the upper branch and silently drops to the forest floor. With his bow in one hand, he hops the low fence surrounding the cabin and moves towards the front door. When he’s standing on the porch, however, he hesitates.

She left for a reason.

Maybe she doesn’t want to see him. Maybe she’d told Morgan to keep them away, maybe she hates them all. Hates him, too.

The thoughts spiral quickly, from fear to dislike to hatred until he takes a small step back, almost running away.

‘Fuck that,’ he breathes and knocks before he can change his mind. If she doesn’t want to see him, she can at least say it to his face. Still, he nervously shifts his weight from one foot to the other, fearful to actually hear the words in just a couple of seconds.

The door opens. Carol first looks annoyed, clearly expecting the King and his guards again, but her eyes widen when she sees the teenager on her porch. Her mouth opens silently in shock. Tears start to form in her eyes as she draws in a shuddering breath.

He nods because he doesn’t really know what to do now.

She sniffs and steps forward, hands landing on his shoulders so she can pull him close. Her arms around his neck, one curling up so her hand can rest on his baseball cap, fingers scratching over the fabric as if she wants to bury her fingers in his hair.

He huffs out a breath of amazed laughter, so happy to see her again. ‘Hey,’ he murmurs as he puts his arms around her, letting his forehead rest against her collarbone.

She’s crying.

‘Okay,’ he says as he gently pushes her back. He looks at the floor and then her cheek, too nervous to meet her eye. ‘Paul took us to the Kingdom. Morgan said you just left. I was out here. I saw you.’ He forces himself to look up. ‘Why’d you go?’

He hates how small his voice sounds. How it nearly breaks on the words.

There are tears now dripping down her cheeks.

‘I had to,’ she whispers.

He ducks his head. ‘Right…’ He looks at the woods, ‘do you want me to –‘

Her hand grabs his. ‘Stay,’ she says before he can even finish the question. ‘Please stay a while, Pookie.’

He twists his wrist and entwines their fingers. ‘Almost lost that damn nickname,’ he smiles.

She smiles back. ‘Never.’

 

 

It feels a little awkward at first. He puts his bow and backpack down in a corner of the hallway and follows her into the cabin, neither of them quite knowing what to say. She can’t stop looking at him and Daryl can’t stop fidgeting.

It’s a nice place, he thinks. Small but comfortable with rugs everywhere and a fireplace. There’s a couch, a table with a small bench on one side. It smells of freshly chopped wood, and fruit. A small coffee table near the couch is covered with books and candles. There are small paintings on the walls, depicting fields and oceans; places far away.

‘It’s nice,’ he says when he looks around her bedroom, smiling a bit when he spots the pile of fruit on one of the cabinets.

‘You’re so big.’

Daryl snorts as he looks out of the window. ‘Didn’t get much taller or nothing. You callin’ me fat now?’

She smiles. ‘No, just – all grown up.’

‘Yeah, well, pretty sure I’m sixteen now,’ he mutters before he closes the curtains. It’s getting dark outside and he doesn’t want anyone passing by to see the candles flickering. ‘And I best still be growing, ‘cause Carl is still a couple’a inches taller than me, so…’

She laughs and shakes her head fondly. ‘Are you staying for dinner?’

‘Could eat, yeah,’ he nods as he sinks onto the chair at the table. He folds his arms and puts his head to rest on them, watching how the woman scurries around the fireplace to heat up some stew for him.

There’s so much they’re not saying, but he watches how she sometimes looks back at him, frightful, hesitant, almost like she’s scared he’s not really there, and he knows he can’t tell her about Glenn. Can’t say a thing about Abraham. Can’t tell her about his time at the Sanctuary, not about Spencer or Olivia, can’t tell her about the war that’s going to happen.

She looks happy.

She got away.

‘I couldn’t lose anyone,’ she says suddenly, finally answering his question. ‘I couldn’t lose any of them. I couldn’t lose you.’ She looks back at him, shadows dancing on her face. ‘I couldn’t kill them. I _could_ ,’ she says, ‘I would, if they hurt any of our people – any more of them – that’s what I would do. And there wouldn’t be anything left of me after that.’

Daryl watches her. He remembers how scared he’d been after killing Gareth. Not of what he’d done, he’d do it all again in a heartbeat, has done it all again, but more scared of how he hadn’t cared. How numb he’d been. Earlier still, after his dad, staring up at the sky with a gun in his mouth, tasting metal and wanting it, wanting it, wanting it so badly.

He thinks about the cell, about the ride back to the Hilltop, of screaming until Merle would hold him close, whispering with that deep voice that could have reminded him of Will but made him think of Negan. He thinks of his other brother, holding out the necklaces and urging him; we need you. That wasn’t you and we need _you_.

How he almost hadn’t known what the boy had meant.

And he can’t tell her. Won’t. Not ever, because he loves her.

And they can’t lose _her_.

She can leave and never come back, she can stay here and live out the rest of her days in peace, but they can’t _lose_ her.

Not if they only get a soldier in return.

‘The Saviors,’ she says, ‘did they come?’

He scratches at the wood with his fingernails. ‘Yeah.’

She shifts closer to the table. ‘Did anyone get hurt?’ she asks, voice breaking as she starts to cry again. ‘Is everybody okay? Did the Saviors – is everybody back home okay?’

He looks at her.

‘ _Dare_.’

‘They came,’ he says, sitting up a bit so he isn’t mumbling into his own arms. ‘We got them all. Made a deal with the rest of them, like Ezekiel. Everyone’s all right.’

She cries. Hand folded over her mouth and shoulders shaking.

He looks at the flames behind her. ‘Everyone is all right.’ With a sigh, he drums his fingers on the table, ‘so… we gonna eat, or – or I gotta be a king or something to get food around here?’

She laughs through her tears, quickly wiping them away. ‘Shut up,’ she says as she gets up to fix him a bowl.

He’s glad that she’s no longer looking at him. Maybe in the light of day, maybe if she’d been closer to him, maybe then she would have seen the lies on his face or how they clawed at his chest, making it a little harder to breathe. He’s glad she didn’t. He’s always been a terrible liar, like Glenn had been, but maybe Maggie is finally rubbing off on him. Or Paul, with his tricks and not-quite lies.

‘Ezekiel,’ Daryl says when Carol sits down next to him and hands him a steaming bowl. ‘Is he okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she shoots him a little smile. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘He’s got a fuckin’ tiger,’ Daryl grins at her.

‘Yes he does,’ she laugh.

 

 

‘Promise to be careful?’ she asks softly when they’re standing on the porch again, hours later. ‘I could just walk you to the last crossroads, it’s already dark and-‘

‘Pssh,’ he scoffs, holding his bow and staring out into the darkness.

‘Right. Well, you best get going then, I don’t want an angry Glenn on my doorstep tomorrow.’

Daryl bites on the inside of his cheek. ‘No – yeah. Well. Okay. We’re going back to Alexandria soon, so…’ He looks at the floorboards and then glances back at her, ‘is it okay if I – you know, if I’m around and … is it okay if I come see you sometime?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good,’ he takes a couple of steps towards the fence and then abruptly turns and walks back. He hugs her tightly. ‘Watch out for yourself, all right?’

‘You too, Pookie.’

 

 

 


	89. The messenger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amazing MaddieSeth has created fanart for this work, please check it out and send some love their way;
> 
> http://maddieseth.deviantart.com/art/Wild-Child-684355880
> 
> It's Dare, and it's awesome.

 

* * *

 

 

Shiva’s happy rumbling still causes his stomach to flip when he sits down on the cold concrete in front of her cage. The oil lamp on the wall casts strange shadows around them. The paintings on the walls seem more ominous now. He makes sure he’s sitting at a safe distance, not sure how she’s going to react now that Ezekiel is not here to soothe her. The sketchpad he’d found and claimed is still in his room, filled with pencil drawings of the soldiers of the Kingdom on their mighty horses, of Jayla shooting her bow, Benjamin ducking under Morgan’s Bo, children playing in the gardens and of course the tiger. Paws, eyes, the pattern on her flank, little flashes of her, but also full portraits of when she’s guarding Ezekiel on the stage, walking next to him through their Kingdom, set loose in the woods and running through the trees.

He came here after visiting Carol. He doesn’t yet want to be alone.

The guards at the doors had stepped aside for him while still gently trying to get him to go to bed. It’s late, past midnight. He should have been asleep hours ago if he wants to get up at the crack of dawn like he usually does.

He doubts that he will sleep tonight.

Instead he thinks about Carol. About Glenn and Abraham. About how he lied.

He thinks about why she ran for all of them, all of it. How she’d been afraid to lose too many pieces of herself with every life she took. In the dark, while watching the tiger prowl her cage, he tries to count how many people he has killed since this all started. At least eight at Woodbury, maybe more, and then he can’t be sure how many he had killed when the prison fell. It all happened so fast and it seems like decades ago already.

Joe’s men. Terminus, the church. More than twenty, at least. And then the outpost, the saviors, the ones at the Sanctuary. Thirty, forty, maybe even – he feels sick for a second. Surely not fifty. He doesn’t feel bad about most of them, but he feels bad about barely remembering some.

Maybe he’s already lost too many pieces. With every bolt, every slash of his knife, he must have lost _something_.

Or maybe he gained something else. Something darker than what he was.

He shivers. That can’t be true. Merle had told him he was good when they saw each other again, after it had all gone down. A good kid, not a monster despite the nickname his brother favors. Lori had called him a lost cause right at the start but she’d still cared for him and he wonders how she might have felt now. If she’d still let him sit next to her at the campfire, if she’d still encourage him and Carl to get along.

Maybe she would be more like one of those mothers back home, who’d been waiting near the school to get their own sons, saying _no_ and making excuses when they asked if he could come home with them so they could play some more. The Dixon name doesn’t mean much anymore these days. It’s no longer a stain on his own person.

Somehow, he doubts she would have shunned him. She had been fierce before the others had even found their own strength.

They did, of course, in the end. Carol had, too.

He can’t imagine how hard it must have been to just walk away from all of them. He knows she loves them. He knows it in his bones.

Maybe she just didn’t want them to watch her crumble, tried to save them that pain in her own way.

He wished he could have done that, too, sometimes. That he’d never returned to Hilltop with Paul after the Sanctuary. That he just ran away, away, _away_.

‘Stupid, huh, girl?’ he says as he looks up at Shiva, who is staring at him. Her tail twitches when their eyes meet and her ears angle a bit forward when he speaks. ‘Would have died within a week without them. Well – might have made it, huntin’, hidin’… I’m good at that,’ he shifts a little closer to the cage. ‘But what is the point without all of them?’

His boot touches the bars.

Shiva slowly pads over to him, paws nearly silent on the concrete, a ghost if it weren’t for the rumbling. It changes into a deep growl when her mouth opens a little bit but it doesn’t sound like a warning snarl so Daryl doesn’t pull his foot back. He just stares back at her, trying not to blink too much or too fast.

Slow blinks, Ezekiel had said. Tell her you know she’s not planning on having you for supper.

So he sits and he watches and he blinks slowly. And the tiger watches him, too.

‘Oh, you’re good with her,’ Morgan says.

Daryl had heard the footsteps, the door, the rustling of clothing nearby. He doesn’t look away from the tiger though.

‘Ezekiel will be impressed.’

‘Figured any guy that has a pet-tiger can’t be that bad,’ Daryl says. ‘And he’s okay by Carol,’ he does look away now because he wants to see Morgan’s reaction. There’s a brief flash of a smile on the man’s face. ‘Yeah, I found her. Out in that little house.’

‘Look,’ Morgan takes a step towards the teenager, ‘what I said when I said she just went away? It’s what she told me to do.’

‘No, I get it,’ he looks back at the tiger. ‘Didn’t tell her shit neither. She asked though. Asked if we were okay back home, whether someone had gotten hurt. I didn’t tell her about Abraham. Glenn. Spencer or Olivia. Didn’t tell her they took me first, locked me up and fed me dogfood to make me sick for days. That damn song to keep me up,’ he scratches at the side of his head, ‘always that damn song. Didn’t say anything about Maggie being sick, needin’ a doctor, hurtin’. Or that they took Eugene, and if he don’t break soon? I know how he will, eventually.’

Morgan makes a soft noise as he kneels down beside him.

‘Didn’t tell her how he made me think my brother were dead, ‘nd Maggie. How I broke. Sure as shit didn’t tell her how I played ping pong with him, how his wives took care of me, how _he_ took care of me, how fucked up it all was.’

‘I’m sorry, Daryl,’ Morgan says. ‘I really am.’

‘Wanted to tell her, you know; wake the hell up. That whole thing she’s doing? Living in that little house, readin’ her books, not having to worry about no-one. It ain’t real. She’s tryin’ to hold onto something that ain’t there no more.’

‘But you didn’t tell her that because she would have known that you were lying otherwise. And then she’d be here. I’m glad for that,’ he nods. ‘See, we’re all holding onto something.’

The teenager looks at him. ‘Is that what you are doing? Holdin’ onto something? What, then? What the fuck is left that won’t come crashin’ down whenever Negan feels like it?’

Morgan sighs and wipes a hand over his face, ‘I’m holding onto _me_.’

‘Pfft,’ Daryl scoffs. ‘That ain’t even you. I know you.’

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ Morgan says with a shake of his head.

‘No, I do, ‘cause we’re the same. Too fuckin’ selfish to just throw it all away, pretendin’ we could do it on our own, don’t have to give a damn about anyone. And yeah, you might be all _all life is precious_ and I’ve been raised to kick heels, but it’s the same damn thing because yours won’t hold and mine will. Things go to hell for you? You do what needs to be done in the end, I know you will. Things go to hell for me?’ He grits his teeth and glares at the man, ‘I’ll kick their heels, ain’t no doubt about it.’

‘Daryl…’

‘No,’ the teenager gets to his feet. ‘I get it, okay? And… I hope it works out for her. She deserves that. I hope she gets to live in that little house, that Ezekiel keeps watching over her, that she can spend the rest of her days in peace there. We all owe her that. And you think we’re fighting to save our own hides, our own places? Pfft. Fuck Alexandria. Fuck the Hilltop. Just places and buildings, man, we don’t give a damn. We’re fighting for _that_. People just like her, just livin’ their lives in peace.’

‘It’s going to be at a cost,’ Morgan tells him. ‘What if you die?’

Daryl grabs his bow off the floor. ‘Then I’ll die tryin’ to protect my family. Trust me, there are worse ways to go.’

Shiva growls and bumps her head against the bars, tilting her head up so she can look at the boy.

Daryl carefully reaches between the bars, hand open. She presses her face into it, eyes closed as she lets out a satisfied rumble. The white tuffs at the side of her face are softer than the hair on her back, which Ezekiel had let him feel earlier. He withdraws his hand slowly, smiling down at her.

 

 

It’s still early in the morning when Benjamin comes to see him. Daryl is busy mucking out the stalls. He has just helped to turn the horses out, let them enjoy the fresh grass and sunshine of the morning, and now he’s busy scooping up all the dirty bedding. It’s only hard work because there are a lot of stalls to clean before the horses are brought back inside.

There’s sweat running down Daryl’s neck, but that’s nothing new these days. The baseball cap keeps the hair out of his face and he uses the rag dangling from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his forehead and upper lip every once in a while. Mostly, he just wiped it on his sweaty forearm even though that doesn’t help much.

He’s working on the third stall when Benjamin walks in. With a small frown, he stands up straight, stretching a little bit. ‘Hey, man. ‘sup, you need a horse?’

‘No,’ the other teenager leans against the wall and folds his arms in front of his chest. For a second he looks up and down the hallway. There’s no one there. ‘We’re going to make a drop today, we’re taking the truck.’

‘Right.’ They’ve given up on arguing about the Saviors. Benjamin agrees that it will all go wrong one day, he wants to fight with Daryl and his people because he knows the Kingdom could turn the tide for all of them, but he also doesn’t want to go against his King. He knows that Ezekiel is just trying to keep his people safe. ‘What’re you doin’ here then? Came to watch me work my ass off?’

‘Yeah, you missed a spot,’ Benjamin says with a roll of his eyes. ‘No. I heard you saw Carol yesterday.’

‘News travels fast,’ Daryl says as he turns back to his work, shoveling some more dirty bedding into a wheelbarrow. ‘What? You people got nothing better to do than gossip?’

‘We can gossip and work at the same time. Morgan told me. She was here, you know?’

‘Yeah, I know. Morgan told us when we got here, said she left, too. Didn’t tell us she just moved to the house next door though.’

Benjamin frowns. ‘No, I mean – she was here this morning.’

Daryl looks up. ‘What?’

‘She came to see Morgan.’

He wrings his hands on the pitchfork he’s holding, ‘she still here?’

The other boy shakes his head. ‘No, she left about an hour later.’

‘Oh,’ he grits his teeth and continues his work. ‘So why’re you telling me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Benjamin sighs. ‘You’re friends, right? And when she walked to the gates – there were these walkers, five of them. She took them all out before we’d even opened the gate for her. We were going to take care of them, we were just waiting on a couple more people to come.’

‘Gate’s guarded by three people,’ Daryl frowns. ‘Two can hold it while the other takes care of it, right? The fuck did you need more people for?’

The dark blond teenager looks a bit uncomfortable. ‘I haven’t been training for very long. I’m good with the Bo, I guess, but not so much with the other weapons. Like, my machete? I’m not very good with it. And I asked Carol to give me some pointers, I offered to walk her home so she could show me how she does what she does, right?’

Daryl scoffs. ‘Right.’

‘She said no though,’ Benjamin pulls a face. ‘Told me to make the drop.’

‘Sounds like Carol, a’right, Daryl murmurs as he puts the pitchfork aside and slips past the other boy to grab a bag with fresh shavings to spread around on the floor. ‘We all have jobs to do. That one is yours.’

‘But I need to get better,’ Benjamin argues. ‘And I can skip the drop, they don’t need me. Maybe we can go outside and you can show me a couple of tricks.’

Daryl straightens again and wipes the sweat from his brow. ‘There ain’t no _tricks_ for that sorta thing, okay? You just jab it into their eye or hack their skull in two, ain’t no fuckin’ rocket science.’

‘So nobody taught you?’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘Of course they taught me stuff. Shane and Rick taught me how to shoot all kinds of rifles and guns, ‘nd my old man had already taught me how to shoot my damn bow. The knives? That was easy once we figured out how to put them down for good. Difficult thing was to get to their heads.’

Benjamin frowns.

‘Was twelve years old and knee-high to grasshopper,’ Daryl laughs, ‘couldn’t fuckin’ reach, man. So Shane taught me how to fight for real; how to take them down so I could reach. Taught myself to jump from cars and whatever else was around. You don’t need to learn that shit. And we ain’t going out just so you can put some dead bastards down neither. Ain’t worth the risk. Practice inside the walls and on the ones blocking the gates. Don’t go lookin’ for trouble,’ he says. ‘It’ll find you soon enough.’

‘But I have to be ready when it does!’

‘You don’t need me to tell you which end to use, right?’ Daryl scoffs. ‘Good Lord. You managed to disarm me three times in a row with the Bo the other day. I’m sure you can take on a dead corpse that ain’t even thinkin’.’

Benjamin sighs again and lets his head thud against the wooden doorframe. ‘ _Fine_. Hey, have you seen Samaira?’

Daryl gestures to the stall around him and pulls a face. ‘What, you think she’s hiding behind that pile of dung or something? No, I haven’t seen your girlfriend.’

The dark blond teenager laughs, ‘she’s not my girlfriend.’

‘ _Right_.’

A blush creeps onto Benjamin’s cheeks. He looks away. ‘I mean – I want her to be, I guess, but…’

‘But what?’ Daryl asks when his friend doesn’t continue.

‘I’m not sure how to ask.’

‘Pfft,’ Daryl scoffs. ‘Ain’t that hard to open your mouth and blurt something out. You do it all the damn time. Samaira, you wanna be my girlfriend? There. Easy.’

‘Is that how you asked Jesus?’ Benjamin asks with a grin on his face.

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl laughs as he throws some shavings at the young guard. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Why not? You said it was _so_ easy.’

‘Because I don’t want Paul to be my _girlfriend_ , you asshole!’

Benjamin groans and covers his face with one hand, ‘you know that’s not what I meant! _Boyfriend_! Fine, did you ask him to be your boyfriend then?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl laughs as he puts the bag down again and cleans his face with his rag. ‘Didn’t ask him shit, just… you know… went for it, I guess,’ he can feel the tips of his ears burning. ‘Wasn’t the best plan. You should probably ask first. Hell,’ he laughs again and walks towards the next stall, ‘I’m done discussin’ this.’

Benjamin follows him. He pushes the wheelbarrow closer to the next door so his friend won’t have to walk back every time. ‘You could ask Jayla to be your girlfriend.’

‘Pfft!’ Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘We ain’t like that.’

‘Why not?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘’cause it ain’t fair, I guess. Like, if.. you know,’ he ducks his head and starts to shovel. ‘Like, I’m still thinkin’ about how to get Paul to say yeah to… all that, then, you know? I think Jayla is real pretty, and she’s real nice, too. Deserves better than just being a distraction.’

Benjamin stays silent.

Daryl doesn’t look at him. ‘My mom died when I were young, right? And, like, my dad… There were all these women, just… _staying over_ ,’ he rolls his eyes because he hadn’t really understood when he had been younger but he understands fine now. ‘Sometimes just once, other times longer, couple of weeks or however long it took them to realize they didn’t mean shit to my dad. They probably thought they were real special. Pfft. He were just lookin’ to get his dick wet. Loved my mom and us, nobody else.’

‘You’re not like that.’

That makes Daryl look up. ‘No. Should hope not. He was an asshole. Not all the time, but… he was.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Benjamin says softly.

‘Don’t be. He taught me everything I know,’ the youngest Dixon nods. ‘Tough as nails because of him. World ain’t fair and ya best learn how to deal early on, when you don’t even know it’s all fucked up and not supposed to be like that.’ He stops shoveling for a second. ‘Your dad, he was a good man, right?’

Benjamin nods.

Daryl smiles. ‘Good. That’s good ‘cause I were talking to your baby bro and he asked whether I believed they were watchin’ over us still, ya know? Our parents? And I said yes. Don’t want to be givin’ him no nightmares.’

Benjamin huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘No, he likes believing that.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Benjamin kicks his heavy boot against the doorframe softly. ‘Sorry. Thanks for lying.’

‘Weren’t lying,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘Got a lot of people sitting on them clouds, watchin’ my ass. It helps. And even if he were an asshole, he – you know. He was trying to do it right. Weren’t his fault he were just some dumb redneck sack of shit.’ He laughs. ‘Anyway, you should probably get to it. Samaira to see, questions to ask, all that.’

The other teenager laughs, too. ‘Yeah – I mean; no!’ he rolls his eyes. ‘I asked her to fix a frame for me. I found a pretty cool picture for Morgan, this guy with a Bo. Pretty epic. Wanted to give it to him as a thank you for teaching me.’

Daryl grins, ‘so if I teach you which end of the machete to use, I get a kick-ass picture, too?’

‘Fuck you. And you could probably draw one if you wanted one.’

‘Could do, I guess. But then I couldn’t get you to go talk to Samaira because she’d need to fix some damn frame.’

Benjamin groans, ‘you’re terrible!’

The sound of hooves on concrete breaks their conversation up. It’s Julia who brings one of the horses back into the stables so she can check him over. She smiles at the two teenagers. ‘Is he bothering you, Daryl?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Daryl laughs while Benjamin just splutters some protests. ‘He ready to go back in again?’ he slips out of the stall he’d been cleaning to grab the reins and stroke the neck of the horse. ‘Hey, boy.’

‘Let me check on your work first,’ Julia nods. A couple of seconds later she leads the horse inside while Daryl quickly adjusts the bedding, sweeping it out from under the water buckets so it won’t get all wet. He’d forgotten to do it earlier but Julia doesn’t seem to mind that she has to remind him.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Benjamin says with a small wave. ‘See you later.’

‘Hey,’ Daryl calls out after him. ‘I’ll take you behind the walls tomorrow. Teach you some damn tricks, okay?’

The teenager grins, ‘okay! Thanks, Daryl.’

‘Yeah, whatever. You just… be careful. Keep an eye on that King of yours. He’s a’right.’ Daryl watches how his friend walks away. There’s a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He doesn’t know it’s the last time he’ll ever see the young guard.

 

 

Nabila braves coming into Shiva’s room to get him hours later. She looks frightened but doesn’t even glance at the prowling tiger. Her voice shakes a little when she tells Daryl that the King needs him urgently.

Daryl grabs his bow and throws his sketchbook into a corner where Shiva can’t possibly reach it and runs out of the building, jumping over the porch railing to head over to the gates. The King is standing next to the truck they left in. His guards are gathered around him, heads bowed. One of them is kneeling, head in his hands to hide his tears.

Richard is standing next to Morgan, empty eyes staring at the sky.

‘Ezekiel?’ Daryl asks as he runs up to them, ‘ _Morgan_ , is Carol okay, did y’all visit her again? Is she-‘

The King looks at him. The dark eyes are filled with tears. ‘She is fine, Daryl.’ He closes his eyes for a second to regain his composure. A deep breath and a roll of his shoulders. He lifts his chin a little higher when he looks at the teenager again. ‘I need you to find Benjamin’s friends in an hour and tell them… Tell them their friend fought bravely today.’ His hold on his staff tightens. ‘Tell them he lost.’

‘No,’ Daryl says softly. ‘Please, no…’

’I am sorry, Daryl,’ Ezekiel says. ‘He valued your friendship. He spoke fondly of you.’

‘What happened, did – ‘ he doesn’t finish the question. It dies between them because of course Benjamin didn’t get bitten. Morgan had been right there with him. He wouldn’t have let that happen, which means…

The Saviors.

 _Negan_.

Daryl closes his eyes and breathes through his nose.

When he opens them, he looks at Morgan. _Did you wake up yet_ , he wants to ask. _I told you this would happen and now you were the one who had to watch._

In the back of his mind Rosita’s voice echoes, bitter and harsh, _you were gonna say you were right?_

‘I’m really sorry,’ Daryl says.

Morgan looks at him.

‘I gave you a command,’ the King says tightly, barely hiding the raw edge of grief and guilt from his tone. ‘You shall follow it.’

‘Of course, your majesty,’ Daryl says with a nod. ‘I’ll inform his friends after you’ve talked to his brother.’ He reaches out and touches the King’s elbow. ‘I’m just – I’m really sorry.’

 

 

He sits with Jayla under the apple tree. It’s close to the enclosure where the horses graze and a quiet spot; away from the bustle of the Kingdom’s main buildings. The girl’s crutches are on her right, Daryl sits on her left, one arm curled around her shoulders. The sobs have turned into silent tears. Every couple of minutes Daryl will reach over and brush them from her cheeks, fingertips trailing over her warm skin.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to make it _better_.

The memory of Benjamin even hurts him and he barely knew him by comparison. His friends, his family within these walls have been with him since the walls were built. He mourns his friend, his heart aching for the people left behind because he knows exactly how it feels. Nothing can make it better, he knows, but he wants to try.

He doesn’t want to feel this. Not again and not here, in the Kingdom where he’s found peace at last.

He brushes another tear away and then lets his fingers glide up to Jayla’s hairline, gently combing through her curls. He kisses her temple.

She looks up at him, lifting her head from his shoulder so their eyes can meet.

Daryl leans forward slowly, kissing her cheek, once, twice, moving closer to the corner of her mouth.

‘Don’t,’ she says before he reaches it. One hand coming up to his chest to push him back an inch. ‘Please don’t.’

He stops and closes his eyes, breath ghosting over her cheek before he put his forehead onto her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know what you’re trying to do. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to swap one emotion for the other just because you want to.’ She cards her fingers through his hair, scratching at the base of his skull to make him look up. ‘You don’t get to choose, Daryl,’ she tells him.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispers. ‘I just – I don’t know.’

‘You were helping,’ she says. The hand on his chest pushes him back against the tree and she puts her head on his shoulder again. ‘This is enough,’ she says with a sigh. ‘It’s okay to be sad for a while. We get to mourn him, we should be thankful for that. Just be my friend now. That’s all I want from you.’

He puts a careful arm around her again, drawing her a bit closer. ‘I can do that,’ he murmurs into her wild curls.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘You’re better at it than you think.’

‘I’m sorry about – about tryin’ to… I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

She smiles, eyes still shinning wetly. ‘Yeah. Sorry I’m not Jesus.’

Daryl pulls a face. ‘Stop.’

She huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘Remember Benjamin’s face when he finally figured out who you were talking about? That was hilarious.’

‘It was,’ Daryl agrees with a smile. ‘And you know, this morning he said….’

They talk about their friend, huddled together under the apple tree until the sun begins to set.

 

 

At dusk, they walk back to their building. Their shoulders brush together as they talk quietly, the words lighter than before, the smiles easier. The clicking of her crutches dances around them and Daryl holds on to the strap of his bow now that he can’t wrap an arm around her. He feels a little better, though he doubts that the feeling will last. Benjamin’s loss will cut deep into the community. Tomorrow it will still be an open wound. It won’t scar over so easily.

Jayla stops walking suddenly.

Daryl looks up from his boots, alarmed. He watches how Ezekiel walks through the deserted street, head bowed as he leads one of the horses on by the reins. The shoulders are curled inwards. He looks smaller now. Older.

‘My King,’ Jayla says when he reaches the two teenagers. She bows her head respectfully.

‘Jayla,’ the King nods. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘And yours.’

‘Thank you. He will be missed dearly,’ he touches her shoulder briefly before looking at the other teenager. ‘Daryl Dixon of Alexandria,’ he says, ‘Julia has told me you know how to ride.’

Daryl looks at the horse. She’s so big and powerful, beautiful with her coat that almost looks golden in the dying sunlight, her darker mane stark against her lighter colors. She moves around restlessly, shaking her head a little but never tugging at the reins in Ezekiel’s hands. He has seen Julia ride her, trying to wear her out for the night, but it has never worked. Faster than the rest and with boundless energy, she is one of the best horses the Kingdom has bred.

‘I know how to ride,’ Daryl confirms.

Ezekiel nods. ‘We have enjoyed your stay here, but it is time for you to take your leave. Nabila has gathered some provisions for you,’ his gloved hand pats on the saddlebags. ‘The road ahead is long and hard.’

‘You’re kicking me out?’

‘No,’ Ezekiel strokes the neck of the mare. ‘This is Khamsin, named after the winds that blow through North Africa, scorching hot and torturing with its dust. The fastest horse I have and she is yours, for however long she wishes to carry you.’ He looks at Daryl. ‘I have a message for Rick Grimes of Alexandria. It should not be delayed any longer.’

 

 

 


	90. Mature

 

* * *

 

 

 

The look of shock and joy on Tara’s face when she recognizes him makes him chuckle. Dawn is breaking over the horizon behind him. Khamsin’s coat is sweaty after the long ride but she dances in place impatiently, whinnying softly when he lets her turn in tight circles while they wait for the gate to be opened.

While the guards of the kingdom had told him that the Saviors rarely patrol the roads at night, he had still chosen to cut through the woods, rather than follow the roads. It had taken them a little longer because of it, but not much. The horse’s night vision is probably better than his, but he had still held her back, fearing that she might step into a rabbit hole or on a rock if they went too fast in the darkness. The last couple of miles before the small town had been nothing but empty fields however.

Under the guiding light of the moon, he had given her free reins. A couple of seconds of hesitation, the expectancy of a firm tug on her reins to hold her back, but when that didn’t come she’d set off like a bullet leaving a gun. He’d already clipped his baseball cap to his belt, anticipating the rush of wind as she galloped to Alexandria. The thundering sound of her hooves on the firm earth, the wind; he’d almost whooped with joy.

Now she’s walking in tight circles while the gate slides to the side to reveal their community. The rattling sound causes the horse’s ears to twitch and angle towards it, but she stays calm and listens immediately when Daryl urges her forward.

‘Dare,’ Tara laughs, walking up to him and putting a hand on his knee, squeezing tightly. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘You, too,’ he nods, twisting the leather reins in his hand. ‘Rick home?’

‘Yeah,’ the woman brushes some strands of her dark hair out of her face. ‘He’s - he’s home with Carl and Michonne, Judith of course,’ she waves a vague hand. ‘They’re all – yeah. They’re all there. Why are you here? Did something happen?’

‘Ezekiel changed his mind,’ Daryl tells her and he gently strokes Khamsin’s neck. ‘Send me out here to tell Rick and Maggie. He’s gathering his troops, they’re getting ready. They’ll be here soon.’

‘That’s amazing news, Daryl!’

‘I didn’t convince him. Someone died for it to go down like this. Benjamin, the younger guard? He died for it.’

Tara’s face falls. ‘I’m so sorry, Dare.’

‘Yeah, me too.’ With a grunt, he swings his leg over the saddle and slides down, landing on the ground with a soft thud. The horse pushes her nose against his shoulder when he reaches for the reins. ‘Come here,’ he reaches out with one arm, not letting go of the horse, and draws Tara into a hug. ‘How have things been here?’

‘Quiet. Rick and Michonne went on a run, they found a lot of guns. We found another community, too. They’re going to fight with us.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, but we need to find more guns. And – ‘ she looks away, ‘we know where to find them. It’s another community. Maybe they’ll fight with us, but if they won’t… we’re going to have to take their guns. Rick drew up a plan. We’re heading out in a couple of hours.’

‘I came back just in time then,’ Daryl flashes her a smile. ‘Good to see you, Tara.’

She rubs a hand over his upper arm, ‘same, Dare. Go on inside. Rick will be thrilled to see you.’

The clacking of Khamsin’s hooves breaks the silence of Alexandria. Nothing much has changed since he’s last been here but it still feels strange. He keeps expecting Saviors to roam the streets, dragging the mattresses out of the buildings, taunting the inhabitants, bowing to the looming shadow of Negan. The last time he had been here, he’d had Lucille on his shoulder.

The fear melts away when he sees Rick’s house. And especially who is lounging on the porch railing.

Paul appears to have his eyes closed, enjoying the first sunlight of the morning. He’s wearing his gloves and beanie, the long coat and his purple vest against the cold. One of his legs swings back and forth lazily, heavy boots thudding softly against the white balusters. The sound of hooves on concrete causes his head to swivel. He sits up, clearly alarmed when he spots the teenager.

‘The hell are you doing here?’ Daryl asks when he reaches the house, ‘is Maggie okay?’

‘She’s fine,’ Paul nods, ‘are _you_ okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Daryl rummages through one of the saddle bags to switch the reins for a lead rope, tying Khamsin down with a simple quick release knot Julia had taught him. ‘You were supposed to keep an eye on her, man.’

‘Merle and Beth are with her,’ Paul says as he slides down the railing to land gracefully next to the horse. He strokes her between the eyes. ‘Rick told us about the raid and we came to help and bring him some news. Merle wanted to stay behind in case you ran from the Kingdom and came back.’

‘Didn’t run,’ Daryl says as he lifts one side of the saddle flaps to undo the girth, gently easing it down and then rounding the horse so he can do the same thing on the other side. He throws it over the porch railing and stands on the tips of his toes to grab the saddle and blanket with both hands. ‘Ezekiel send me.’

‘Need some help?’ Paul offers as he steps closer.

‘Nah, I got it,’ Daryl grunts as he lifts the saddle up and over, putting it on the railing as well so it won’t touch the floor. He strokes Khamsin’s neck. ‘Good girl, I’m gonna brush you down later, okay? Thanks for taking me home.’ He smiles when she pushes against his shoulder with her nose. ‘Yeah, yeah. You’ll get a treat later, too. Good girl.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ Paul says. There’s a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

‘Her name is Khamsin, after the hot and dusty winds in North Africa,’ Daryl says as he puffs his chest up a little. ‘She’s mine now. Ezekiel gave her to me. Fastest horse of the Kingdom.’

‘Beautiful,’ the man repeats with a nod. ‘Why did he send you here?’

‘Let’s go inside, I ain’t gonna tell the same story a thousand times,’ Daryl says with a small smirk. ‘Rick and Michonne are up, right?’

‘Yeah. They’re getting ready.’

‘Some big raid, huh? Yeah, Tara told me.’ He hitches his bow higher onto his shoulder and heads towards the small set of steps.

‘Hey,’ Paul grabs his elbow. ‘Are we… I’m sorry about leaving you in the dark like that, but I’m not sorry about leaving you there. I know you felt…’ He searches for the right word, ‘betrayed, but… it was the right thing to do. You look good. Better.’

Daryl nods. ‘I feel better, too. Had time to think about some stuff. I was mad that y’all left my ass there, hell yeah I felt betrayed, but I get it now. It was good while it lasted. Wish you would have told me when we left Hilltop though. It’s important to say goodbye and I didn’t get that chance.’

‘You’ll see them soon,’ Paul tells him. ‘You didn’t have to say goodbye.’

‘But you never know, right? You never know what could happen, or you think you do and then there’s more, and…’ he shakes his head. ‘Just don’t do it again. Don’t try to protect me like that. You could have told me the plan. Might have raged a little, but I would have listened eventually.’

‘A _little_?’ Paul asks with a raised eyebrow.

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘Fine. A lot, but Rick could have handled that.’

The man flashes him a smile. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. And I really appreciate that we can talk about it like this,’ he gestures between them. ‘That’s really mature of you.’

‘Really mature, huh?’ Daryl says as he wobbles on the balls of his feet. ‘Does that mean we can date now?’

Paul laughs and gives him a fond look. ‘A really mature sixteen year old is still sixteen. You’re never going to catch up on the age difference, Daryl.’

‘Ain’t my fault you’re fuckin’ old.’ He easily dodges the swipe at his head from the other man, running up the couple of steps before looking back again. ‘It’s good to see you, Paul.’

‘You, too, Daryl.’

 

 

The other community is called Oceanside and Tara has been there before.

Daryl and Rick are sitting next to each other on the porch. There’s a cigarette between the teenager’s fingers, slowly burning up. Smoke drifts up to the endlessly blue sky, the tip flaring red before settling into ashes when he takes a drag. It scorches his lungs but makes sure his heartrate picks up again, the organ beating rapidly inside his chest and it keeps the sleepiness at bay for now.

He has promised Michonne that he will sleep on the way to Oceanside, a fishing community to the north, the one Tara found while she had been looking for supplies with Heath. She had kept that place a secret even though she knew they had needed the guns. They had done what Daryl had thought of doing, what Carol has done; they just left. Hiding far in the woods, close to the ocean and the edge of the world, as far away from Negan as they could.

It hadn’t been far enough, because Rick has planned a raid and they’re going to get the guns, no matter what.

Daryl smokes his cigarette.

He thinks about the tales of old about all the battles fought on these lands. He remembers sitting beside a campfire, shadows dancing over the faces of his friends, wide-eyed and too young to be up still, and the faces of their fathers who told the stories their fathers had told them. Of the battle of Chickamauga, of Brown’s Mill, the first battle of Dalton, and still older battles, fought by native Americans. Tales about generals and soldiers, rifles and knives, horses and bows, of fire and gunpowder. The stories never had a true beginning because everyone already knows how wars begin.

Somebody has something they want to hold onto.

Someone else wants to make it theirs.

The stories started with the first gunshot, the first arrow. It started with screaming soldiers, running for cover or towards fire, digging themselves into foxholes or chasing blood over the wide plains of America on the backs of their great stallions. They never started with a general sitting on a porch, looking small next to his smaller teenage son.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Rick says. He’s looking down the street, one hand nervously plucking at his ear before he rubs at his chin, fingernails scraping over the stubble of his beard.

Daryl already knows that. He’d seen it in the way Rick’s hand first went to his heart when he stared at the teenager, shocked to see him home, fingers shaking a bit when he final recovered enough to pull him into a tight hug. There weren’t any whispers of being sorry, of regret, and Daryl hadn’t expected them. He knows Rick tried to do what was best for him and in the end that’s all that counts; that someone tried.

‘Me, too,’ the teenager answers. ‘Would you have come to get me? If I’d still been at the Kingdom, would you have come to get me before all this went down today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Rick rubs at his eyes and sighs. ‘Because you’re a good shot. You’re fast, strong. And you would do what needs to be done.’ He looks at the boy, ‘this is your fight, too, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t get to say that you, Carl and Enid can stay here. That you won’t have to see any of that, won’t have to _do_ what I’m going to ask of you. You will see it. You already have and I’m so sorry.’

Daryl shakes his head. ‘That ain’t on you. How the world is now? We didn’t cause that, we didn’t get to decide that. It happened and this is just how it is, right? We get to decide what comes next. Ain’t that what we’re fighting for? It ain’t for me and Carl. Ain’t for Enid or Beth neither. But Judith won’t remember the old world. Got to make sure hers is as good as Carl’s was, before it all turned bad, right? And yeah, maybe she’ll grow up sleeping with a knife under her pillow, behind gates and walls, with dead people still roaming the earth. But I want her to be able to see the Kingdom, to ride to the Hilltop without having to worry about anything but rotting walkers on the side of the road. Because that will fade, right? Everyone knows to get them in the head. Everyone who dies now – everyone makes sure nobody of theirs turns. We keep that up? We’re gonna win. It’s gonna be us, at the end of all of it. It’s gonna be _her_ world. We just gotta win to make that happen.’

Rick reaches out and strokes the boy’s hair, squeezing the back of his neck affectionately. ‘We’re gonna win,’ he promises.

‘Yeah.’ Daryl drags his bow into his lap, fidgeting with the black bolts.

‘Ezekiel gave you that?’

‘Kinda. Jayla did, but the King probably gave permission.’

‘The fastest horse in the Kingdom and a crossbow,’ Rick says with an amused smile. ‘Who knew a Dixon could even wrap a King around his little finger?’

The teenager laughs. ‘Yeah, well – didn’t work on everyone.’

‘Oh?’ The former cop glances at him out of the corner of his eye. He tries to act casual when he asks; ‘are you talking about someone special or just…’

‘There was this girl – Jayla, right? She taught the rest of the kids and teens how to shoot a bow and everything, had these curls, real pretty. So I kinda – I just, you know. I thought she were cute, so I told her she were pretty and stuff, but… she wanted to be friends, so,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘We’re friends now.’

Rick’s eyebrows have almost disappeared into his hairline.

‘What?’ Daryl asks with a frown. ‘I told you I like girls, too!’

‘No – I know!’ the man says quickly. ‘I know. That’s fine, all of it – any of it, it’s all fine. I’m just surprised you’re so…’ he waves a vague hand, ‘talkative about it? So open, I mean. Feels like you were growling at us to stop sticking our noses in just seconds ago.’

‘Pfft,’ Daryl rolls his eyes, ‘stopped doing that when I were thirteen, man. Was no point; all y’all kept doing it anyway, so…’ he shrugs again. ‘Doesn’t matter, she didn’t like me like that. Was real stupid, right? She were too good for Dixon blood anyway. Like, I had to tell her and their friends that Benjamin had died and we were sitting near one of the pens. And she was so sad, and I were really sad - I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to…’ He scratches at one of his bolts so he won’t have to look at Rick. ‘I tried to kiss her. She wouldn’t let me.’

‘Why did you try?’

‘Just didn’t want to be sad anymore.’

Rick nods. ‘And you stopped when she told you no?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good.’

‘Might be a Dixon but I ain’t trash no more,’ Daryl murmurs around his cigarette.

Rick sighs. ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s just – it’s important, okay?’

‘Yeah. We don’t got to do the whole awkward sex talk again, right? Because I had it growing up and then Shane did these random pop quiz things and it was just,’ Daryl shakes his head. ‘Was weird, man.’

The leader of Alexandria laughs at the memory of his brother. ‘I’m pretty sure he just did it to learn more Dixon euphemisms though.’

The teenager presses the palms of his hands against his eyes with a groan, ‘ _horizontal monster mash_ ,’ he laughs.

Rick snorts. ‘That was a great one. I thought he was going to choke laughing.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl smirks, ‘that was a good one.’ He ends the cigarette on the step and flicks the butt into the bushes. A tiny frown appears on his forehead. ‘Does it weird you out to talk about that kind of stuff?’

‘Not at all,’ Rick smiles. ‘It used to weird _you_ out. And if I try to talk about it with Carl – let’s just say he learned that Dixon glare, all right.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s weird to talk about it with your dad.’

Rick looks at his boots for a second. ‘You talked about stuff with Shane, right? And Glenn?’

‘Guess,’ Daryl shrugs. ‘But ain’t like they had to teach me shit. Well, maybe Glenn, like – with Aaron and Eric? That it was okay and everything, but nah – ain’t no better sex education than living in a Dixon household, they could be watching the damn weather, complainin’ about how the dry spell had affected their dicks. _Hasn’t been wet in weeks neither_ ,’ Daryl says, mimicking his dad’s tone of voice.

Rick groans and buries his face in his hands. ‘That’s terrible.’

Daryl laughs. ‘Yeah. Some crazy shit.’ He shoots Rick a grin, ‘don’t matter anyway; ain’t ever gonna get some when they keep shootin’ me down like that. First Paul and then Jayla, hell, they’re gonna give me a complex.’ He taps his fingernail against the tip of his bolt. ‘How did you get Lori to date your ass?’

The man snorts. ‘I don’t know – I just asked.’

‘You just asked?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick rubs at his forehead. ‘We went to the movies.’

‘Christ, you’re no help at all,’ Daryl mutters. ‘Can’t take anyone to the movies no more, man. Ain’t what are the odds I’m gonna land myself someone with a dental-hygiene obsession _and_ find some damn mints?’

The door behind them opens and closes.

‘The world ended and teenage boys still worry about how they’re ever going to get laid,’ Tara comments dryly as she breezes past. ‘Nothing ever changes. Rick, we’re ready to go.’

‘Did he tell you about his super-secret flirting technique already?’ Paul asks as he vaults the railing of the porch to head down the road towards the gates, following Tara. ‘Because that’s really something, Rick.’

Daryl finger-guns him down.

Paul laughs. ‘Really?’

‘Yup.’

‘ _Still_?’

‘Have you looked in the mirror? Yeah still,’ Daryl grins. ‘Learn to live with the love, man.’

The man shakes his head but smiles a little shyly as he walks away towards the main gate where people are starting to gather. Weapons are being distributed, automatic rifles passed around while the explosives are secured in the trunks of the cars.

It doesn’t take very long before the rest of their family pours out of the house as well. Daryl takes Judith from Enid, pressing kisses to her cheek under which she collapses into a heap of giggles in his arms. She paws at his neck and face, babbling in her funny little language. There’s a ragdoll in her hands. She gives it to Daryl.

‘Oh, thank you, Little Asskicker,’ he gushes, accepting the doll. ‘That’s real nice of you.’

She reaches for it again immediately.

‘You want it back? Okay. Here you go. Oh, I can have it again? Thank you very much, kicker!’

Michonne drapes an arm over his shoulders. ‘She missed you.’

‘And I missed you loads, too,’ Daryl grins at his little sister. ‘You gotta learn how to walk and ride real quick, okay? ‘cause I can’t always be the one draggin’ my ass down here, you gotta make an effort, too, you know? World’s bigger than this place. We’ll make sure of it,’ he promises.

The hand on his shoulder twitches. ‘You’re – you’re not going to live here?’ Michonne asks. ‘After the war is over?’

Daryl shrugs. ‘I dunno. Guess – I mean, I dunno. Gonna travel around a lot anyway, don’t matter where I end up. I want to be a scout, like Aaron and Paul. Maybe more of a messenger, like – a diplomat.’

‘Daryl Dixon the diplomat,’ Michonne snorts.

He glares at her.

She shoots him a smile and runs her hand through his dark hair. ‘We’re going to need to find you a suit.’

Rick walks over to take Judith from him, rocking her in his arms while whispering goodbye’s. Michonne joins him, a hand on the small of Rick’s back and the other one stroking Judith’s cheek. Daryl smiles as he walks on, passing them to head over to where Tara is standing.

When he looks to his right, however, he stops.

‘Oh my God. Dare.’

He laughs and breaks out in a run, jumping into waiting arms. ‘ _Eric_!’

 

 

He sleeps on the backseat of the car, his head on Tara’s thigh and her fingers gently carding through his hair. His feet are in Gabriel’s lap but the Father doesn’t seem to mind. He just stares out of the window, tight-lipped but not as nervous as he once was.

Daryl dreams about Will.

 

 

_‘A play?’ Will asks with raised eyebrows. ‘You want me to come to a goddamn play?’_

_‘You don’t have to,’ Daryl says as he squirms in his seat. ‘It’s just…. I’m in it, ya know? I have a line. And teacher said parents can come and watch. Gotta pay for a ticket tho. Two bucks.’_

_‘I gotta pay two bucks to watch my own goddamn son say shit? Hell, we should put you up on the kitchen table, have Merle sell some damn tickets. Five bucks tho, can’t buy no pack of smokes for two bucks, now can we?’_

_Daryl scratches at the table top. ‘They’s gonna use the money for books,’ he murmurs._

_‘What’s that?’ Will asks, leaning in closer which causes Daryl to shrink into his seat._

_‘They’re gonna use the money from the tickets to buy books for the school library,’ the boy says, voice a little shaky. ‘Not smokes.’_

_Will reaches around and clips him across the back of his head. ‘Of course they ain’t gonna buy no smokes from – Good lord, you slow or something, boy?’_

_‘He’s eight,’ Merle snaps as he leans back to grab a lighter from the kitchen counter. ‘Give him a fucking break, dad. So your audition went good then?’ he asks his little brother._

_‘Yeah,’ Daryl beams at him. ‘I remembered all the words!’_

_Merle holds out his hand for a high-five. ‘Proud of ya.’_

_Daryl laughs and smacks their hands together. ‘Teacher was really proud, too. Said she could tell I’d practiced, that’s why I get to say a line!’_

_‘_ A _line? A whole goddamn play and you got one line? What, it’s two words or something? I gotta pay a buck a word now?’_

_The boy presses his fingers into his knee to count the words. ‘It’s four,’ he says after a couple of beats of silence. ‘Here comes the King. That’s my line. See, I already know it,’ he beams at his brother._

_Merle takes a drag from his cigarette and claims another high-five._

_Will shakes his head. ‘What a fucking bullshit.’_

_Daryl has seen the movies. He knows his dad doesn’t like plays and he doesn’t like the people from school and sometimes he doesn’t even like Daryl very much, but… he’s going to show up at the play. Daryl has seen it happen in all the movies_

_And Merle is even saving him a seat._

_Daryl can see his big brother sitting on the front row, the seat next to him claimed by the little program leaflet and his brother’s arm across the back of it. Merle keeps glancing at the door, too._

_It doesn’t matter that the teacher says they can’t wait any longer. Will can just sneak in, he’s very good at sneaking when he’s sober because he taught Daryl how to hunt and now Daryl can sneak around like no other._

_It doesn’t matter that his dad misses his grand entrance where he shuffles onto the stage shyly. Merle whoops so it's okay._

_He misses the line, too. That doesn’t matter either because he forgets that he’s supposed to shout it happily and instead he just murmurs it while looking at his big brother’s boot with tears in his eyes._

_Will misses the whole thing._

_Merle says he’s proud of him at the end, that he was amazing, that he stole the whole goddamn show and that they can go and get a milkshake or maybe even ice cream with sprinkles on it even though that costs extra._

_Daryl claims he’s tired and they go home instead._

_Will is passed out on the couch._

_Later, when he’s in bed, he can hear Merle shouting in the living room._

_Bottles break._

_The next morning, Merle has a black eye and he hobbles around the kitchen. But he still grins when he asks what the little superstar wants to eat for breakfast._

He opens his eyes and shifts around so he can look up at Tara, who tears her gaze away from the world outside the windows to focus on him.

‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asks. ‘We’re almost there. Do you want a protein bar or some dried meat for breakfast?’

‘Can I have both?’

She rolls her eyes and reaches for her bag. ‘Teenagers. Good thing Rick is used to that kind of stuff, because he packed you both. I would have just let you starve.’

He laughs as he sits up. ‘Liar.’

 

 

They park on one side of the bank. The temperature is steadily rising and mosquito’s buzz just above the water, dancing around in small, gray clouds. The first boat is lowered into the water and Daryl watches how Aaron and Eric get in and keep the boat steady for the rest. Huddled low and with their weapons at the ready.

Rick and Michonne sit next to each other, shadowed by Gabriel and Tobin. They row the boat to the other side, gliding through the water at a steady pace.

The rustling of leaves causes Daryl to glance over his shoulder but it’s only Paul. The man gives him a brief smile. The teenager nods his head and looks back at the boat. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I don’t mind lookin’ at your face all the damn time, but you baby sittin’ me like this really undermines the whole maturity thing we were talking about.’

‘Tough,’ Paul says softly as he steps up next to the teenager. ‘We’re babysitting each other. Rick wants you on Aaron and Eric’s team. I’m with them, too.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Daryl murmurs as he ducks a little bit so he can still see the boat despite the low hanging branches he’s hiding behind. ‘It was just a joke. It’s better to work with even numbers.’

‘It is,’ Paul agrees.

‘Spit it out.’

Paul looks at him sharply.

‘What, we hanging out now? I ain’t no fool. What’s going on?’

‘Rosita and Sasha left the Hilltop two days ago. I think they went after Negan themselves.’

Daryl nods, ‘yeah, no shit. They sure as hell weren’t at the Kingdom, and they ain’t here. Only one place for them to go, right?’

Paul nods and folds his arms in front of his chest. He looks down at his boots. ‘I caught Sasha stealing bullets from me. I let her have them. I shouldn’t have.’

‘She had a gun?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hell, you only got two bullets left?’ Daryl asks as he straightens again. ‘You best give them to Sasha. Girl can shoot a turkey between the eyes from any distance. Come on, we’re on the next boat.’ He jumps down the small hill and glides towards the beach. There, he climbs on board with Tara, Enid, Carl and Paul. He rows with his brother, perfectly in sync.  
  
  


 


	91. Oceanside

 

* * *

 

 

Aaron and Eric stand guard while Daryl and Paul plant the explosives. The teenager crawls around on all fours, in charge of unrolling the wire and picking out good spots while Paul connects the sticks of dynamite. The woods surrounding them are quiet. Occasionally the wind will carry whispers of Aaron and Eric’s conversation over but mostly it’s just the sound of leaves crushing under their boots when they move to the next spot that breaks the silence.

Daryl glances up at the sun to check on the time.

The clock is ticking.

Tara had told them a lot about the community. Not only about the lay-out of the buildings, about the armory and the water protecting it on two sides, but also about the people who live there. The women and children. About what had happened to their men.

He knows what the Saviors have done to their families and he understands why they ran. It’s a different kind of bravery than he’s used to. It had taken him a while and a bit of Michonne’s gentle coaxing for him to understand that it had, in fact, been bravery. They could have stayed and served the Saviors, after all. They could have worked for them like Alexandria, Hilltop Colony and The Kingdom have done but instead they’d tucked tail and ran.

New policies about killing everyone on sight would have kept them safe enough, if they had stuck to them. Policies set up by hands still shaking from terror, however, never hold for long when they have to be upheld by the hopeful. Their leader, Natania, still fears the shadows lurking between the trees, for she knows the terror that lies beyond. Her daughter, Cyndie, dreams about bigger worlds and better people.

It’s the same conflict only in a different community. It’s _all life is precious_ clashing with Rick’s hardened heart. It’s Ezekiel wanting to keep his people safe and still having to bury Benjamin. It’s Maggie sitting between Glenn and Abraham’s grave with her hand on her growing belly.

Everyone fears the digging of the next grave.

And everyone fears they could have done something to stop it. Going to war, or hiding and serving.

Three communities have already made up their minds.

It’s time for Oceanside to decide.

Whether they join the fight or not, Rick won’t leave this place without the guns. That’s why Daryl and Paul are setting up explosives, why Michonne is climbing a tree somewhere nearby to find a good spot to snipe from. They’re going to take what they need, one way or another.

Tara had pleaded for time to talk to them.

Rick has given her an hour.

There’s little hope that Natania is just going to give in and risk the lives of her people. Daryl gets that now, after spending time in the company of Ezekiel. At first he’d thought the man made a terrible king by refusing to help them. He remembers stories of kings high on their thrones, with golden crowns and sparkling jewels. On white horses wearing red or purple capes, flourishing autographs on long scrolls of parchment, swords too weighed down by diamonds to be any use in protecting their people.

Ezekiel wasn’t that. His jewels and crown were a heavy chain and Shiva’s flashing eyes, his boots muddy from patrolling outside out the walls, the end of his staff bloody from piercing a walker’s skull before it could get to one of his personal guards. The autograph is his voice, ringing out in the auditorium when he delivers his decree or echoing through the Kingdom when he laughs with the children who dance around him. It’s his hands, clapping to encourage the singers of the choir or digging into the earth to help replant the royal garden.

Daryl knows the man is a good king. He knows he tried to protect his people to the best of his abilities.

He knows Rick had tried to do the same when he agreed to take Negan out for Hilltop Colony, that it’s Gregory who is the coward who hides behind others, who had only taken in refugees as long as it benefited him in some way. Ezekiel had let him stay out of the kindness of his heart and his trust in Paul’s judgement.

Daryl wonders what Natania will decide. Whether she knows enough about Tara’s heart to trust it, or whether she is wise enough to listen to the council of the young and hopeful to brave the shadows of the outside world.

They will find out soon enough.

‘I should have tried harder to stop Rosita and Sasha,’ Paul says suddenly. He’s holding the box with the dynamite and watches how Daryl uncoils the wire, laying it on the earth before scooting further to the left. ‘If they had just waited one more day…’

Daryl shoots him a glance before continuing his work. There’s an odd sense of pride blooming in his chest. He’s glad that Paul never treats him like a child and that he’s still willing to talk to him after knowing about his embarrassing crush on the man. So he thinks about his words before shrugging. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘Sasha’s a good shot, and Rosita knows how to take care of herself. They’re probably back at Hilltop right now. Least I hope so,’ he says, voice a little softer at the end. Then he hardens his expression. ‘We’re gonna need ‘em. There’s a whole lot of people who still got to die.’

Silence stretches between them.

The teenager looks up. ‘What, you don’t think so?’

Paul doesn’t meet his eye. ‘Morgan told me about the cell he built.’

‘So?’

‘I didn’t know we had that option before. Maybe we should reconsider the ending of this whole plan.’

Daryl scoffs. ‘It’s four walls and a roof, we’ve _always_ had that option. And it’s fine to use it for some of them, I guess. For the ones who just followed. Yeah, lock them up for a while, I don’t care. That's what all those prisons were for back in the old world anyway, right? They’d lock people up to try and change them, make them see the error of their ways, try to scare them into never coming back to prison. That works on good people, getting them out of a bad situation, giving them time to think about shit. It works on the guilty, too. Let them serve their time and start fresh. It doesn’t work on the ones who don’t give a shit.’

‘You’re talking about Negan.’

‘Weren’t you?’ Daryl snaps back. ‘Locking him up,’ he scoffs. ‘No way. I know guys like him. Hell, I’ve lived with guys like him all my damn life. He thinks he’s ten feet tall and there ain’t ever going to be a reckoning. But he’s wrong because I’m coming for him.’

‘Dare,’ Paul says softly.

‘He killed Glenn,’ the teenager says. ‘I’m coming for him.’ He scoots down further to the left to place the wire onto the ground, grabbing his knife to cut it. ‘Besides, Rick already made him the promise. Ain’t no going back now.’

‘I can talk to Rick,’ Paul says as he attaches the dynamite. ‘Just like Tara did. He wanted to storm this place, kill everyone who resisted, but she managed to get enough time to be able to make a deal with these people.’

‘We can’t make a deal with the goddamn Saviors, Paul.’

‘You said it yourself; there are people who just follow. We could talk to them, try and get them on our side. We could use the numbers, you know that. If we have people inside the Sanctuary, we have a better chance at winning. The wives, they liked you, right? If I told them-‘

‘You ain’t telling them shit,’ Daryl hisses. ‘You act like you can just stroll up to their gate and demand an audience with them. Christ. If it all goes down and they see they’re losing – people will take our side. We’re just gonna have to count on that.’

Paul shakes his head. ‘I just want – I just want to think about other options than just killing them all. We have more people now. We can do it peacefully if we really wanted to.’

‘We don’t want to,’ Daryl says as he meets Paul’s eye.

‘ _Dare_.’

‘What don’t you get?’ the teenager asks. ‘He killed _Glenn_. You’re free to round the rest of them up and lock them away for good, but not him. He ain’t ever going to change. He ain’t ever going to be fucking sorry.’ He scoffs. ‘And even if he were; ain’t ever going to be enough. Nah, man. Don’t know what got into you, but we’re sticking to this. Rick made the promise. _Not today, not tomorrow, but I’m gonna kill you_.’

Paul frowns a little. ‘So you’re just going to let him do it? Don’t think that won’t change him. It’s not easy; taking someone’s life.’

‘He’s not going to do it,’ Daryl throws him a little smile when he gathers the left-over wire and throws it into the crate again. ‘He’s made promises like that before, you know _? A machete with a red handle – that’s what I’m gonna use to kill you_. Said it to the guy who’d killed Shane. I told you about Shane, right?’

‘A little.’ Guilt flashes over the man’s features. ‘Maggie and Merle filled me in on the rest. He sounded like a good man, Daryl. I’m sorry you lost him.’

‘Me too,’ Daryl nods. Then he flashes Paul a smile. ‘I don’t care that you’ve joined their little gossip group. At least you’re thinking about me.’

Paul snorts and shakes his head. ‘You’re terrible.’

The teenager works his jaw for a second. ‘Yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I am. Rick didn’t kill that guy. I did. With the machete. Rick gave it to me because he knew I needed to do it, just like how I need to do it now. Negan is mine. I’m going to kill him. There ain’t no doubt about that. And anyone who’s going to stand in my way? They’re gonna get it, too.’

‘It doesn’t have to go down like that,’ Paul says as he gets up, done with attaching the last sticks of dynamite to the wire. ‘Maggie wouldn’t want you to do that.’

‘Maggie wants to win,’ the teenager says as he grabs his crossbow. ‘That’s the only thing that matters anymore. We gotta move. The hour is almost up.’

 

 

The explosions are the signal. Fire bursts into the sky, roaring past the trees, causing the leaves to rustle with the shockwave. The earth even trembles a little, Daryl can feel it through his heavy boots. The hand on his shoulder twitches at the sound. He looks up at Eric. The man’s face is pale and drawn but there’s determination in his eyes. The gaze softens a little when he meets the teenager’s, fingers digging into the leather jacket before he nods.

‘Let’s go.’

Their job is to secure the arsenal.

Daryl and Paul sneak forward, into the village while Aaron and Eric cover them. Heavy combat boots silent on the loose earth, their presence unnoticed due to the chaos caused by the explosions. People are screaming and running the other way, just like Rick had predicted they would. Only two of them had a clear enough mind to head back towards the danger and get the guns.

Two shots from Michonne stop them in their tracks right in front of the arsenal.

‘On the ground,’ Daryl growls as he steps forward, peering at the two women through the scope of his bow. ‘Now! Those hands – put them on your heads.’

One of the women glares at him while the other looks at Paul.

‘Please,’ the man says, his tone softer, though he hasn’t lowered his automatic rifle. When the women kneel before them, Paul binds their hands together while Daryl signals the all-clear to Michonne. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. I’m going to help you stand up, okay?’

The woman bares her teeth at him but still gets to her feet, swaying a little until Paul steadies her. She looks at Daryl, who is standing guard with his crossbow. ‘You let children fight for you?’

‘Ain’t no kid,’ Daryl says with a nasty glare. ‘And shut up, okay?’ He walks over and grabs her elbow, dragging her along. More explosions go off in the distance. People scream in the forest until it all goes silent. There’s no gunfire either, so Daryl knows that the plan is working. He pushes the woman through the small town, his own gaze sweeping over the huts. There’s fishing equipment everywhere. Nets and hooks and baskets. He wonders whether they have boats, too.

He remembers Andrea and Amy, the bridges of their noses burned after spending all day in a boat on the lake and their buckets overflowing with fresh fish. The little party around the campfire that night when Will hadn’t returned from Atlanta. How good that had felt and how he’d pretended it was the fresh food that had made him smile.

‘Dare,’ Eric says softly to draw his attention back to the present.

He shoves the woman forward, careful not to do it too hard and make her fall when her hands are bound. They walk down a path to find the rest of the community already on their knees and surrounded.

Rick is waiting for them, standing tall and proud with his rifle. His gaze softens due to relief when he spots the teenager. A warm hand finds the back of Daryl’s neck. ‘Any trouble?’

‘Nah,’ Daryl answers. He guides the woman to her group. ‘Get down over there. And keep quiet.’

‘Now, we made a lot of noise,’ Rick says as he goes to stand in front of the group. ‘We want to wrap this up quick so you can send people to redirect anything coming this way. Tara said your forests are relatively clear, so we won’t take any chances. _No one needs to get hurt._ This is just about what you have. What we need.’

A voice cutting through the trees tells Daryl that the plan hasn’t worked completely. A woman is holding Tara in front of her like a shield, a gun pressed against the back of the girl’s head. There’s no doubt that this is Natania. The young woman walking next to her, with her darker skin and black curls, must be her granddaughter Cyndie.

‘Nobody is taking anything,’ Natania says. ‘You need to let everyone go and leave right now. Just walk away or this one dies.’

Rick nods. ‘Yeah, we’ll leave you alone,’ he promises. ‘But we’re taking your weapons with us. That’s not gonna change.’ He takes a step closer to her, ‘it’s Natania, right? Put the gun down and let’s talk about what we _can_ change.’

Daryl watches nervously. His hands grip his bow a little tighter as Tara shouts out for Michonne to hold her fire. He takes a slow step to the side, raising his bow silently as he closes one eye, finding Natania’s head with his crosshairs. He aims at her ear, knowing that the shot will land a little higher due to the distance and wind.

‘Don’t,’ Eric says as he reaches out and stills the teenager’s arm, preventing him from taking his perfect stance to shoot. ‘Let Rick handle it.’

‘Ain’t no handlin’ this,’ Daryl whispers back. ‘That’s Tara, she-‘

Aaron glances at the two of them and takes a step closer to Paul, effectively blocking Daryl’s shot.

Daryl lowers the bow immediately, not wanting to aim it at the back of his friend’s head. He glares at Eric.

Eric doesn’t seem to care as he focusses on the two leaders again.

‘They want us to fight the Saviors,’ Cyndie tells her people. Some of them shiver and wince but others lock gazes, a little stunned but with hope flaring in their eyes. After a couple minutes and more arguing between Cyndie, Natania, Tara and Rick, one of them even nods. ‘Maybe we should try,’ she says. It’s the woman Paul had escorted back here, the one who’d called Daryl a child.

The community wants to fight. Natania thinks they have forgotten all that they lost when they’d tried that the first time. Her voice trembles but doesn’t break when she accuses her family of forgetting. She doesn’t understand that they _do_ remember. That everything they lost is the very reason why they want to fight now.

Everyone here already knows loss. They have dug the graves and their hearts have been broken beyond repair, but there are children huddled among them, hiding behind their mothers and sisters. Little boys with their father’s eyes, little girls with their smiles. And every time they laugh with those twinkling eyes and those smiles, the rest of the community is reminded; they are not safe.

There is always more.

‘ _Rick! Walkers!_ ’

Michonne’s warning causes enough of a distraction for Cyndie to knock her grandmother to the ground. Rick quickly rallies his Alexandria troops, letting them form a line while the Oceanside community is driven back for their own protection. On their feet and with the children hiding behind them. One of the women holds out her bound hands to Rick while barking instructions.

‘First shift, join them on the line! Knives out; dead only. _Dead only_!’

Rick doesn’t hesitate. He cuts the rope and hands his knife to her before stepping up to the line, taking his place beside Carl. ‘Dare, fire at will! Everyone else, shots within ten feet of the line.’

Daryl peers through his scope, watching how the walkers stumble towards them between the trees. They need them to come closer to have sure shots for the rifles, they can’t waste any bullets meant for Negan’s forces. His bolts are different of course, and he has the perfect longer-range weapon. Heartbeat slowing down, breathing evening out and then he lets the first bolt fly, taking out a walker on the left. The trees block some of his shots but he calmly reloads, foot in the stirrup and counting on Paul, who is standing beside him, to cover him.

‘Hold your fire,’ Rick barks out when Daryl swings his bow up and people nervously finger their triggers. ‘ _Dare_.’

Daryl takes out another walker. On his right this time, one who’d been walking in a cluster of three. Lone walkers are easier to take care off with the knives, after all. It becomes a problem when they bunch up like that.

‘Get ready,’ Rick warns while Daryl reloads again. The walkers are getting close. ’That’s it! Now!’

Short bursts of gunfire erupt. Bodies fall to the ground.

Daryl searches for his next target, not worrying about the walker right in front of him because Paul takes care of it with a single shot. Instead he takes one out who comes close to Carl, who is busy reloading.

The walkers break through the middle of the line when Alexandria’s people have to reload, but the women from Oceanside deal with them effectively. Quick slices of their blades, fearless hands grabbing hold of rotting throats, one small girl sneaking forward and kicking one of the walkers to the ground before she can reach the skull. Her blade buries into the brain and it’s over, leaving her standing tall and panting slightly, curls spilling over her bony shoulders.

Daryl watches out of the corner of his eye. He wonders how old she is. Younger than him, twelve maybe. His lips curl into a small smile.

The attack is over soon, most of the bodies form a pile ten feet off the line.

The woman gives Rick his knife back and the leader of Alexandria shakes her hand.

It’s the last straw for Natania. She gives up on the weapons, shouting that they can have them as long as they leave their community alone. She goes to lie down and recover from the blow to her head while they collect the weapons and bring them back to the boats.

Daryl helps Tara carry the last rifles out. He knows that it’s hard for her, that it was hard to betray her new friends like that, but he’s glad she did it. There are a lot of guns here. They might actually have a chance now.

‘We’re gonna bring them back when it’s all over,’ Tara tells Cyndie. ‘This is Daryl – Dare. He’s going to be one of the scouts after the war. Maybe we can trade. I mean, I didn’t like the fish much but – ‘ she laughs nervously. ‘Please don’t stab him when he comes to visit you. Or imprison him. Any of that.’

Cyndie looks at Daryl, who wobbles on the balls of his feet. Long hair peeks out from beneath the backwards baseball cap, a couple of strands hiding his small, blue eyes. He’s finally just as tall as Tara is. The thin lips curl into a hesitant smile.

‘Hey,’ he mutters, kicking his feet together and glancing at Tara.

‘Hey,’ Cyndie echoes. She looks at Tara, too. ‘We won’t hurt your friends.’

‘Cool,’ Tara nods before she reaches out to squeeze Daryl’s shoulder. ‘Wait for me over there?’

‘Sure thing.’ Daryl walks over to the spot she indicated, in sight but out of earshot as she has a conversation with the other woman. His gaze lands on the little girl who glares back defiantly. ‘What the hell you lookin’ at, midget?’

‘You better not come back!’ the girl snarls.

Daryl quirks an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘Right. So I guess you don’t want me bringin’ those guns back, together with some of the Kingdom’s summer fruit, right? Sweeter than your grandma’s tea used to be, that’s for sure. Oh and you don’t want me to bring you batteries we can charge in Alexandria neither, right? ‘cause you sure as hell don’t want something as fun as a music player. Bet you’d even hate my beautiful horse. See no damn animals here. You ever ridden a horse, girl?’

She grits her teeth. ‘No.’

Daryl smirks at her. ‘Bet you don’t even wanna learn, right?’

She scowls. ‘What, you would teach me?’

‘Sure. If you’d ask real nicely.’

‘Fuck you.’

He flips her off.

‘Dare!’ Tara calls him over. There’s a small smile lingering around her mouth. She knocks their shoulders together when they fall into step, heading towards the boats. ‘That’s Rachel and it’s my job to flip her off every chance I get.’

‘Seems like an annoying little shit,’ he says with a glance over his shoulder.

Rachel sticks her tongue out at him.

‘Yeah,’ Tara says as she eyes the boy next to her. ‘She reminds me of someone.’

Daryl pretends to be shocked. ‘I weren’t ever that annoying!’

Tara laughs. ‘Keep dreaming, Dare.’

 

 

An hour later, he’s sitting with Aaron on the riverbank. They watch how two groups ferry the supplies across the river. The older man watches his boyfriend work with Rick, carrying heavy crates towards the bank and then loading the boats.

‘He was really glad to see you,’ Aaron says suddenly. ‘Eric, I mean. He was worried sick about you.’

Daryl nods.

Aaron looks at him. ‘How have you been?’

‘Not that great,’ Daryl says with a painful grimace. He looks away, across the river. ‘Better now. Same as all of you.’

They watch how Rick nearly slips on the riverbank, boots sliding into the water. Luckily Enid grabs his upper arm, holding him up as he finds his footing while not letting go of the crate he’s carrying with Eric’s help. Paul and Carl are rowing one of the boats to the edge. The son is laughing at his dad’s misfortune.

‘You were out with Rick when he found those weapons, right? On that boat?’

There’s a hint of a smile on Aaron’s face as he turns back to the teenager next to him. ‘Yeah. We both got more than a pair of wet boots. Why?’

‘You were there when they met those trash people, too?’

Tara has told them a story about a landfill not too far from Alexandria. How someone had taken Gabriel and all their guns, how they’d found them again because Daryl had taught Rick to track and hunt. About the strange people and their stranger use of language, the pit they’d thrown Rick in to fight some kind of gladiator walker. None of it had made sense to Daryl.

‘They’re called the Scavengers,’ Aaron says with a nod. ‘Yes. I was there.’

Daryl gnaws on the nail of his thumb. He glances at his friend. ‘What do you think about them? Good people?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were a scout, it’s your job to know.’

Aaron shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, Daryl. It’s people we need. I don’t think it matters anymore whether they’re good people or not. They’re going to fight with us. That’s all that matters right now. We’ll deal with everything else later.’

‘Are they?’

‘Are they what?’

‘Are they going to fight with us?’

‘Yes,’ Aaron says with a nod. ‘If we found more guns, and we did.’

Daryl grunts and narrows his eyes. He watches how Michonne patrols the riverbank below them, one hand on her katana, the other holding her sniper rifle in place on her shoulder. She walks easily on the uneven surface, just a silhouette of elegant long limbs against the dying sun.

Aaron is studying him. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘Just wanna know who’s fighting next to me, I guess,’ Daryl mutters around his fingers. He scratches some mud off his boot and takes his baseball cap off to run his fingers through his long hair. It’s not nearly as long as Carl’s but he thinks he should still ask Maggie to cut it next time he sees her. Or maybe he could ask Enid now that she’s here, she used to cut her dad’s hair, after all.

‘I might not be Eric,’ the man knocks their shoulders together, ‘but you can still talk to me.’

Daryl shoots him a small smile. ‘Sorry. I know. It’s just something Tara said. She said they take things, they don’t bother.’

‘That’s their motto,’ Aaron nods.

The teenager frowns. ‘And going to war ain’t no bother?’

‘It’s a common enemy,’ Aaron says. ‘They need the supplies, they’re living in a landfill. They aren’t growing their own food, I don’t think they have any livestock.’

‘And they were still willing to wait for months until someone finally came along to get them some supplies?’ Daryl asks skeptically. ‘It don’t make any sense to me. They could have just told all y’all to fuck off and die in a corner. Our problem ain’t nothing to them.’

‘The Saviors would have found them eventually.’

‘Maybe,’ Daryl shrugs, ‘but they’ve been real comfortable in that damn landfill for two years and the Saviors didn’t move in just last night, okay? They haven’t found them yet, maybe they never would have. And you said it yourself; they don’t have shit! So the saviors come? They just pack up and find a new pile of fuckin’ garbage to call home.’

‘What are you saying? We shouldn’t trust them?’ Aaron looks at him sharply. ‘We shouldn’t trust _Rick_?’

Daryl winces and curls his shoulders inwards, ducking his head. ‘’course we should. I weren’t sayin’- never mind. I haven’t met them, is all. It don’t sound right.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Aaron sighs and looks across the water where the rest of their family is now dragging the boats onto the shore, Enid splashing Paul with an indignant look on her face. The man raises his hands in surrender and then just watches how the girl struggles with the heavy boat. He claps when she manages to pull it onto the shore by herself. She flicks her hair over her shoulder arrogantly before giggling and grabbing the man’s hand to squeeze it briefly. ‘You brought back stories about a King and his pet tiger. That doesn’t sound right to me either.’

‘’s different,’ Daryl insists. ‘Ezekiel is a good guy. Paul already knew him. We don’t know shit about these people.’

‘We didn’t know shit about you,’ Aaron tells him, ‘and we still took you all in.’

‘You said you knew we were good people. You don’t even know that now.’

‘I know we have to trust Rick,’ Aaron says as he uses the teenager’s shoulder to get up. ‘Come on, we have to get going.’ There’s a growl coming from behind the bushes. A walker stumbles upon their path. It moves slowly, almost starved to death. It used to be a young woman. Now she’s nothing but skin and bones, dull eyes. Most of the clothes have been torn off, probably caught on branches, ripped off or decayed over time. Chunks of flesh are missing, too. They can see her ribcage.

‘I got it,’ Daryl murmurs as he gets to his feet, too. He sighs as he grabs his knife, flowers pressing into the palm of his hand. It’s easy enough to put the walker down. It hardly puts up a fight save for the snapping teeth. He watches how the body falls into the tall grass.

‘Use your bow next time,’ Aaron says sternly. ‘Don’t approach them if you don’t have to.’

‘Too much work.’ It’s been a long time since anyone scolded him for approaching a walker and taking care of it. He can barely remember the last time but guesses it would have been Maggie, losing her shit that one time when Judith had just been born. It’s ironic to him, because they have taught everyone in Alexandria how to fight.

‘It takes you two seconds to load it.’

Daryl grabs his bow and pushes past the man. ‘The fuck do you know, city slicker?’

 

 

_Daryl is sitting on the edge of his seat. ‘Who?’ he breathes, eyes wide and fingers nervously twisting into his jeans._

_Glenn pauses a beat. ‘Her tennis coach.’_

_‘No way!’ Daryl jumps up, almost causing the chair to topple over. ‘That fucking asshole! That bitch, did she-‘_

_‘Daryl Dixon! Language,’ Lori scolds._

_‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the boy says quickly as he sits down again. ‘Did he mess her up good?’_

_‘No, no,’ Glenn waves his hands. ‘He didn’t – didn’t mess her up in any way. Err… That’s – That’s not right.’_

_‘Neither is sleepin’ with your damn tennis coach when you’re married,’ Daryl huffs as he crosses his arms. ‘That skank. Pfft.’_

_Glenn glances around the room guiltily before quickly moving on with the story. The rest of their family is huddled together in small clusters. Carl is sleeping in his mother’s lap, arm curled around her big belly. Rick is studying a map by candlelight, brow furrowed as his finger traces the lines on the paper._

_Hershel and his family are sleeping on the other side of the room. Beth almost hidden by limbs and coats, while Maggie rests her head on her sister’s thigh, eyes half-closed and watching her boyfriend sleepily. Occasionally she will meet Shane’s eye, the corner of her mouth twisting up every time._

_Shane is sitting on the other side of the room. He’s sharpening his knife while watching the two in the middle of the room._

_‘Right,’ Glenn says, ‘so, Michael catches is wife with the tennis coach, right? Yeah, so he gets is buddy Franklin and they chase this guy across town to a mansion.’_

_Daryl nods eagerly._

_‘They mess. It. Up. Like,_ mess it up _!’ Glenn says, eyeing Lori for a second before grinning at the twelve year old across from him. ‘Destroy it completely. But! But, the mansion turns out to belong to some Mexican drug lord’s girlfriend.’_

_‘Oh shit,’ Daryl breathes._

_Glenn nods._

_‘So?’ the boy asks, ‘what happened next?’_

_The Korean looks uncomfortable. ‘Well – they – they just, got the money doing some gangster shit and paid for the damages, okay? Time for bed, Dare.’_

_Daryl stares at him, mouth open._

_Shane snorts, ‘some gangster shit, really? You couldn’t make up something? A bank robbery? A diamond heist?’_

_Glenn groans and folds an hand over his eyes. ‘Ssh!’_

_‘You made it up?’ Daryl asks as he jumps to his feet, ‘it’s not even a real fucking story? You lied?’_

_Shane laughs softly, ‘easy, tiger. Keep your voice down, people are sleeping.’_

_‘He lied to me!’_

_Rick rolls his eyes as he looks up from the map. ‘You really thought Glenn knew a guy who was living under witness protection in Los Santos and a gangbanger who works for a corrupt American car salesman? Really?’_

_Daryl frowns and folds his arms in front of his chest. ‘I don’t know. He were a pizza guy, right? Pizza guys talk to all kinds of people. Everyone’s got to eat.’_

_Rick looks amused. ‘Do you know where Los Santos is?’_

_‘Georgia’s a big place,’ the boy says defensively. ‘Can’t know_ every _corner.’_

_‘Los Santos is not a real place,’ the former cop laughs softly._

_‘Rick!’ Glenn hisses._

_‘It’s from a videogame,’ Rick smirks. ‘He’s telling you the plot of a videogame, Daryl. And going by the abrupt ending, he only ever saw the trailer.’_

_The boy falls back into his seat with a nasty scowl on his face._

_‘I’m sorry, Dare,’ Glenn says with a small smile. ‘It wasn’t really lying, you know… It was just – I don’t know any cool stories.’_

_Daryl kicks one of the legs of his chair moodily. ‘Yeah? Well, ‘s fucked up, ‘cause that was a stupid-ass ending, okay? Good lord. Did they ever pay back the damage or did the drug lord mess them up a bit to get them going? Merle told me they do that sometimes. Try to scare ya into movin’ ya butt.’_

_Rick and Shane share a glance._

_‘I’m not sure,’ Glenn says, squirming a little in his seat._

_‘Merle told me you can always tell when it’s a Mexican gang because they’ll behead people. Chop their head off. Or their arms or legs. First they were just in Mexico, right? But now they’re everywhere. People see it, right? And they think; that’s pretty cool or something, and they’ll do it, too, to tell everyone; we’re tough as nails, just like them Mexicans, and-‘_

_‘Shane, please,’ Lori groans._

_‘I know how the story ends,’ Shane laughs as he pads the floor beside him. ‘Come sit with me for a bit, buddy.’_

_‘You played the game, too?’ Daryl asks with wide eyes. He scampers over to where the man is sitting. He slides into the empty spot easily, curling up next to his friend._

_Shane smiles and drapes his jacket over the boy’s shoulders, ‘yeah, of course. Played it all the time. I’ll tell you if you close your eyes.’_

_‘I’ll fall asleep,’ the boy warns._

_‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Shane tells him, curling an arm around him, rubbing the boy’s back. He watches how the blue eyes close slowly. ‘Okay, so, this guy – err-‘ he glances at Glenn._

Michael _, the Korean mouths._

_‘Michael, right? He – err –‘_

_‘Robbery in downtown Atlanta, two years ago, highway chase,’ Rick mutters as he turns back to the map to remind him of our of their old cases._

_‘Right!’ Shane laughs, sinking a little lower and stroking Daryl’s hair. ‘So this Michael needed some cash quick, right? Yeah, so he and his buddy Frank – Franklin,_ Franklin _,’ he corrects quickly, ‘they decide to rob this store downtown. Armed robbery, right? They got the weapons from another buddy. Dumb sacks of shit didn’t think about the silent alarm though, thought they had all the time in the world. So-‘_

_Daryl falls asleep when the criminals are being chased down by two cops from a small town near Los Santos._

When he wakes up, he has to blink a couple of times. He opens his mouth to ask; _Shane?_ but of course it’s not Shane at all. It’s Rick. The man has his arm draped over the teenager’s shoulders, the baseball cap now covering his own wild curls so he could run his fingers through the boy’s hair.

‘We’re almost home,’ Rick says softly. It’s dark outside. Daryl feels something heavy press onto his hip. He cranes his neck but Rick keeps him in place. ‘It’s Carl. He’s sleeping, too. We stopped by the landfill to let Jadis know we have the weapons. They will join us soon.’ He brushes a strand of dark hair out of the boy’s face. ‘You needed some rest.’

‘I wanted to meet them,’ Daryl mutters but he relaxes again, putting his head back in Rick’s lap.

‘You will meet them soon enough,’ Rick assures him. ‘You were dreaming.’

Daryl nods with closed eyes. ‘Glenn and Shane. They used to tell me these bullshit stories. Remember that?’

The former cop smiles. ‘Yeah. I remember.’

‘Can’t believe I thought it was real. Like Glenn knew all those cool people. Hell, I almost fucking fell for that story about the kid growing up under the staircase he said he saved. He just stole other people’s stories, man.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick grins. ‘You just thought Glenn was really cool, so it was easy to believe him.’

‘He was such a dork, though,’ Daryl smiles. ‘Even Maggie thought so.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick tilts his head back and stares out of the window. ‘He was.’

Daryl plucks at a seam of Rick’s jeans. ‘You miss him?’

‘Very much.’

Daryl works his jaw. ‘Me, too.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save him like he saved me,’ Rick whispers, stroking the boy’s hair. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since – I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I know he wouldn’t want me to get stuck on it, but… sometimes it’s my fault people die. Not always, but sometimes – sometimes it is. And that’s…’ Rick shakes his head and looks out of the window. ‘I struggled. How do you live with that, knowing that they’re dead because of you, because of what you did.’

Daryl closes his eyes and digs his fingers into Rick’s thigh, holding on.

‘You carry it,’ Rick whispers. ‘Every day until you die, you carry what you cause. And it’s hard. Sometimes it’s so hard that I don’t want do it anymore, that I think can’t. But I keep pushing on, one foot in front of the other. For Judith. For Carl. For Michonne. You. There is always someone worth fighting for, Dare. Something. I hope you know that.’

Daryl nods.

‘And I hope you know that you’re one of those someone’s for a lot of people. Whatever you do during the next couple of days, weeks, however long it takes - I hope you remember that. And don’t do anything stupid or reckless. I know what you want to do and I hope I beat you to it. I hope I get to carry it.’

‘Fuck Paul and his gossip club,’ the boy mutters. ‘He snitched.’

‘He’s worried about you.’

‘Should be worried about Maggie ‘nd Enid, not wastin’ time on my ass. ‘sides, it won’t weigh a thing,’ Daryl says. ‘Not his death. Negan’s. It won’t weigh a goddamn thing.’

Rick brushes his hair away from his forehead and kisses it softly. ‘You’re wrong,’ he whispers against the warm skin.

 

 

Rosita is at the gates when they return.

 

 

She leads them to the prison Morgan has built. Daryl hangs back with Paul and Tara, letting Rick and Michonne take charge as always. The door is unlocked, swung open. Rosita steps aside.

Shadows dance inside the cell.

Someone moves into the light.

Dwight. Blond hair dirty, the giant scar a silvery mess in the moonlight. He’s still wearing the winged vest.

With a snarl, Daryl pushes past Paul, past Tara, past Michonne to lunge at the man. Animalistic noises of rage and hurt escape him, he growls through gritted teeth, fingers curling into claws as he tries to get a hold of him.

It’s Rick who holds him back just in time. Grunting with the effort to restrain the Dixon boy, feet slipping on the concrete, but he manages to hold him off. ‘Whoa, whoa,’ he says, pushing at the broad chest of the boy, keeping him back. ‘Slow down. Eyes on me. _Dare_. Eyes on me.’

‘They say they want to help us,’ Rosita says.

Rick’s hand on his pounding heart and Daryl’s eyes on Dwight at all time; the words barely register until Michonne speaks up.

‘ _They_?’

Another shadow moves inside the cell.

Daryl’s gaze flickers to her. Anger flares again until everything in his chest freezes over. He falls back onto his feet, shoulders sagging in defeat. He stops fighting.

Sherry pushes a strand of dark-blonde hair behind her ear. ‘Hello, Dare.’

 

 


	92. Little prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this story is almost there, y'all. Like, the End End.  
> Just, you know.. a little heads up so you won't all hate me in about four chapters.
> 
> ;)

 

* * *

 

 

‘Hey, little prince.’

Daryl stares at the woman. ‘Don’t call me that,’ he whispers.

Sherry reaches out; a trembling hand going to his cheek.

Rick bats her hand away. ‘You touch him, you die,’ he growls. ‘Back up. Is it true you want to help us?’

‘Yes,’ Sherry says while she goes to stand beside her ex-husband. She’s no longer wearing a little black dress. Instead she wears a pair of slightly baggy jeans, brown boots and a shirt that’s too big for her small frame. The dark-blonde hair frames her face, eyes sunken even though they flash with defiance when Rick pulls his Python out of its holster.

Dwight takes a small step forward, putting himself in front of her.

‘On your knees,’ Rick orders. They comply without question, sinking down to stare up at the barrel of his gun. Dwight’s gaze drifts to Daryl.  ‘Look at _me_ ,’ the former cop says. ‘Why do you want to help us?’

‘Because we want it stopped. We want Negan dead,’ Dwight answers.

‘So why don’t you kill him?’

‘It can’t just be me, or the two of us,’ the man says with a glance at his wife. ‘They’re all Negan.’

Tara suddenly steps past Dare, into the cell. She walks up to Dwight and leans in close. ‘That girl you murdered? She had a name. Her name was Denise and she was a doctor and she helped people.’

For a split second, Dwight looks sorry. ‘I wasn’t aiming for her.’

Anger flares inside of the teenager. He ducks past Rick, grabs the man by his shoulders and throws him against the wall with a grunt. He grabs his knife, bringing it up to the man’s eye. They stare at each other. There’s no debt left between them. Daryl has saved his life back in the burned out forest, Dwight saved him from Negan’s clutches by murdering Fat Joe. That’s the only thing that has been resolved.

There’s more, there’s always more.

The song. The dogfood and that tiny smirk whenever Dwight saw him cowering naked in the corner of his cold cell. Every second he could have gotten him out earlier. Every hardship he could have made better or easier to bear. It’s all on him.

And so is Denise.

‘Do it,’ Tara says from behind him.

‘You wanna end it this way, you go ahead,’ Dwight whispers. ‘But I’m sorry. I am. I know you want to.’

He does. There’s only one person in the whole world he’d rather have a knife point. At his mercy.

‘He could just be here to see if you were here,’ Rick says.

‘We can’t trust him,’ Michonne chimes in.

Sherry takes a small step towards him. ‘He owned us, but not anymore. What Dwight did to you? You know he had no choice. You know what he was like,’ she whispers. ‘Even you broke. Remember?’ She glances at Rick and Michonne, at Tara, Rosita and Paul. ‘Remember how Frankie helped you read those Western books, right there in Negan’s living room? How he got you those clothes?’

Daryl huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘What’re ya even tryin’ to do, huh? Make me look like a damn traitor in front of my family ‘cause I let someone read me stories? That I took some clothes instead of crawling around naked in your damn dump? Pfft. Did way worse than that. You’re right; I broke. Didn’t just kneel, didn’t _pretend_.’ He rolls his shoulder back, easing the knife away from Dwight’s eye without lowering it. ‘But don’t you act like that’s ammo,’ he glares at Sherry. ‘Like you got something on me now.’

‘Don’t I?’ She lifts an eyebrow.

Daryl works his jaw. ‘Nah,’ he spits out after a second. ‘Think Rick’s going to think I’m trash because I let you tuck me in at night? You think they’re gonna judge me because I were fuckin’ scared and clung to the wrong damn person for protection? Yeah, I crawled right into Negan’s lap, right where he fuckin’ wanted me, but that don’t matter anymore.’

‘Because you got out,’ Dwight cuts in. ‘And so did we. She treated you right,’ he glances at his wife for just a second. ‘She made sure you were safe inside those walls. You owe her. I don’t care what you do to me, but _you owe her_.’

‘I don’t owe her _shit_. Didn’t have to be this way,’ the teenager growls, tightening his grip on the knife. ‘You did this.’

 ‘ _We_ did,’ Sherry says. ‘And I’m sorry, Dare. I’m so sorry, but we can make it right now. For the others. Negan trusts him. If we work together, we can stop him.’

‘Daryl. Daryl, you knew her!’ Tara hisses from behind him.

His knife shakes a little.

‘There’s another choice,’ Dwight says while he stares at the teenager. ‘We can end him. You knew me then, and you know me now. You know I’m not lying. I’m not.’

Daryl grits his teeth. His hand is sweaty around the handle of his knife. He can feel the flowers on it, soft and comfortable. He hasn’t used it yet. Not to put anything down and not to kill anyone either. This will be the first blood. Not his own, just like he promised, but still…

‘Do it!’ Tara demands.

An ugly first kill.

He snarls and rips himself away from the man, lowering his knife with shaking hands, still so angry but now backing up until he can feel Rick’s hand curl around his shoulder. He leans against the man’s chest, seeking out his comfort and relaxing a little when he senses that steady heartbeat behind him.

‘They have Sasha,’ Rosita says, voice flat. ‘If she’s even alive.’

‘Why didn’t you say something,’ Jesus asks. ‘They could be our only chance to get her back!’

‘Because I don’t trust them,’ the woman says sharply. She folds her arms, ‘but I trust Daryl.’

Rick’s arm slides around his shoulder, his neck, so he can rest a hand on the boy’s heart.

‘Negan is coming soon,’ Dwight predicts as he looks at the leader of Alexandria. ‘Tomorrow. Three trucks probably, twenty Saviors and him. I can slow them down, bring some trees down in the road, buy a little time for you guys to get ready. If you can take them out, that’s where we start. You kill them, I’ll radio back to the Sanctuary.’

‘The Sanctuary?’ Rick echoes.

‘Where Negan lives,’ Sherry explains. ‘That’s what they call it.’

‘Yeah,’ Dwight nods. ‘I can radio back to them and say everything’s okay. You drive the trucks back and I can lead you right inside, and with the right plan we can wipe out the rest. We can check to see if your friend is still alive. Then we get the workers on our side, build our numbers up and go from outpost to outpost and end this.’

Jesus takes a small step forward. ‘Maybe we don’t have to kill them all. If Negan is dead and the main base is down – maybe the rest will surrender.’

‘The workers will,’ Sherry agrees, ‘but the lieutenants won’t. They either won’t believe you and still fight for him, or they’ll try to claim his spot. They think the system works. They’ll want to hold onto it.’

Tara glares at the woman. ‘You’re one of his wives, right? Of Negan? Why don’t you just crawl into his bed tonight and do us all a favor; kill him in his damn sleep. Then open the gates for us and we’ll take care of the rest, just like we’ve done at the outpost.’

Dwight glares right back at her, ‘she can’t go back!’

‘Why not,’ Tara hisses back. ‘Don’t you see that it could-‘

‘He knows I helped Dare get out,’ Sherry folds her arms in front of her chest. ‘He knew I didn’t want to be there, but… I ran so he wouldn’t think Dwight had anything to do with it. He thinks Daryl killed Fat Joey himself, but he knows I must have given him the key to the bike. I can’t go back. He’ll kill me.’

‘He sent me after her,’ Dwight tells Daryl. ‘You know what he’s like. You know what he will do to her if he gets his hands on her.’

Jesus narrows his eyes. ‘But you can go back?’

‘Yeah,’ Dwight’s gaze darkens with shame as he looks at the floor. ‘I’ll tell him she ran into a herd trying to get away from me.’ His gaze flickers to his ex-wife. ‘He’ll believe that.’

She reaches out to touch his hand, the tips of her fingers trailing over his pinky.

Then Dwight looks at the teenager again. ‘You told me to get her out, to take her and get the hell out of there. You told me that was what it would take to make things right.’

Tara scoffs and turns away from them.

Rick glances at Michonne before turning back to the man. ‘She stays here, she won’t be safe. You said it yourself; Negan will come.’

‘I know that,’ Sherry says. ‘We know that. Give me a gun and I will fight with you.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick narrows his eyes at her. ‘We’re not giving you a gun. You can stay here, take your chances.’ He gestures to the cell. ‘It all goes down tomorrow, you best hope it’s us who open the door the next morning, because it’s going to be us or Negan. Or you can go out there,’ he points to his left, ‘outside the walls, take your chances there. That’s your choice.’

Sherry tilts her chin a little higher. ‘Fine.’

‘Fine, what?’ Rick demands.

‘Fine,’ Sherry snaps back, ‘I’ll stay here.’

‘Fine,’ Rich echoes. ‘Michonne, Rosita, take Dwight to the house. We need every bit of information we can get. Start drawing up a plan. Jesus, Dare, I need you for something.’ He guides the teenager out of the cell while trusting the scout to follow them.

Daryl glances at Sherry one last time before stumbling out into the night air, taking a deep breath to calm himself. His back is drenched with sweat and his hands still feel clammy, but the night is cold and soothing. Quiet, for now. He looks at Rick. ‘Maybe we should give her a gun, let her fight with us. We’re going to let Dwight go, right? So why not let her help, too?’

‘Whatever Dwight does, whether he helps us or not – it won’t give Negan an advantage. If he turns on us? It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know about the Scavengers, he doesn’t know we found all those guns. But if we arm her? She could turn on us and kill one of us before we even know who’s shooting. I can’t let that happen.’

‘She wouldn’t.’

Rick gives him a sharp look. ‘She betrayed you once. She’ll do it again.’

Jesus looks at the leader of Alexandria. ‘What do you need from me?’

‘Maggie needs to be warned,’ Rick says as he rubs a hand over his jaw. ‘If we manage to drive Negan’s forces away, they might flee to Hilltop. It’s closer than their own base and they think they control it. Whatever Hilltop decides,’ the cop says with a small sigh, ‘they need to be warned.’

Jesus nods. ‘I’ll leave now.’

‘Yeah,’ Rick nods. ‘But you’re not going alone. I need you to take Enid back, too. And…’ He works his jaw. ‘Dare…’

‘I’m not leaving,’ Daryl says immediately, taking a step towards the former cop. ‘Rick, you can’t-‘

‘ _Dare_ ,’ Rick puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘I wasn’t finished, son. I’m sorry,’ he nods, ‘but I need you here. Please go and wake Judith up. Enid can take her to Hilltop. She’ll be safer there.’ The hand slides to the teenager’s neck, warm and solid. ‘Go wake your sister up.’

 

 

They watch as Dwight drives off into the night. Daryl and Rick, standing side by side with Paul and Michonne ghosting in their shadows. Tara is sitting on a porch nearby. She glares at the teenager but Daryl pretends not to notice. His back is straight, the crossbow a comforting weight on his shoulder, steady fingers wrapped around the other treasured weapon he carries; the knife, still clean.

‘We just started it – the whole thing,’ Rick states.

‘If he’s lying,’ Daryl says softly as the gate opens for the Savior, ‘I’m gonna kill him real slow. When this is done? I don’t give a damn if he’s sorry, or don’t got nowhere else to go. They’re gonna be on the other side of that wall. This is the second time I’m helping him. Ain’t gonna be a third.’

‘If he’s lying,’ Rick says darkly, ‘this is already over.’

Daryl nods. ‘Still.’

‘Still,’ Rick agrees. He puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans and watches how the gate closes again. Another car starts and is parked in front of it. It’s the one Paul will take back to Hilltop once Enid and Judith are ready to go. Daryl had woken the little girl up with kisses, peppering them all over her tiny face until she had shrieked with sleepy laughter, fingers pawing at his face. He’d locked that sound away, somewhere even Negan could never drown it out.

Carl had packed a bag for her. Bottles and food and clothes and two toys. A blanket.

After a glance at his brother, he’d taken the sheriff’s hat off, turning it over in his hands. There, tucked away in a little incision, was a picture. Creased from being folded a thousand times over but still clearly depicting the Grimes family in better days. Rick, Lori and a Carl younger than Daryl had ever seen him.

Carl had put it inside Judith’s bag without a word, grabbing the handles and muttering at his brother whether he got their sister. Daryl had lifted the little girl to his hip, hugging her one last time as they walked downstairs before giving her to Enid.

‘They weren’t lying,’ Daryl says, ‘about… that shit they said about me and Negan? She weren’t lyin’ about that. I know we haven’t talked about what happened there, and I don’t really want to, but.. Just… she weren’t lying about that.’

Rick looks at him.

‘I ain’t even really sorry,’ Daryl mutters as he stares ahead, not meeting the man’s eye. ‘I was scared. Everyone wanted me dead ‘cause I’d killed two of theirs while being locked up there. Straight up butchered them. And Negan, he were… He was strong, ya know? ‘nd everywhere. Everyone. I just wanted to…’ he shakes his head a little. ‘I was scared. He made me feel safe.’

Rick shifts his weight but doesn’t speak.

‘We played ping pong. I liked that even though I sucked at it. Cards, too, until I whooped his ass one time too many. He let me stay in his room, had this bar and everything. Thought it was pretty damn cool and I didn’t have to pay for shit while I were his, so… Ate ice cream while all y’all were starving.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Dare,’ Rick says softly.

‘It does,’ Daryl says with a small smile. ‘I ain’t sorry for savin’ my own hide that way. Ain’t proud of it neither, wish I could have held out, just stayed in that little cell, worked on the damn walker wall until Paul came to get me, or Sherry let me out. I wish I had been that strong but... I weren’t. Still made it, though,’ he rolls one shoulder back. ‘And he made a mistake. He let me go on patrols with Laura and Arat. Let me wander around the place with Dwight ‘nd Fat Joey guardin’ my ass. I know every inch of that place. Where ever the fuck he’ll try to hide, I’ll find him.’

He doesn’t care that Michonne and Paul are listening, that they know about Negan. Paul already knew anyway. Must have known, either from the way he hadn’t exactly been a prisoner at the Sanctuary or from the way he had screamed the man’s name at night.

‘I’m just glad you’re here,’ Rick says.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl pushes the crossbow higher onto his shoulder. ‘Me too,’ he turns around and looks at Paul. ‘You leaving?’

Paul nods. ‘In a couple of minutes. We’ll see each other soon.’

‘Yeah, we will. Take good care of Maggie for me, okay? And, tell my brother that…,’ his fingers twist into the band of his bow. ‘Just – tell him; tough as nails, okay? Just that. Tough as nails. He’ll know.’

‘Sure.’

‘Wait, give – give this to Beth,’ he digs around in his pockets until he finds the zippo lighter. He smiles when Paul frowns while taking it from the teenager. ‘We burned a cabin down once, Beth and I. She’ll know what I mean by it.’

‘Okay,’ Paul slips it into the deep pockets of his coat. ‘I’ll make sure she gets it. No special message for Maggie?’

‘No,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘I’ll tell her I love her myself, when I see her.’

Paul smiles. ‘Of course.’

‘And if I don’t get the chance no more, you’ll do it, right? That I did. Because I do.’

‘Yes,’ the scout puts a steady hand on the teenager’s shoulder. ‘And she knows, Dare. She knows.’

‘It’s important to say it though. That’s what Shane said. That it’s nice to hear it sometimes.’

‘It is,’ the man agrees. ‘See you soon, Daryl.’

The young man nods, grabs his bow a little tighter before stepping closer to Paul. One hand glides to the man’s hip, resting there, fingers flexing a little with nerves as he raises himself to the tips of his toes. He leans in and kisses Paul on his cheek.

Breath ghosting over skin. The kiss longer than last time.

Then he falls back onto his heels. ‘Goodbye, Paul.’

‘See you soon, Daryl.’

He brushes past him, hand still warm where he touched the man, the memory of the kiss causing his lips to curl into a shy smile. Ears burning bright red when he catches sight of Michonne’s fond look, the heat only dying a little when he steps up to Tara, who is still sitting on the porch.

‘You’ve been glarin’ at me the entire time,’ he says. ‘I didn’t kill him and I ain’t sorry for it. You want him dead? You do it. You carry it. But I know sure as fuck Denise wouldn’t want you to. Or me. What he did was fucked up, but he’s gonna pay for it, okay? He’s going to have to carry it until the end and it fucks you up, let me tell you.’

Tara hardens her expression before she looks up at him. ‘What? So you’re not going to kill now? Is that what Morgan taught you while you were taking a holiday?’

The words don’t hurt.

He doesn’t lash out like she wants him to.

Instead he scoffs, ‘they come tomorrow? I’ll kill them all. But he weren’t even armed! Didn’t see you do it neither, so I don’t know what you’re crawling up my ass for. Go ahead. Hell, you want him to feel the same damn thing as you do? Sherry is right there,’ he points at the house with the cell. ‘Go on then. Kill her and say you do it for Denise. Trust me,’ he spits out, ‘you still won’t be able to fuckin’ sleep ‘cause it doesn’t help. None of it does!’

Tara shakes her head and looks away. ‘You don’t know.’

‘Think I didn’t love my dad?’ Daryl asks. ‘Or Shane? You think I didn’t give a fuck about Hershel neither, huh? Yeah. Keep dreaming, girl. You ain’t the only one who loves people who’re gone, okay? You want it, you do it. I ain’t nobody’s damn attack dog.’ He walks away, boots loud in the quiet of the night.

 

 

The Scavengers arrive the next morning, on their bikes and riding their garbage trucks. Dressed in black and gray, faces drawn and ashen. They spread quickly, like a plague. Flitting between the houses, walking through the tall grass near the lake, climbing to get up on the wall. Daryl watches from the roof of Rick’s house. He’d climbed out of his old window, up via the drainpipe, onto the sloping tiles where nobody sees him. He sits and watches and thinks.

Rick is talking to their leader, Michonne at his side. It’s a woman with brown hair that’s lighter at the back. She moves confidently, striding over to the leader of Alexandria, not shaking his hand even though her body language is relaxed and friendly. Two of her people shadow her, outnumbering Rick and Michonne.

Daryl frowns and crawls closer to the edge of the rooftop. The scavengers split up but always in groups of three. The gates are opened again to let Rosita, Aaron and Tobin out. They’re going to plant the explosives in the trucks outside of Alexandria so they can blow Negan’s forces to pieces once they get stuck trying to get the gate open, or trying to negotiate.

There are scavengers on the wall. They’re watching.

Cars are being moved to block the road, no longer serving as walker traps now. Everything to slow Negan down. Tara gets out of one of them and nods at one of the Scavengers who’s walking up and down the road. They nod back, friendly enough.

Movement on one of the balconies on the other side of the town catches his keen eye. He lifts the crossbow, peering through his scope while fidgeting with the magnification. It’s Michonne, checking out her sniper spot. There’s a Scavenger standing right beside her. They’re talking, Michonne’s gaze fixed on the gate and the people walking around below, probably trying to spot Carl or Rick in the mess of people, but the woman behind her is leaning against the doorpost casually. There’s a sniper rifle in her hand, too.

Rosita had drawn up most of the plan, together with Tara and Rick. Daryl wonders whether all of it has been shared with their new recruits. He curses softly when he sees Rick walking down the street, pointing at various locations in Alexandria. The leader of the Scavengers is following him, shadowed by one of her men.

Outnumbering Rick again.

‘Fuck this shit,’ Daryl grumbles as he slides down the roof, carefully walking along the drainpipe until he can climb down again, swinging himself back into his room. He lands with a heavy thud.

Carl looks up from the bed. ‘Hey.’

Daryl blinks. ‘Hey. Shit, man, I thought you were on the wall.’

‘Soon,’ Carl nods because he’s going to be their first line of defense, right next to Aaron and Eric, Patricia, and a bunch of Scavengers. ‘Just – I just wanted to sit here a bit.’

‘Okay,’ the youngest Dixon says carefully, not sure what to make of his brother’s behavior.

‘I’ve been training my other hand,’ the teenager says. A vague smile is playing around his lips but he doesn’t sound happy. ‘Small stuff, you know? I’ve been throwing darts with my wrong hand.’ He looks at it, flexing the fingers like he’s never seen that hand before. ‘I’m getting better at it.’

‘What’re you doing it for?’ Daryl asks as he sits down next to Carl on the bed.

‘That night, out in the woods? He threatened to make dad cut my arm off. Asked which hand I used, whether I was a southpaw or some shit. I told him I was right-handed, he drew a line on my left. Suppose he,’ Carl pulls a face, ‘was doing me favor. I bet he takes my right next time, so, you know, I wanted to be prepared …’ With a sigh, Carl drops his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to be prepared for _something_.’

Daryl presses his lips together and nods. ‘You are.’

Carl peeks at him. ‘Doesn’t feel like it.’

‘It never does. Hell, first time I ever had to do it, you know, by choice? Was for Glenn, too. Way back at the prison, when we went for Woodbury? Shane was checking my gear,’ Daryl says with a small smile. ‘You remember how he got with my gear?’

Carl huffs out a breath of laughter. ‘He was checking it twenty-four seven, man.’

‘Yeah,’ his brother laughs. ‘So he were checking it again and I asked him, right? How do you do it? Kill someone. He said you flip some kinda switch inside of you and then you don’t feel a thing. You just do it because you have to.’

Carl watches him, tilting his head a little further so his hair falls to the side, clearing his vision.

Daryl rubs at the side of his nose and looks at his boots. ‘I never found that switch. Or I did, by fucking accident after Gareth, but… didn’t feel right. Everyone’s got all these theories right? About switches and things you got to carry, life being precious, losing pieces of yourself every time you do it… I dunno, man,’ he scrapes the heel of his boot over the floorboards. ‘Maybe my dad got it right. He was a simpleminded shit, but… I think he got it right.’

‘What did he say?’

‘It’s gonna be us, always,’ Daryl says as he looks at his brother. ‘Doesn’t matter what you feel, what you have to carry afterwards or how many pieces of yourself you lose while doing it. All life is precious until you have to choose. And you’re gonna have to choose, sooner or later. And it’s gonna be _us_.’

‘Right,’ Carl says softly.

‘Yeah?’

Carl stands up. ‘Yeah.’

 

 

Rosita glares at him. ‘Look, I don’t have time for your paranoid bullshit, okay, Dare?’

‘It’s not bullshit,’ he insists while leaning onto the table where the guns are spread out. ‘I’m not making this shit up, Rose, if you’ll just open your damn eyes and _look_ then-‘

 The glare intensifies.

Daryl doesn’t know whether it’s because of the nickname or his insistence. He sighs. ‘Okay. Fine. Just give me a weapon then. A sniper rifle.’

Rosita looks up at him with narrowed eyes, ‘a sniper rifle? Why? You always use a-‘

He leans back, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. ‘I’m the best long-distance shot you have. You ever seen me miss, woman?’

‘With your bow, no,’ she says, unimpressed by his attitude, ‘but you hardly ever use a sniper rifle and you’re the third best shot with an automatic, after Rick and Tara, so _excuse me_ for asking-’

Someone steps up next to Daryl. ‘Gun, now.’

Rosita’s glare shifts to the man from the junkyard. He holds out an impatient hand, fingers wriggling to get Rosita to move. Daryl winces a little because the man clearly has never met the woman behind the table. Hands go to hips, eyebrows shoot up just before she launches into a tirade about what the hell she’s supposed to do with that. What kind of gun, she snaps, and starts to rattle of a list of every gun they have on the table.

Daryl slowly side-steps away from the conversation, eyes on the angry woman at all times. His hand reaches out and closes around a sniper rifle. She doesn’t notice. He grabs it. She doesn’t notice.

He presses it against his right side and takes an automatic gun with his left hand. ‘Yo, Rosita, this one then.’

She glances at him. ‘Fine. Grab some ammo at Eric’s table.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He scurries over to Eric’s table and shows the guns.

The man frowns and hands him a couple of clips for his automatic. Then he grabs a small box. ‘I don’t have a lot of bullets for the rifle. Michonne took most with her, there’s about five left here, but you can as-‘

‘Only need one, right?’ Daryl grins as he stuffs the box into his back pocket. ‘It’s for one of the Scavengers,’ he says quickly when the man frowns at him. ‘I’ll send her by Michonne to, like, share the bullet evenly or something. They’ll figure it out.’

‘If you’re sure…’

‘I’m sure,’ the teenager nods. ‘Thanks, man.’ He walks away hurriedly, before Rosita spots the rifle pressed to his side. When he rounds the corner, he sees that Tyreese is already walking back to Rick’s house.

With a little smile, he slips into the house on the right. There’s nobody there. They all have more important things to worry about. The house isn’t completely finished yet. The walls are completely bare and electrical wires are sticking out of the plaster. He moves to the cellar, boots heavy on the steps.

The keys are on a hook near the door. He grabs them.

‘Hey,’ he leans against the bars of the cell and looks at Sherry. The woman is sitting on the floor, one hand in her dark-blonde hair while she scratches at the floor with her free one. Fingernails rake over concrete as she sighs and looks up. A small smile warms her expression.

‘Hey, Dare.’

‘They’re thinking any minute now,’ Daryl tells her.

‘Then why are you here?’ she cocks her head to the side. ‘Someone just brought me food and water for the day.’ She nods at the water bottle and can Tyreese has left behind. ‘Now it’s just waiting to see who comes to open this door next.’

He nods and puts the sniper rifle next to the door. He slides the box with five bullets through the bars. ‘You can make sure it’s Rick, though.’

Sherry eyes him suspiciously. ‘If you think that Negan is setting one foot inside of this place before his men secure it? Then you’re wrong, Daryl. He isn’t stupid. If you’re putting up a fight, he knows you have guns. And you all lived, so you know how to use them. No.’ she shakes her head. ‘He won’t show his face and I don’t think Rick will let me climb his precious wall. Does he even know you’re doing this?’

‘There’s a lot of things Rick doesn’t know,’ Daryl throws her the ring with keys. ‘And I’m not asking you to take Negan out.’

 

 

Rick is standing on top of the wall. He’s watching Carl who is crouching nearby. The lanky teenager is pressed up against the metal, his assault rifle in his hands and his friends by his side. Aaron and Eric, always together now, and Gabriel, too. The long brown hair and white bandage hides most of his expression, but his lips are pressed together in a determined line.

Rick gives him a curt nod before glancing down at the gate. ‘Rosita,’ he says. ‘Get into position. I’ll signal you. And the wall in going to hold.’

Rosita looks up at him. ‘It’ll hold,’ she promises.

Rick’s eyes wander to the other teenager, standing behind one of the cars.

Daryl meets his eye and nods. Then his eye is drawn to the horizon. Fear pools inside his stomach as he sees a truck approach. Two more behind that. Dwight had been right about the number of trucks, at least. It takes a couple of seconds to register that a voice is ringing out from beyond the wall. It takes even longer for Daryl to realize that it’s Eugene who is speaking.

Rosita had told them what he’d done. That he had refused to come with her and Sasha.

Switched sides.

For a while, Daryl hadn’t believed it. Maybe it had just looked like the man had switched allegiance, maybe that is how the man had survived in Negan’s care. If anyone had busted in on one of his nights at the Sanctuary, playing ping pong and eating ice cream and chasing the leader through the hallways in a wild game of tag before falling onto the man’s couch with his wives to cuddle up with, it would have looked like he’d switched sides, too. But Eugene had had a chance to escape. Like Paul had for him, Sasha and Rosita had come for him, too.

And he had said no.

Paul had had to convince him, sure. But he had to convince him that it was real, he was real and on their side and people were waiting for him to come home. Eugene knew that already.

And he had still stayed.

‘-is already met. I come armed with two barrels of the truth,’ Eugene says through a loudspeaker. ‘A test is upon you, and I’m giving out the cheat sheet.’ He is standing on the back of one of the trucks, dressed in new clothes and looking healthy. Daryl plucks at Negan’s jeans as he frowns, kicks Negan’s boots together before gripping his rifle a little tighter. Eugene looks up at Rick. His voice wavers a little. ‘H-hello. I come salved with the hope that it is my dropped knowledge that you heed. Options are zero to none. Compliance and fealty are your only escape. Bottom-lining it; you may thrive, or you may die. I sincerely wish for the former, for everyone’s sake. The jig is up and in full effect. Will you comply, Rick?’

Everyone looks at the leader of Alexandria.

Rick shifts his weight. ‘Where’s Negan?’ he shouts back.

‘I’m Negan.’

Daryl feels sick.

A couple of feet in front of him, Rosita shakes her head while looking up at the sky.

Rick works his jaw. Swifts his weight again, hesitating before looking down at Rosita.

He nods. And ducks down behind cover as Rosita presses the button of the switch in her hand.

Daryl squats down to hide behind the car, waiting for the explosions outside of the gate to go off. The ones Rosita had rigged up earlier, the ones she’d been so sure of were fine. He’d asked her to check on them, one last time, but she’d dismissed it as paranoid bullshit.

They don’t go off.

Everything is quiet for far too long.

He knew it. He knew it in his bones.

Daryl lifts the rifle, Rick goes for his gun and Rosita stares in horror as the Scavengers recover first. They draw their weapons and point their guns at the heads of the Alexandrians. The leader, Jadis, is standing right behind Rick with her gun pressed into the dark curls. A tiny smile around her lips.

She’d just been waiting.

The barrel of a gun is shoved into Daryl’s face, too. He looks around, nervously shifting on his feet to catch sight of Tara, who looks back at him with wide eyes. They’re surrounded and outnumbered. Like they’ve been from the start.

The gate is opened by Jadis’ second in command.

Negan hops out of one of the trucks, smug smile in place and Lucille resting on his shoulder. Leather jacket and red scarf, jeans riding low on his hips to reveal the edge of his white shirt peeking out from all the black. Clean shaven this time, hair slicked back but ruffled by the wind as he drags Eugene forwards.

Daryl shivers. He hates how he remembers what the jacket smells like. That mixture of leather, cologne and Negan himself. That he knows that it’d be warm and comforting against his cheek, that he remembers that the man is strong enough to carry him, like Will used to do when he was younger.

The voice makes it even worse. He half expects soft whispers of comfort, a crude remark that would make him laugh, the nickname that had made him royalty at the Sanctuary.

It doesn’t come. Of course it doesn’t, Daryl thinks bitterly. None of that had been real.

‘You ever heard the one about the stupid little prick named Rick who thought he knew shit but didn’t know shit, and got everyone that he gave a shit about killed?’ Negan asks as he leans back a little and points at the leader of Alexandria. ‘It’s about you!’ He smiles and licks his front teeth before his tone sours. ‘You’re all gonna wanna put your guns down now.’

‘No one drops anything,’ Rick says immediately. ‘We had a deal,’ he hisses at Jadis.

The woman shrugs. ‘Tamiel came for the boat things. Followed ones who took. Made a better deal.’

‘You push me,’ Negan calls out. ‘And you push me, and you push me, Rick! You just tried to blow us up, right? I mean, I get me, my people,’ he gestures to the soldiers standing between the trucks. ‘But Eugene? He’s one of yours. And after what he did? He stepped up! You people are animals. Universe gives you a sign, and you just shove your finger right up its ass!’ He thrusts a middle finger up into the sky before laughing. ‘Dwight, Simon,’ he calls out over his shoulder. ‘Chop, chop.’

The two men climb onto the first truck and pull some blankets aside to reveal a casket.

Daryl stares with open mouth, heart going crazy inside his chest.

A couple of feet to his left, Tyreese makes a soft noise of hurt.

‘So you don’t like Eugene anymore?’ Negan asks as he climbs onto the truck as well. The casket is put upright, gleaming in the heat of the sun. ‘You guys gotta like Sasha,’ the man says with a big smile before he lifts his hand to his heart. ‘I do, too. Got her right here packaged for you convenience, alive and well. Now I brought her so I wouldn’t have to kill all of you, and not killing all of you could get complicated. See, I know there’s a lot of firepower left in there, Rick, so I’m gonna make this simple. I want all the guns you’ve managed to scrape up.’ He laughs softly. ‘Yep. I know about those, too. I want every last grain of lemonade you got left. I want a person of your own choosing for Lucille!’

He holds the bat up and raises his eyebrows while pointing at it.

‘Daryl.’ Negan looks at him now. ‘Ooh, I gotta get me my Daryl back.’ He raises two fingers, points at his own eyes and then at the teenager. ‘I see you, little prince. And the pool table,’ he tells Rick, ‘and all the cues and chalk, and I want it _now_ , or Sasha dies. And then all of you.’ He sneaks a peek at Daryl. ‘Probably. Not you. Don’t worry. We’re just gonna start at the beginning again, huh, son? Pretty soon I'll be giving you a piggyback ride through our Kingdom again, just like the good old time. What do you say?’

Daryl doesn’t say anything.

Neither does Rick.

‘Come on, Rick, just because I brought her in a casket doesn’t mean she has to leave in it!’

No answer.

Negan sighs and rubs at his forehead in exasperation. ‘You know what? You suck ass, Rick. You _really_ do. I don’t wanna have to kill her, but that’s exactly what you’re gonna make me do.’

Rick takes a step forwards. ‘Let me see her.’

‘Oh.’ Negan laughs. ‘All right, just give me a second. I might have to get her up to speed. You can’t hear shit inside this thing.’ He lets the bat thud against the metal or the casket. ‘Sash! You’re not gonna believe this crap!’ He opens the door. ‘ _Holy - goddamn_!’

Sasha snarls at him, lunging for his face, his neck, anything she can reach.

It’s not her anymore, though.

She died and turned and now she’s trying to claw at the leader of the Saviors, bite him, scratch him –

Negan stumbles back so far that he falls off the truck with Sasha right on top of him.

A shot rings out.

It happens a second before Carl whirls around to shoot the Scavenger behind him in the leg before shooting him in the chest. Before all hell breaks loose.

Daryl looks up.

Rick gapes at the body of Jadis that crumples beside him.

A single sniper shot.

Relief floods through Daryl as he looks up at the house where the cell is in the cellar. A window is open on the third floor. The scope flickers, shifts, moves and steadies. Another shot rings out, sharper and clearer than all the rest, and the Scavenger right in front of Daryl is missing a chunk of his head suddenly.

He doesn’t have time to signal his thanks. Doesn’t have time for anything except swinging his rifle up to his shoulder and unloading his magazine on anyone he doesn’t recognize as being from Alexandria. He steps backwards until he’s closer to Tara, wanting his friends near.

Rosita gets hit in the shoulder.

Tara rushes forward to grab her and haul her to safety.

Daryl unloads his magazine on the Saviors in front of the gates but realizes there are too many. He can hear Rick scream up on the gate that he needs to run, get out of there, before the former cop runs towards his son to climb down with him.

His magazine is empty. He throws the rifle onto the ground and starts to run.

‘No, no,’ a hand curls around his upper arm. He goes for his knife but two strong arms wrap around him, pinning his arms in place. ‘ _Stop_.’

It’s Dwight.

‘Stop fighting,’ he hisses. ‘It’s over, we fucked up, it’s – I’m sorry.’

The gunfire dies down around them. Alexandrians are being rounded up. Arat moves her forces in, going after Rick and Carl, while Wade leads his men down the alley Tara disappeared into. Footsteps on asphalt. They halt next to Daryl and Dwight.

‘Well, hello there, little prince,’ Negan greets with a smirk. ‘I’ve missed you.’

 

 

 


	93. Stars

 

* * *

  
Two wonderful artists have made incredible fanart for this work. Please check it out and give them some love. It blew my mind, I was so happy when they showed it to me.  
  


[Abigailht - Dare with his stolen marker and paper](http://abigailht.tumblr.com/post/162061047704/jamesjohneye-abigailht-founding-fathers-by)

 

[Browneyedchica - Dare with his cap and crossbow](https://browneyedchica.tumblr.com/post/162061477776/young-daryl-in-founding-fathers-fan-art-for)

 

amazing, amazing, amazing. Thank you both, again, so much.

 

* * *

 

 

There are bodies in the streets.

A young woman lying on her side, one of her hands still on her thigh, blood seeping between cold fingers and dripping onto the hot asphalt, the other hand reaching out for her gun, inches away. Her chest is riddled with bullet holes. There’s a steadily growing puddle of blood surrounding her, drenching her clothing and skin. Her eyes are open. They still capture the horror and pain of her death.

Daryl tries to see whether she was hit in the head or stabbed afterwards. She had been one of the Scavengers; he doesn’t care about her having eternal peace or dignity in death. He just doesn’t want her to rise as yet another threat.

‘Stop checking out the dead girl, kid, it’s creepy,’ Negan tells him as he shoves his shoulder to get him to move again.

They’re walking down the main street of Alexandria. Everything is quiet. There are no more gunshots, no more screams, no more running footsteps. He can see people kneeling between the houses and on the side of the road, hands raised in surrender while Saviors point their rifles at the backs of their heads. Some of them are crying, others are struck silent by the sudden realization that all is lost, now. None of them look up when Daryl passes, nobody dares to meet Negan’s eye. The man is walking a step behind the teenager.

More bodies. People he doesn’t know; a Savior and some Scavengers. One of them was shot in the face, the others in their legs and chests. When they pass, Daryl can see that one hand is still twitching, clawing at the asphalt in pain, soft moans escaping bloody lips as they beg for the end to come. Daryl looks back at Negan.

Negan shoves his shoulder again.

They keep walking.

Empty clips and bullet casings litter the street. Guns have been thrown aside once empty or dropped when the Saviors finally got a hold of the situation. There’s a bloody knife in the tall grass and bloodstains on the pavement, leading away from the road and fight. Daryl follows the trail with his eyes and then stops abruptly.

‘No,’ he whispers before running towards the body that is lying right next to one of the porches. Black boots, dark jeans and a cream colored shirt now almost completely red due to the drying blood. Broad shoulders, one muscled arm still curled around his abdomen, the other stretched out beside him. The beanie that his sister used to make fun off.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Negan’s hand curls around Daryl’s upper arm, the grip so tight that it hurts but the boy doesn’t care.

‘Let me go! Let me go!’ he shouts, struggling against the man. When he realizes he won’t win that fight, he glares up at him. ‘He’s one of ours. Let me check whether – please, just... let me check.’

Negan rolls his eyes theatrically but lets him go. ‘Fine,’ he shifts Lucille, twirling her on his shoulder, ‘but if you think you can get cute, you got Lucille coming for that pretty little head of yours.’

‘Whatever,’ Daryl snarls as he shoves the hand away before falling into the grass on his knees. He grabs hold of one shoulder and pulls the body over so he can see the face.

It’s Tyreese.

Empty eyes still dark and not yet clouded over. Daryl’s breath hitches. He almost doesn’t recognize the man this way; silent and solemn. Death has stolen the warmth from his eyes and the smile from his face. Daryl reaches up and closes his eyes, leaning in to press their foreheads together.

He wants to remember the man like how he was; kind and gentle, carrying Judith on his arm, letting her taste the food he was cooking. The easy laughter and witty banter with his sister, always keeping an eye on her, the stories about his football days he used to tell him and Carl. The large body animated, moving so gracefully and swiftly as he reenacted some of his best plays. The way he would snort and laugh at how Rick threw a ball, nearly bowling the former cop over when he returned it with slightly too much force.

Daryl’s fingers stroke over the beanie, hoping to find blood. He doesn’t. Nobody got him in the head. Soon, he will reanimate just like his sister did.

With clenched teeth, Daryl reaches for his knife.

‘Uh-uh-uh.’ Lucille lands on his shoulders softly, the barbed wire digging into his leather jacket. He can see it from the corner of his eye and horror swirls through his veins. He hasn’t been on the wrong side of her in a long while. Negan leans in, ‘nothing cute, I said.’

‘He’ll turn,’ Daryl says through his teeth.

‘Yes. He will.’

The teenager slowly turns around, breathing a little easier when Lucille is lifted from his shoulder to return to Negan’s. He looks up at the man, swallowing every hateful and hurtful thing he wants to say to mutter; ‘let me end it. He was one of ours.’

Negan lifts an unimpressed eyebrow.

Daryl works his jaw. ‘ _Please_ ,’ he manages to choke out.

The man leans in, smiles wickedly as he traces the boy’s jaw with a finger. ‘Since you asked so nicely.’ He stands up abruptly, spine almost snapping straight. Lucille is thrown up in the air, he catches it again but now the barbed wire is pointed at the man. He holds it out to Daryl. ‘Be my fucking guest, kid.’

Daryl stares, leans back onto his heels just to get an inch further away from the dreaded weapon. ‘I’ll – I can – ‘ his hand goes to his knife again.

‘You _will_ use Lucille or you _will_ join him and the both of you can rot in a puddle of your own damn blood,’ Negan tells him. ‘Look at all this shit,’ he gestures to the road. ‘A fuckton of people wasted and my Lucille? She didn’t even get to play yet. That’s not right! So we will _make_ it right, little prince. Hell, you wanted the nickname, you gotta wear the crown,’ he thrusts the bat at the teenager.

‘Let me use the knife,’ Daryl says. ‘ _Please_.’

‘You think I’m going to negotiate with you after the shit you tried to pull just now?’ the man asks with raised eyebrows and a dangerous glint in his eye. ‘You want to be a good Samaritan, you be a good Samaritan, killer. Go on. You said it yourself; he’ll turn. Tick tock.’

Tears start to well in Daryl’s eyes. ‘Please,’ he whispers, ‘Negan, please. Don’t – let me do it with my knife.’

Negan looks around again. ‘You see all these fine people kneeling here? Your friends? Your family? Yeah,’ he nods and looks at the teenager kneeling in front of him again. ‘You will beat your dead buddy’s skull in with my Lucille, and afterwards you will thank me for letting me use her – you might have noticed; I don’t like to share my girls, but I’ll make an exception for you. _Or_ , I will show you how it’s goddamn done and bash _all_ their heads in, and after? I will _still_ make you bash his head in. So choose.’

Daryl reaches out and lets his fingers curl around the wood. It feels oddly warm. A tear slides down his cheek as he gets up, his stomach already turning when he looks at Tyreese’s body. He tries to figure out the swiftest way to do this, the easiest, but he just rolls Lucille around in his hand – terrified.

‘You need some help there, little prince?’ Negan murmurs. ‘That’s okay. Nobody knows what they’re doing during their first time, huh?’ He wiggles his eyebrows and laughs as he pushes the teenager to stand near Tyreese’s head. ‘Here,’ he stands right behind Daryl, his chest against the boy’s back. ‘You’re gonna want to hold her with two hands, she’s not your limp dick, okay?’ His hands guide Daryl’s left to the bat as well, correcting his hold on her. ‘Raise her up high over your head and bring her down in one fell swoop, hmm?’ Negan says into his ear, voice soft and gentle.

Daryl closes his eyes and tries to breathe normally. The smell of leather engulfs him, causing his mind to get confused with notions of comfort and terror, mixing together to recognize Negan. He leans back against that strong chest for one horrible second, his body seeking comfort and protection, until he jerks away, eyes snapping open again.

Negan laughs softly. ‘It’s okay, killer. I’m here,’ he strokes Daryl’s wrist with his left hand, the leather rubbing over bare skin. ‘I’m here. So, up over your head and then down. Don’t close your eyes again or you’ll fucking miss and look like an idiot in front of all your friends, hmm?’ He nuzzles the boy’s ear before stepping back to a safe distance.

Daryl shivers and glances to his right.

Eric and Aaron are kneeling in the tall grass, arms resting on the tops of their heads. Aaron is staring at the gun that’s just a couple of inches away from him, eyes hard and determined, like he’s willing it to come back to him. Eric is watching the teenager, eyes much softer and mouth a thin, unhappy line, fingers twitching like he wants to reach out to him.

Daryl lifts Lucille up over his head. She’s heavy but he grits his teeth because he doesn’t want to do this again. One swoop, Negan had said, should be enough. He curses himself for not just walking along, passing the body all together. Maybe someone else would have put him down with a knife, properly, after this was all over.

Or maybe he would have turned before anyone could.

He doesn’t know which is worse; Lucille, or turning.

They’d made a pact, however. Back out on the road, before the prison, back when Rick had told them that they were all infected. They wouldn’t let any of them turn. And Tyreese hadn’t been there when the pact had been made, but he’s family now and Daryl won’t dishonor him like that.

So he grits his teeth and does close his eyes, tears spilling over his eyelashes as he brings the bat down.

There’s a sickening crushing sound. He feels the bat connect with a skull, driving down deep before coming to a stop.

And then there’s Negan again, so close and warm, wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulders, over his chest, hand rubbing over the teenager’s heart. He kisses the boy’s temple before whispering; ‘open your eyes.’ His fingers curl around the boy’s chin, forcing him to look down.

Daryl opens his eyes. He stares at the bashed-in skull of his friend. The bloody bat in his own hands.

 _He was already dead_ , Daryl reminds himself as fear and horror consumes him. _He was already dead_ , _this isn’t on you, this isn’t your fault_.

‘Remind you of anybody you know?’

Daryl rips himself away from Negan, throwing the bat aside before stumbling away from the body. He throws up. He leans onto his knees with shaking arms, doubling over, spitting the bile into the grass.

Behind him, Negan laughs.

There’s a pounding in his head, behind his ears and eyes. His throat hurts now. He spits onto the ground before taking another couple of steps, trying to straighten up again and take deep breaths to calm himself.

Footsteps announce Negan again. The man appears before him with a small smile on his face, Lucille and a bottle of water in his hand. He inspects the boy’s tear-streaked face and shakes his head slightly. ‘Holy shit,’ he whispers, the corner of his mouth turning up. ‘You’re a damn mess, son. Here,’ he leans down and grabs the red rag that’s dangling out of Daryl’s back pocket. He wets it and gently rubs the tears from his cheeks. ‘Let me get that for you, hmm? Yeah,’ he leans in to kiss Daryl’s forehead. ‘You did so good. You have a great swing, just like your daddy.’

Daryl looks at him. ‘I hate you.’

‘I know,’ the man beams. ‘But we’ll fix that. Here, rinse your mouth.’

The water is cool. Daryl lets the first three sips swirls around his mouth before he spits them out, and then takes a couple more sips.

‘I believe you have something to say to me.’ Negan says with a raised eyebrow. He swings Lucille back onto his shoulder. Blood drips from the barbed wire into the grass.

Daryl just stares at him.

‘ _I believe_ ,’ Negan says as he leans back, spine arching before snapping straight again, ‘you were going to thank me for the water. _And_ for letting you use my Lucille just now.’

Daryl nods. His grip on the water bottle tightens. ‘Thanks for the water,’ he mutters before taking another sip. This time, he spits the water right into Negan’s face.

The eyes darken. The smile fades. Negan takes a step closer to him and grabs hold of his chin. He speaks softly. ‘Do you really want to get on my nerves right now, kid? Because you kind of are. I respect the whole teenage rebellion thing you got going on, but lemme tell you; I’m not Rick. I _will_ beat it out of you.’

Daryl sets his jaw.

The skin around Negan’s eyes wrinkle, ‘ah,’ he nods and gestures at the boy’s chest. ‘You think you can take it, huh? Because you already look like someone tried to teach you a lot of things. But no. No,’ he says soft, voice warm and gentle, ‘I’d never do that to you, you know that.’ He strokes the boy’s cheek. ‘I’d do it to them and make you watch. That’s how you learn; by example. Like how you swung Lucille, that was beautiful.

‘Now,’ Negan leans back and arches an eyebrow. ‘Do you have something to say to me or should I just start with the first lesson?’ He points the bloody bat at Aaron.

‘Thank you,’ Daryl says quickly. He grits his teeth and lowers his gaze submissively. ‘Thank you for letting me use Lucille.’

‘Better than any knife, huh?’

Daryl nods. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good,’ Negan shoves his shoulder, directing him back towards the street. ‘No more bullshit, kid. I’m serious.’

Most of the Saviors have gathered across from the solar panels, on the patch of earth next to the pantry. The automatic rifles are resting on their shoulders as their lips twist into cruel smiles at the sight of the teenager and their leader. Daryl recognizes some of their faces, some of their names even. Of course Dwight is standing there with Simon, tall and proud but only one of them cannot bear to meet the boy’s eye.

Arat is there, too. She is standing behind Rick, a handgun pressed into his sweaty curls. Wade is standing next to her and behind Carl, a knife pressed into his lower back. Both Grimes’ look terrified. Their eyes grow wide when their gaze settle on their friend.

‘Rick!’ Negan booms, ‘found something of mine inside your walls. Any idea how it got there?’

The leader of Alexandria just stares at the Dixon boy.

‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter, you’re right, Rick!’ the man laughs while grabbing hold of Daryl’s shoulder. ‘But this is just going to make you sad.’ The laughter dies between the words. ‘Broken.’ His fingernails dig into Daryl’s jacket, ‘you’re gonna _wish_ you were dead. I like having fun, I do.’

He shoves Daryl over towards Rick and Carl. The youngest Dixon stumbles a bit, dazed as he moves closer to his family, turning back to look at Negan.

The man isn’t smiling anymore. He stares Rick down. ‘But maybe you think that the guy that did what he did to your friends wasn’t me, like that was some sort of a put-on, like I am not the guy with the bat. I’m just the guy that makes your kid spaghetti and runs a fucking day-care for the other one.’

Rick turns his head to glare black at him.

‘Oh,’ Negan sighs, raising a dramatic hand to his eyes, ‘oh shit. Maybe this is on me. Maybe this is all on me! I gotta make it right. I guess I gotta start all over again! Yeah!’ he exclaims when Carl takes a stuttering breath and Rick presses his lips into a thin line. ‘Because, you got your little uprising going on and Daryl here doesn’t want to play ball!’

‘I did what ya asked!’ Daryl objects, stepping forward but cowering a little when the man’s gaze settles on him.

‘Really, kid?’ Negan arches an eyebrow. ‘You thought I was just gonna take you home, wrap you into a fuzzy blanket and let you curl up in my lap, _again_? Shit! You tried to fucking murder me just now, with your bombs and your bullshit. My men? That I understand, that I can forgive, hell, that I can even appreciate, you little spitfire,’ he jabs Lucille at the boy. ‘But _me_? That’s crossing a line.’

‘You said you were gonna take me back, put me in the cell again and then-‘

‘Everything would be fine and we’d live happily ever after,’ Negan nods. He smiles. ‘Fairy tales. Stuff kids love to hear. Listen,’ he grins at the boy, ‘this doesn’t change how I feel about you. Hell, kid, if you die? I’m gonna mourn you. I am,’ he nods with conviction. ‘I’m gonna do the whole shebang! Flowers, eulogy, I’m even going to dig the grave myself. I might even fucking cry.’

Daryl grits his teeth.

‘Rick?’ Negan puts a hand on his heart, ‘if I had a kid, I’d want him to be just like yours. They are adorable. And I’m not even counting the ankle biter, though she is cute as hell, too. No. These two, you got here? I love them to death, which makes this _so much_ harder.’

‘You’re not going to win,’ Carl snarls.

‘Carl,’ Negan says as he walks closer to him. ‘It is over. Why don’t you point your one ball up the street there and take it all in?’

The people kneeling on the street. The abandoned weapons. The bodies littering the yards. Blood splatters on white picket fences. The sound of people sobbing ghosting through Alexandria.

It’s all shattered by a horrified death-scream. And the sound of a body falling onto concrete from a great height.

Their gazes snap to the balcony where Michonne had been stationed and the scream had come from.

Behind him, Rick’s breathing stops for a second, while Daryl just stares in horror.

Negan laughs darkly. ‘Oh. Oh! Wow,’ he walks over to the leader of Alexandria, standing way too close for comfort while he grins. Rick’s eyes are wide and filled with unshed tears. The sweaty curls are plastered to his forehead, mouth still slightly open in shock. Nothing seems to really register right now. ‘You just lost somebody important to you right now – like, _just now_!’ Negan says. ‘Jesus. That is _timing_!’

Rick looks up at the man. Eyes growing darker the longer the other man speaks.

‘Well, Rick, you chose this. I truly don’t know what more I could’ve done to warn you. And this isn’t a warning. This is punishment.’ He tilts his head a little to the side. ‘I’m going to kill one of your boys now. I’m gonna make it one nice, hard swing, try to do it in one because I like them. It doesn’t matter which one you choose.’

Rick’s gaze searches the man’s face. ‘What?’ he croaks out.

‘You’re gonna choose,’ Negan nods. ‘I told you; I want a person of your own choosing for Lucille. And it’s going to be one of your boys. I want you to think about it for a second because it’s a fucking hard decision, right? But after all of that, Lucille here, she’s gonna take your hands.’

Daryl feels something die inside his chest. His blood runs cold as he stares at the two men. Carl turns to look at him, his one eye wide and filled with horror, but Daryl can’t meet his gaze. His knees almost buckle - he’s so scared.

A tear rolls over Rick’s cheek. ‘You can kill one of them right in front of me. You can take my hands,’ he says and his voice is oddly steady, determined. ‘I told you already; I’m gonna _kill_ you. All of you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but nothing is gonna change that – _nothing_.’ He leans closer to the Savior and whispers; ‘ _you’re all already dead_.’

Negan just looks at him for a second. There’s no smile on his face, no cocky smirk, no spark of sadistic pleasure in his eyes. There might even be the hint of fear in the dull, dark pupils. It’s gone before it can register properly, hiding behind a mask of giddiness.

‘ _Damn_ ,’ the Savior breathes back. He chuckles. ‘ _Wow, Rick._ Okay. Which one?’

Rick closes his eyes for a moment before looking over at his sons. He works his jaw for a moment. He opens his mouth and no sound comes out. His hand shake against his thighs.

‘Dad,’ Carl breathes, ‘it’s okay, just – ‘

‘Rick,’ Daryl cuts in, ‘it’s a’right, you gotta – ‘

‘ _Which one, Rick_?’

 ‘Daryl,’ Rick says quickly, like he’s ripping off a band-aid. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells the boy. ‘I’m – I – Daryl.’

‘Right!’ Negan grabs Daryl by the shoulder and pushes him to the ground. The teenager falls to his knees quickly. ‘Is this some kind of pathetic pay-back, picking my kid, too? That’s real clever, Rick, breaking both our damn hearts like this. But I said I’d do it and you said I fucking could, so…’ He grabs Daryl’s baseball cap and throws it onto the ground while standing behind him, raising Lucille above his head. ‘Here we go!’

 

 

There’s no time to cry.

And there’s no point in begging.

So Daryl just closes his eyes and hopes to see Shane and Glenn soon.

 

 

A terrifying growl cuts through the silence. There’s a yelp, a curse, the sound of a body being slammed to the ground and then the screaming starts. Daryl’s eyes snap open just as Negan ducks away, cursing under his breath while trying to get to cover behind Simon and Dwight. Gunfire erupts, around Daryl but further away, too. Near the street and behind the building.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees how Rick dives towards an automatic gun that has fallen on the ground near him. Swift movements over metal, a safety released with the flick of a thumb and then he’s gunning down the Saviors near Daryl. Carl follows his example a heartbeat later, rolling into the tall grass to find a weapon and then covering his brother.

Daryl ducks his head and scrambles to get to his feet. He glances over his shoulder.

Shiva.

Beautiful and majestic, growling so loud that it causes Daryl’s bones to shake, claws tearing a man apart while she gnaws on his face. The man is still screaming but she silences him soon enough by biting down on his neck, tearing it apart with flashing teeth.

Daryl ducks to grab his cap off the floor before looking around for a gun, a rifle, any other weapon than just his knife. Carl’s bullets whistle past him, chasing Saviors around corners and into alleys but the youngest Dixon never looks up, not worried that he’s going to get hit by him.

And then there are shouts and hooves on soft earth and Daryl whirls around. The first thing he sees is Ezekiel. Running, his coat flaring like a mantle befitting his kingly stature, gun at the ready as he leads his troops into battle. Horses jump over fences, soldiers bursting onto the plot of land to chase the demons back to the hell they came from. Armor flashes, arrow whizz through the air and then there’s a burst of automatic gunfire and Daryl sees Carol; dressed in armor forged in the kingdom; face drawn but determined as she moves to fight beside her people.

Ezekiel’s voice rings out amidst the screams and gunfire. ‘End these Saviors and their accomplices! Alexandria will not fall, not on this day!’

‘Dare!’ Rick’s scream rings in his ears but the teenager darts forward, grabbing a rifle and running after the Saviors that are fleeing. He runs into the direction he saw Negan fleeing into with Dwight and Simon, zipping past cars until he runs into a new group of saviors. Feet slipping on concrete, he tries to scramble behind a car for safety.

One of the Saviors sees him, takes aim – and is killed by a bullet to the side of his face.

Daryl’s gaze snaps to the left – and he feels his legs go weak when Merle reloads with a smug smile on his face. He slams another magazine into his rifle and side-steps to cover Maggie, who is running forward, shouting commands to the troops of Hilltop Colony who are swarming behind her. Plastered to her right side is Enid, long hair flowing in the breeze as she fires her handgun. And Paul is there, too. On Maggie’s left hand, automatic rifle pressed to his shoulder as he shoots in short bursts, saving ammo and taking another Savior down.

With a grunt, Daryl pushes himself away from the car and runs towards his big brother, head low until he feels Merle’s hand curl around his shoulder, dragging him behind his broader frame.

‘Good?’ Merle asks while firing.

‘Yeah. Fuck,’ Daryl breathes. There’s no time for an emotional reunion even though he wants nothing more than to run over to Maggie and never let go again. Instead, he rolls his shoulders back and steps up beside his brother, head high and feet steady as they walk forward, the sound of their rifles deafening.

Saviors flee.

Daryl doesn’t care that he’s shooting them in the back. He wants them dead. He wants them _all_ dead.

The fight is nothing but flashes and gunfire, the roar of the tiger that jumps onto another Savior, the hooves of Kingdom horses pounding on concrete. Morgan is fighting next to Rick, his Bo now abandoned for one of the handguns that had been littering the street. Carl is a shadow between the houses, running alongside Gabriel and Aaron now. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell everyone apart in the chaos; Daryl’s never been in an actual war before and he’s glad that Merle guides him forward, voice loud and clear as he commands his troops, making sure they take cover and cut through the street in the safest ways possible.

Smoke bombs announce the retreat of the Scavengers and Saviors. They turns into shadows as they run past the wall, heading towards the main gate. Some even manage to scale the steel plates, slinging themselves up and over before angry bullets can bite at their skin.

They meet up with Rick near the RV.

‘They’re falling back,’ the leader tells Maggie.

‘Eduardo, Bertie – between the houses. Cover the gate! Merle, you have the street,’ she orders, voice steady and clear as she addresses her people. Her hand reaches out to come to rest on Daryl’s cheek, thumb rubbing over the beauty mark near his lip for just a second, a small moment of acknowledgment and affection during the chaos of war. She’s looking at Paul when she speaks. ‘Go,’ she tells him. Her fingers flex against Daryl’s cheek and then she’s off again; running after the scout and covering him as they make their way towards the gate.

Merle takes off too and Daryl follows him. They come across a man trying to hide on a porch and Daryl guns him down before he can take his brother out. Merle glances at him before gesturing to the left. Hunter’s feet in tall grass, quiet but fast; they ghost through the plot of land towards the gate, clearing out the couple of saviors who are trying to make a stand now that they’re cut off from their main group.

They die quickly. Bullets in the chests, neither Dixon really sure who took them down in the end. It doesn’t matter. Daryl jumps over their bodies, panting a little as he runs for the gate.

There’s the sound of a truck. The roar of an engine. Screeching tires.

Daryl rounds the corner just in time to catch sight of the black truck tearing out of Alexandria; Negan’s middle finger raised high into the air from an open window. He watches how people from Hilltop, the Kingdom and Alexandria chase after the car. Most on foot, some on horses. They’re stopped by a hail of bullets coming from scavengers still on the gate.

‘Up top,’ Merle warns. He takes the first one out while everyone else dives for cover.

The gate is closed. The rest of the scavengers jump the wall once they’ve emptied their magazines.

‘Now!’ Daryl screams when he sees that the last one throws his empty gun aside. Aaron and Jerry run towards the gate to try to get it to open but the retreating forces must have jammed it somehow. ‘Get me up there!’ the teenager screams as he runs towards the truck that’s parked right next to the wall.

Merle passes him, throws himself with his back against the truck and folds his hands together just in time to catch Daryl’s foot and push him up.

The teenager jumps and grabs hold of the small ladder on the side, climbing up quickly, scrambling to get to the top. When he makes it, he straightens and stares out over deserted streets.

The truck is long gone.

The Scavengers are gone, too.

He pants as he watches how the smoke vanishes. ‘It’s clear,’ he says to the people on the street next to him. Ezekiel’s voice is a faint ringing in the distance; the command to comb through every street, every inch of this place, is ignored by the teenager. His heartbeat slowly settles into an easier rhythm. His mind catches up with what happened.

There’s a sense of relief that floods him; they’re still here.

Dread follows it quickly enough; there’s always a cost.

‘Monster.’

Daryl looks down.

His brother is looking up at him. ‘Come on,’ he’s holding out a hand. ‘Get down from there. They can blow your head right off, dummy.’

He throws the rifle down first and then climbs down again, metal scraping over his skin but he doesn’t care. His boots hit the concrete when he jumps down the final steps, bending a little at the knees when a soft grunt escapes him. He looks up at his big brother, ‘thanks…. Ya know, for – ‘

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Merle reaches out and drags him into a tight hug, too desperate, fingers clawing at his brother’s shoulders and back. He buries his face into his little brother’s neck, ‘thank God. You okay? Didn’t get hit? Bit? Scratched? Nothing got you?’

‘No – no,’ Daryl murmurs, pushing himself closer to his brother, ‘I’m good. You’re okay, too, right?’

‘I’m fine. Dixon’s.’

‘Tough as nails,’ Daryl nods.

‘Damn straight. And it’s us,’ Merle leans back for a second to press their forehead together. ‘It’s always _us_.’

Daryl closes his eyes and catches his breath, leaning against his big brother. ‘Maggie,’ he breathes.

‘Yeah,’ a warm hand strokes the teenager’s neck for a second, ‘we’ll find her. Jesus was watching over her but that girl? Spitfire, I’m telling ya. Good a shot as any.’ Merle slings an arm around his shoulders and leads him down the main street. He hasn’t ditched his rifle yet, keeping it slightly raised as they walk, ready to cover them both.

There’s no need. The gunfire has died own. The final inches of Alexandria are being searched but every team comes back with a little shake of their heads and lips almost twitching into smiles. Peace returns, for now.

‘What the hell,’ Merle’s hand shoots to Daryl’s chest, fingers twisting into the fabric as he pushes his little brother behind him. His blue eyes are wide, mouth open as he stares at the tiger that pads down the street. Tail swaying behind her, ears swiveling to try and catch a sound of something she’s searching for. The gleaming eyes settle on the two Dixon’s.

‘Holy shit,’ Merle breathes. ‘ _Holy_ _shit_.’

‘Relax,’ Daryl says as he grabs Merle’s other arm, dragging the rifle down before passing him. He takes a couple of steps towards the tiger. ‘It’s Shiva. She ain’t gonna hurt us. Hey, girl. That’s right, huh? You ain’t gonna hurt us.’ He sinks to his knees on the concrete, a couple of steps away from her. ‘Remember me?’

The tiger stares him down.

‘Yeah, you remember me,’ Daryl says, blinking slowly. ‘Are you okay? Lookin’ for Ezekiel? Bet he’s lookin’ for you, too.’

Shiva licks her lips and blinks back. Nails scrape over concrete as she pads towards the teenager. There’s a rumbling in her chest when she presses herself against his back, nose pressing into his spine, ribs and side before she pads over his legs, sniffing at his arm before circling him quickly again, leaning against his back. Daryl laughs and reaches back, slinging one arm over her shoulder blades, feeling the muscles ripple.

‘Thanks, girl,’ he says softly as he leans back against her.

Her content rumbling causes him to shiver.

‘Of course you would befriend the tiger.’

Daryl looks up.

Maggie smiles at him. She’s flanked by Ezekiel, Carol and Morgan. There’s sweat running down her temples and there’s blood on her hands, but she doesn’t seem injured.

The teenager nearly falls over when the tiger leaps away from him, running over to curl around Ezekiel instead, the rumbling louder now that she presses her face into the softness of the man’s belly. He greets her with wet eyes, hands seeking out injuries and finding none.

‘Truly, a victory,’ the King whispers as he presses his face into the side of her neck briefly.

Daryl grins and scrambles to get to his feet, boots slipping on asphalt as he runs over to his friend. ‘ _Maggie_! Are you okay?’

 I’m fine,’ she catches him easily, holding him close. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’

‘Same,’ the boy sighs, ‘but you shouldn’t have come.’

‘Hush,’ the woman whispers, pressing a kiss to his forehead. ‘We’re okay. We’re okay for now.’

Heavy footsteps behind them and Daryl smiles when he feels Merle’s hand settle on the small of his back, rubbing comforting circles into his skin. When he look up, he sees that Merle is doing the same to Maggie’s shoulder, his thumb brushing over her jacket.

She smiles at the oldest Dixon, reaching up with one free hand to cover his.

 

 

They bury the Williams siblings next to each other, behind the church. He holds Maggie’s hand, thumb brushing over the back of hers, twining their fingers together when Gabriel reads from the bible by heart. Maggie’s pale lips form the words too; a whisper carried away by the breeze.

When Daryl looks over his shoulder, Merle’s gaze immediately snaps to him, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

The teenager shakes his head slightly, gives his brother a watery smile and looks back at the graves he has dug.

Paul is standing on Maggie’s left, head bowed with respect for the words, his hands loosely clasped in front of him. Daryl knows that he is the one who helped Maggie find Sasha, after it had all gone down. That he had carried her body back to be buried here. Merle and Jerry had carried Tyreese, laying him to rest next to his sister.

He wonders how many more graves there will be, before this is over.

They won the fight. Not the war. And even this price was high.

The crowd disperses slowly. Back to burning bodies of strangers, back to distributing food to those who have come to their aide. People are still being patched up on the side of the streets. Everyone knows how to stitch wounds closed now and nobody cares about ugly scars anymore.

‘Let’s go,’ Maggie says softly, squeezing his hand before she walks away, following Paul to one of the main buildings.

 

 

‘Are they going to be okay?’

Rick’s head snaps up, eyes wide and hand tightening around Michonne’s for a second. He’d almost fallen asleep, hunched over the entwined fingers, his spine probably protesting now that he’s sitting upright again. He winces a little and shifts in his seat before focusing on the teenager standing next to the bed, one hand resting on the wood.

‘Yeah,’ the former cop croaks after a glance at Rosita, who is resting in the next bed over. His gaze finds the teenager again. ‘Yeah, they’re going to be okay.’

‘Good,’ Daryl says.

Rick works his jaw. He looks at Daryl’s shoulder. ‘You gave Sherry the rifle.’

‘Hmm-hmm.’

‘That was – thank you. We didn’t see.’

‘I tried telling you. It didn’t sound right, none of it, but you wanted it so bad. And I tried telling Rosita, too. Didn’t believe me neither.’

Rick nods. He swallows with some difficulty. ‘I’m sorry.’

Daryl shrugs. ‘Don’t matter now. She ain’t locked up no more though. Ezekiel is using the cell for Shiva.’

‘Good,’ the leader of Alexandria says. ‘That’s – yeah. Good.’

They look at each other for a long time. Rick’s eyes are filled with pain. Tears gather, causing the blue eyes to shimmer in the near darkness. He opens his mouth but Daryl beats him to it.

‘Don’t say you’re sorry ‘cause you’re not,’ the teenager says softly. ‘You shouldn’t be.’

Rick closes his eyes for a moment. ‘I didn’t want to choose.’

‘He’s your kid.’

‘So are you.’

The corner of Daryl’s mouth quirks upwards. He looks out of the window. ‘I made a deal with Shane, back at the farm. Promised him we’d take care of you. All of you. If It means catching the bat for yours? So be it. Ain’t scared to die.’

Rick bows his head. His hold on Michonne tightens fractionally.

‘We’re gonna be digging more graves before all of this is over, man,’ Daryl says. He grabs hold of the strap of his bow, trying to anchor himself. ‘Just – I just wanted to come here and say that – ya know… Shit you did for us? Like, all of it,’ he scratches at his upper arm, ‘from the start to… just all of it. Thanks.’

Rick shakes his head. ‘It was all of us.’

‘No. It was you and Shane first.’

‘Glenn,’ Rick says, looking up. ‘It was Glenn first. He saved me. He started this…. Whatever we are now.’

Daryl smiles and meets his eye. ‘Blood. ‘s what we are now; blood.’

‘Yeah.’

Daryl wobbles on his feet for a second. ‘I’m gonna…. It’s late, I’m going to get some sleep before it all goes down, so… I – ‘ he hesitates for a second and then walks forward. One arm sliding around Rick’s shoulders, fingers digging into his warm skin before he buries his face in the man’s neck, hugging him tightly.

Rick grabs hold of him with his free hand, tugging him closer still. He’s shaking.

‘I’m glad they’re okay,’ Daryl whispers.

Rick nods, too choked up to speak.

 

 

The living room is made of shadows as he steps inside. There are people sleeping on the floor, on the couches, curled up beneath the windows, in the corners. He needs to walk carefully to not step onto any hands or feet, the tips of his toes finding the empty spots of wood and carpet.

Maggie and Paul are sitting with Ezekiel, Tara and Sherry at the kitchen table. Their voices jut whispers as they study maps. Forks form barriers on roads, Paul is crossing out sections of a town nearby that has burned down over a month ago while Sherry circles spots further north and south with a red marker.

Outposts.

‘We’ll need to hit them fast,’ Paul says. ‘Before he can rally his forces.’

Sherry shakes her head, ‘they’re well organized. The outposts have been warned already.’

‘They will strike swiftly,’ Ezekiel states while studying the map. ‘And hard. The Kingdom is left well defended, my men will hold them off should they seek their vengeance there.’

Paul glances at Maggie, ‘the Hilltop is weakened. They know we’re here, if Gregory ran to the Sanctuary; they’ll know they’re left defenseless.’

Maggie nods. ‘But Negan wants Rick. Maybe he’ll rally his troops and just strike again here.’

‘Negan wants to _win_ ,’ Tara cuts in. ‘He doesn’t care about who he hurts in the process, if he needs to wipe out everyone-‘

‘People are a resource to him,’ Daryl says as he slides into a seat next to the King, leaning forward to study the map, too. ‘He knows most would just bend their knee if it weren’t for all y’all. For Rick, Maggie and Ezekiel. He just needs to take care of them and it’s over.’

Ezekiel glances at him. ‘Indeed, but what leaders won’t bow when their people burn?’

‘The ones worth following.’

Paul rubs at his beard while staring at Maggie.

Tara looks away.

Sherry lowers her gaze while pushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

Ezekiel meets his gaze calmly. ‘Your determination can be admirable,’ he says, ‘but don’t let it blind you.’

‘Ain’t blind to nothing,’ Daryl says with a shake of his head. ‘You think any of us can go back after this? The rest of them, yeah, they can kneel and break and he’ll accept it. Not us. Not anymore. It’s all or nothing, you knew that coming here, so don’t tell me I’m letting it blind me. This is it. Ain’t no going back.’

‘He’s right,’ Maggie says. ‘So let’s focus and come up with a plan.’

 

 

‘Hey, girl,’ Daryl murmurs. It’s early in the morning. The sun is not yet up. ‘Are you ready?’

Behind him, soldiers are gathering near the gate. Horses whinny softly, hooves clicking on concrete while they step in place nervously. The men and women are quiet.

‘This is it,’ Daryl says softly.

Khamsin presses her nose into his chest, nudging him eagerly.

‘I know,’ he says. His hands shake when he reaches for the reins. They curl around the leather, brushing over her warm coat. His voice shakes. ‘I’m scared,’ he whispers. ‘I’m _so_ scared.’

The horse huffs out a breath, shakes her head and scrapes a hoof over the asphalt.

Daryl loops his arms around her neck and hugs her tightly. ‘Yeah,’ he steps back again, taking a deep breath. Then he grabs hold of the saddle to hoist himself up, throwing his leg over and falling into the seat. Khamsin takes a couple of eager steps but he makes her do a tight turn, letting her know who is in control.

‘You and me, girl,’ he says, stroking her neck. ‘Come on.’

They ride to the gate. It opens when he arrives, allowing the riders of the kingdom to take off.

Daryl holds Khamsin back for a second, making another tight turn.

Maggie is standing on the porch of Rick’s house, one hand on her swollen belly, the other covering her mouth as she looks at him. She’s crying.

Daryl works his jaw, grips the reins a little tighter.

Paul moves closer to the woman, hesitating only for a moment before draping an arm around her shoulders to offer comfort. She turns to him, leaning into his frame.

Merle is standing on her other side. His arms on the balustrade, shoulders hunched, fingers digging into his own skin. He bows his head and puts his forehead onto the wood to hide his expression.

Carl and Enid are holding each other’s hands. Carl is the only one who raises his free hand.

Daryl shifts in his saddle. Raises his own hand before tugging at the reins again, allowing Khamsin to walk out onto the road. The riders from the kingdom are already entering the small town, weapons gleaming on their backs.

‘Dare,’ someone shouts.

He looks up.

Eric smiles down at him. ‘Just – good luck.’

‘Dixon’s don’t get lucky,’ Daryl says. ‘They get smart.’

‘You are that,’ Eric nods. ‘Come home.’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl says softly. Then he digs his heels into Khamsin’s flanks, urging her on. She walks to the side of the road, into the grass and then whinnies. He smiles and lets go of the reins, ‘ _yeah_!’

The window blowing through his hair, rushing past his ears, stinging into his eyes as she takes off running, carrying him off and away, faster, faster, _faster_ , until they overtake the riders of the kingdom, leading them on.

He glances up at the night sky.

And follows the stars like Will had taught him.

 

 


	94. Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional chapter warning; disturbing imagery.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Dawn is breaking when they make their last stop. The horses get to graze a little and drink from the pond nearby while the riders stretch and eat their breakfast. Most are from the Kingdom but there’s one man from Hilltop, too. Men and women huddled together for warmth and comfort. Hardly any words are exchanged, sometimes a soft request for a water bottle or piece of meat, but not much else.

Soon, they will split up into three small groups. Each of them heading to one outpost. There are explosives in their backpacks, the ones that hadn’t detonated at Alexandria’s main gate. They’re going to plant them on the roads between the Sanctuary and the outposts, trying to take out at least a part of the convoys that will be send over to support Negan.

Sherry said they had to hurry. The Saviors are well organized, they can assemble their army quickly and efficiently, but they don’t know that the militia knows about the other outposts, or their exact positions. They’re not going to be as careful as Negan will be on the road to Alexandria, Hilltop or the Kingdom.

Daryl sits on a fence near the pond, keeping an eye on the horses in case any walkers amble across the fields towards them. The bow is heavy in his lap. He nervously palms it, biting a little at his lower lip before rubbing at his nose with his knuckles. Heavy boots tap nervously on the metal bars.

‘You should eat something,’ Morgan says as he walks over with some food. ‘Keep your strength up.’

‘Thanks,’ the boy mutters, eyes downcast. He takes the food, stuffing some of it into his mouth before licking his fingers clean. It doesn’t taste like anything. His stomach turns when he swallows and he wraps the food up. ‘Gonna save it,’ he says when Morgan looks at him pointedly.

‘We have enough.’

‘Feel sick,’ Daryl admits. He looks out over the fields. A couple of walkers are heading over to them but it’s nothing he can’t handle. ‘Not like, _sick_ , but… I don’t feel good.’

Morgan nods. ‘Take your time.’ He sits down next to the teenager and slices pieces off an apple, knife blinking due to the sunrise behind them. ‘I’m surprised they let you go.’

Daryl shrugs. ‘You were a man and horse short.’ After a short pause he adds; ‘they wanted to send Paul, but he’s one of Hilltop’s best fighters. They need him there. Others don’t know how to ride, and Khamsin is mine, ya know? Ain’t sendin’ her nowhere dangerous if I ain’t going myself.’

The man smiles. ‘No. You wouldn’t.’

Daryl watches him out of the corner of his eye. There’s nothing different about him. No extra lines on his face, no sunken eyes, no sagging shoulders. Instead, Morgan looks calm. He eats his apple and watches the walkers come closer and closer.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Daryl says softly, a little embarrassed, maybe.

Morgan nods again. ‘I thought I could hold onto it. I wanted to believe it; all life is precious, everything gets a return, you know? But sometimes things happen and….’ He shakes his head. ‘A boy died. A boy died and you were right; we just watched it happen. There was nothing we could do and it would keep happening otherwise, so…’ He cuts another piece of the apple and holds it out to the boy. ‘Try this.’

Daryl takes it and nibbles on it, eyes still on the man.

‘It was Richard,’ Morgan tells him. ‘He’d taken one of the cantaloupes, hidden it… we were short and they killed Benjamin for it. I went back, found the fruit under a basket and I knew…. I knew it was him. I confronted him, he admitted. He couldn’t watch, he felt like he had to do something.’ The dark gaze flickers to the teenager. ‘Same as you. He wanted to start something, too.’

Daryl screws up his nose and looks at his boots, letting them thud against the metal. ‘Same as how I got Glenn killed, that what you’re saying?’

‘What, no – I –‘

‘Anybody moves, anybody says anything,’ Daryl recalls with a shake of his head. ‘And I punched him right in the face because he were taunting Rosita. I was so angry, I just - I just did it. He took Glenn after that. Said we had to understand who he was.’

‘I’m sorry that happened,’ Morgan says, ‘but I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t know.’

‘Yeah – don’t worry about it,’ Daryl clicks his tongue and holds his hand out to Khamsin, who is grazing near the fence. She looks up and walks over. ‘Here, girl,’ Daryl smiles when she takes the slice of apple from his hand, lips tickling on his skin. ‘Good, nice, huh?’ He laughs when she nudges him gently, ‘I ain’t got more, ya silly.’

Khamsin blows hot breath over his bare arm and then turns back to the grass.

Daryl smiles at her before looking back at Morgan. ‘Did you kill him? Richard?’

‘I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to.’ The man takes another bite from his apple and stares out over the fields. ‘I could pretend it was for making the Saviors think we wanted to hold onto the deal – that we understood, that that was more important than our own people, but… I wanted it. Benjamin was dead because of him. Sometimes we need vengeance for vengeance’s sake. To calm the soul.’

Daryl nods. ‘We do.’ He raises his bow and shoots the nearest walker.

It falls onto the ground.

A whistle behind them announces their departure. The riders hoist themselves back into the saddles, goodbyes already whispered earlier. Daryl waves his hand in acknowledgement and goes over to yank the bolt out of the walker’s head. There are other dead ones stumbling closer. A woman, already half-gone and her clothes torn, a man without a shirt, burns on most of his upper body.

He wipes the bolt clean and turns on his heels, ignoring them for now.

The riders watch as the boy climbs onto the fence again, whistling once. His horse trots over eagerly, nearly pushing him back off playfully before allowing him to glide into the seat. They smile as Daryl leans forward to stroke her neck, whispering softly before taking the reins again.

‘See you soon, Daryl,’ one of the men says with a nod. ‘Morgan.’

‘Real soon, Mitchel,’ Daryl answers easily.

Morgan gets on his horse, too. ‘Good luck. We’ll see each other again. Lead the way, Dare.’

Daryl urges Khamsin on, allowing her to get used to the uneven ground before letting her run free again, trusting her better night vision to carry them safely through the woods and fields. The world flashes by. He almost can’t hear the pounding of his heart over the sound her hooves make.

 

 

There’s sweat running over his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Brown hair sticks to his temples and his fingers shake as he plants the explosives by the side of the road, under an abandoned car. It’s harder to work in the cramped space, hotter too now that the sun is coming up. He whispers Paul’s instructions to him, Merle’s coaching, Tara’s advice. Over and over and over while his clammy fingers work on the wires and the detonation device.

He can hear Morgan’s boots scraping over the concrete behind him. He’s standing guard, on the look-out for walkers and Saviors. The outpost is a couple of miles away still. It hadn’t taken them very long to find the right spot, the road is clear and marked by tire-tracks. There are several other roads leading to the industrial complex where the Saviors are hiding, but Sherry knew that two of them had been blocked to create an extra layer of protection. The other road leads West, away from Negan.

This is the fastest way.

The only way.

Morgan’s Bo taps against the metal of the car. ‘Hurry up.’

‘Fuck you,’ Daryl snaps back. ‘You do it then, you fucking asshole. Two more fucking seconds!’

There is no answer.

Daryl grits his teeth. He knows he shouldn’t have talked to Morgan like that, it’s just that he’s so nervous already and the nagging doesn’t help. He wants to get the hell out of there, too. Away from the explosives that should be strong enough to rip through metal and armor, detonating with a devastating blow. Away from the saviors who will kill them on sight, who are just a couple of miles down the road.

He takes a deep breath and slides the last component in place, arming the device. He wiggles out from under the car, wiping the sweat from his brow and upper lip with the back of his hand.

Morgan looks down at him with a grave expression.

‘It’s done,’ Daryl nods as he stands up and grabs his bow off the asphalt. ‘Get the hell out of here. Meet you at the barn.’

The man holds out his hand. ‘Give me the detonator, Daryl.’

‘No,’ he pushes the hand away. ‘I’m faster. If this all goes to shit? I can get out.’

They both know that’s a lie.

The range of the detonator is limited. There’s an alley up ahead where he can hide from the blast, huddled behind the concrete and bricks, but with a clear view of the road when he leans around the corner.

He had wanted to wait on the top of one of the higher buildings lining the road, but Morgan had told him to stay on the ground. If he got spotted up there, he’d be trapped.

They don’t talk about the fact that the alley is a dead-end, though.

If he’s spotted, he has to run up to the road, in plain sight of the saviors.

An easy target.

‘Go,’ the teenager tells the man. ‘Best not to leave the horses on their own for too long. I’ll meet you there. Best be ready to haul ass when I do.’

Morgan sighs and gives him a small nod. The dark eyes are mournful. He walks away and then stops again, turning around-

‘Sorry I called ya an asshole,’ Daryl says before the man can speak. He knows what his friends wants to say. That they can switch places, that they can wait together, that it’s fine if he wants to tuck tail and run. He doesn’t want to hear it. So he grips the detonator a little tighter and hauls the bow onto his shoulder, narrowing his eyes a little in defiance.

The side of Morgan’s mouth quirks up a tiny fraction. ‘I’ve been called worse.’

‘Will be called worse if you don’t start walking,’ Daryl promises with a grin that doesn’t reach his bright, blue eyes. ‘My girl is all alone out there. Something happens to her, I’m gonna stomp your ass.’

‘She is save with me.’

‘Better be!’ Daryl snipes before he turns on his heels and runs off, heading towards the alley up the road. When he reaches the corner and looks back, Morgan is already gone.

 

 

The hardest part is waiting.

He sits in the alley, pressed against the brickwork, one leg stretched out before him. The sun has come up but Daryl can’t see it from where he’s sitting on the ground so he’s not sure how many hours have passed, exactly.

At first, he’d been terrified.

Sitting alone in the dark, ears straining for the sound of engines coming around the corner, heartrate spiking with every single sound. An empty can rolling down the street due to the wind. An animal scurrying around in a trashcan, birds flitting overhead. When a walker actually bumped into a car, the sound louder than any before, he’d nearly thrown up, his stomach turning while he’d let his thumb hover over the button.

Slowly, the terror had faded.

When Merle had explained the plan in low whispers in their kitchen, he’d said that the biggest enemy of any soldier was boredom. Firstly, because it makes you sloppy. Monotonous tasks such as patrolling the same street every night made you numb to the dangers that could have snuck in while your head was turned, and boredom made you slow. It’s hard to stay alert for hours, finger on the trigger, adrenaline spiking with every unexpected sound.

Merle had warned them not to fall asleep.

At the time it had seemed like a ridiculous thing to say.

Now, he’s pinching the skin of his wrist to keep his eyes open. It’s warm, it’s quiet; he’s exhausted from the battle for Alexandria, the short night planning their attacks, the ride over to the outpost. He’d slept a little during the second break, just before they found the barn where he and Morgan have hidden their horses before they’d headed into town but it had done nothing but leave him disoriented when he’d woken up with Morgan looming over him, muscles aching and head pounding from the nap.

He tries to keep himself busy.

He tries to list every state but can only think of thirty-two.

The list of presidents is abandoned when he can’t get past number seven.

The cleaning process of his weapons is easier to remember, whispering the instructions under his breath. First for his bow because that has been beaten into him, then his gun because it reminds him of Rick and then the cleaning and sharpening of his knife because it was Paul’s present.

He tries to draw a map of the whole world but can’t remember what Europe actually looked like and Asia is just a mess of islands. He feels stupid when he realizes that he knows what Scandinavia looked like, but can’t remember which country was on the very left, Sweden or Norway. With a grimace, he wipes his fingertips clean on his jeans, erasing the map by kicking at the sooth and dust.

A walker stumbles into the alley but he doesn’t even have to get up before firing his bow. The sound the bolt makes when entering a human skull doesn’t sicken him anymore. Eventually he gets up to drag the body further into the alley and out of sight, not wanting to arouse any suspicion should the Saviors spot it before the bombs go off.

He sits and waits.

He thinks a lot about his family and the plan they’ve made. He wonders where they are now, whether the other groups have succeeded already and are on their way home, whether Rick has managed to evacuate Alexandria already. The former cop had joined the planning late; unwilling to leave Michonne’s side until she had woken up around midnight, speaking to him softly and falling asleep again.

Carl had taken over at that point, allowing his dad to join them at the kitchen table.

Alexandria was the most obvious target but Gregory had left Hilltop at some point. There had been little doubt in Paul’s and Maggie’s minds that he’d ran back to Negan. With most of the fighters back at Alexandria; Hilltop was the easiest target. The Kingdom is their biggest settlement, left well-defended by Ezekiel.

They’re still outnumbered, despite the Kingdom’s forces. They just don’t have the manpower to defend three places.

A game of chess, Paul had called it in the dead of night.

Russian roulette, Merle had muttered.

One tactical error, one unlucky turn, and they’re all doomed.

The sound of engines penetrates the silence just when Daryl lets his head thud back against the brickwork, eyes drooping closed. Adrenaline spikes again, rushing through his system, and sweat breaks out immediately. He palms the detonator and lowers himself to the ground, scooting towards the corner.

He peeks out.

Four trucks.

His heart stutters, skips, thunders in his chest.

The first one looks a lot like Negan’s truck, black and menacing. The ones behind it are regular pick-ups, like the one his dad used to own. The backs are filled with men, sitting on the sides while others are crammed together on the floor. They go too fast for Daryl to count them, but there are at least twenty in every truck.

Not a regular patrol.

Nerves run up and down his spine while bile rises in his throat. He swallows thickly, watching how they round the corner and head down the road.

They’re going fast, clearly unafraid of their surroundings.

Like Merle said; they must have patrolled this street a thousand times. This is their territory. They don’t even know that they should fear what hides in the shadows.

He fingers the detonator nervously. There’s a slight delay before it will go off, Tara had warned. He’d have to pick the right vehicle to target, Merle had pressed. The second one, the former soldier had urged, or the third. The ones at the front and back are most likely to be armored.

Sweat stings in his eyes.

Time seems to slow down.

He wants to throw up when they get near the car that’s hiding the explosives.

‘One,’ he whispers, bringing the detonator up where he can see it, gaze glued to the first truck.

‘Two.’

They won’t know what hit them. It will rip through them, the blast, the heat, the shockwave, the shrapnel. They’ll die with their ears ringing and mouths opened in surprise.

The first truck drives past the stalled car.

‘Three,’ Daryl whispers.

He pushes the button.

One heartbeat, the truck passes, the other one lines up with it, drives pa-

The explosion is deafening.

Daryl throws himself behind the wall again, rolling to safety as he covers his ears, the detonator pressing into his skin. He whimpers when the building next to him shakes. A heatwave rushes past him, he can feel the air being pushed out – away. For a couple of moments, he can’t move.

Shaking all over, he counts until ten, like Merle had taught him.

Then he gets up, throwing the detonator aside and grabbing his bow instead. He puts it on his back with a practiced move and then runs out into the street, ducking low between other cars, zipping towards the end where he needs to turn left.

There’s screaming behind him.

His boots pound on the concrete, fingertips occasionally brushing over asphalt when he threatens to lose his balance by being crouched so low, but he makes it to the corner without being seen.

He can’t help but look back.

Smoke and fire.

The first truck has stopped.

The second one has been hit so hard that it’s out on the pavement, pressed into a storefront. The third one is turned over and on fire. The final car probably couldn’t stop in time; it has hit the third and has stalled.

Terrified screams fill the air.

Black smoke billows through the street but fire licks up the store front, engulfing the whole scene in a strange red glow. Shadows run through the smoke, through the fire. Some of the shadows are on fire. They roll around on the floor, writhing in pain or trying to put it out. Others try to drag their friends away from the carnage. Someone screams for them to get to cover, but they’re not trained soldiers; nobody listens. Most burn.

Daryl watches.

There will be survivors, of course. He can see men running around still, jumping out of the cabin of the first truck. Some run to their friend’s aide while others back away in fright, stumbling into alleys, pressing their scarves to their noses to prevent the smoke from suffocating them.

More screams, more desperate still.

Daryl frowns and tilts his head to the side, trying to figure out what is –

The tires of the second truck explode.

Daryl backs away a couple of steps, nearly tripping over his own feet, and laughs. He looks up at the sky, ‘these fireworks are way better. Hope you’re watchin’.’

 

 

Morgan watches him closely as they ride back. His eyes are narrowed and dark, haunted. Fingers curl around reins, leather almost cutting into skin. He refuses to listen to the details, claims he doesn’t want to hear, that he knows enough from the explosion in the distance and the look of utter elation on the boy’s face as he came running down the street towards the barn.

Daryl shrugs and shoots him a grin.

Morgan doesn’t return it.

‘The fuck is wrong with you?’ the teenager asks after a couple of miles.

‘People have died,’ Morgan tells him. ‘And you’re happy.’

‘ _Saviors_ died,’ Daryl says. ‘Saviors who were coming to kill my family. You’re damn right I’m happy. Don’t pretend you’re so much better. What, you’re gonna go back to that moralistic bullshit again? All life is precious?’

‘Moralistic,’ Morgan nods with a glare at the boy, ‘big word.’

‘For redneck trash you mean? Pssh! I know another one; _hypocrite_. Actin’ all high and mighty while you were comin’ to Alexandria to get some vengeance yourself. You wanted them dead. You wanted all of them dead, just like me, and now you’re crawling up my asshole for it?’

‘I wanted them to die,’ Morgan allows. ‘I _want_ them all to die. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy afterwards.’

‘You don’t think they were happy when they murdered Tyreese? You think they weren’t laughing their asses off after Abraham. _After Glenn_?’

‘You think you should lower yourself to their standards?’

Daryl scoffs. ‘So I should fuckin’ _mourn_ them then?’

‘You shouldn’t be happy,’ Morgan tells him. ‘That is all I’m saying.’

‘You believe what you want, but I’m gonna be dancin’ on their fuckin’ graves by the end of all of this,’ Daryl says with a nasty smirk. He clicks his tongue, pushes his heels into Khamsin’s flanks and doesn’t look to check whether Morgan follows him.

The rest of the ride back is silent.

 

 

Daryl is stiff and sore by the time they reach the safe house. It’s close to the place where the group had parted. His muscles protest when he slides down from the saddle, boots landing on the soft earth. It’s a small farm on the outskirts of a town, the one a couple of miles South of Alexandria, on the way to Hilltop Colony. Every group is supposed to pass through here on their way back to their own communities.

It’s already midday when they arrive.

Daryl gives Morgan the reins of Khamsin so he can walk ahead of them. The fence had been closed, which is a good sign, but he’s wary nevertheless. Annoyance still gnaws at his bones every time he looks at his companion and he can’t bear the judgmental looks the man keeps giving him.

He doesn’t have anything to be sorry about.

Those Saviors died screaming and he will gladly carry that.

A whistle rings out.

Daryl quickly answers it. His posture relaxes as he lopes through the tall grass, his pace quickening to a jog when he spots Tara standing in the shadows cast by the house. He wipes the sweat from his brow and beams at his friend. ‘Hey!’

Tara nods. ‘Hey.’ She sounds relieved. ‘It’s good to see you two. The others passed through here hours ago.’ She looks up at Morgan, brushing past Daryl. ‘Did it work?’

‘Hell yeah it worked,’ the teenager says. ‘I blew them to bits and pieces!’

‘It worked,’ Morgan confirms. ‘He took out a convoy. Four trucks. Barely any survivors.’

Daryl puffs out his chest and smirks.

Tara just nods at the man. ‘Laura and Danny hit another convoy. Three trucks, no survivors. They finished it. Van and Gerard were supposed to hit the outpost near Washington. Their explosives didn’t go off, something must have gone wrong with the wiring – I don’t know. They came back though. They weren’t spotted.’

‘Did they go back for the explosives?’

‘No,’ Tara says with a little shake of her head. ‘They got themselves out, that’s what’s most important.’

‘ _Most_ important?’ Daryl asks angrily. ‘What’s most important is we need them to not fuck it up. If they got the damn wiring wrong, then they should drag their asses back there and get our shit back! How can they even fuck it up, Merle told them a million times how they were supposed to do it and you showed them with the drawings and the fake stuff how –‘

‘It happened,’ Tara snaps at him. ‘Let it go. They got out safely.’

‘So did the Saviors,’ the teenager says through clenched teeth.

Tara looks at him for a second before turning back to Morgan, clearly choosing to ignore him. ‘I’m just waiting on the last group from Alexandria. They were doing a last sweep of the place. Rick said they were right behind them, but they haven’t checked in yet. And Rick passed through an hour ago.’

With a grunt, Morgan slides out of his saddle. He strokes the neck of his horse as he thinks about that for a moment. ‘Who was in the final group?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Tara admits. ‘Rick said a couple of them were still back there. They’d drive the RV back.’

Daryl frowns and wobbles on his feet nervously. ‘Think we should go back for them?’

‘We should stick to the plan,’ Morgan says with a shake of his head. ‘Regroup at Hilltop, figure out what’s going on from there.’

‘Hilltop is further away, if they need help we’ll be too late-‘

‘Look,’ Tara grabs the boy’s arm, nails digging into the flannel. Her eyes grow wide as she looks at something above the tree tops.

Daryl whirls around and looks, too.

Smoke.

Black smoke.

The trail starts small, marring the blue sky, but it grows quickly, turning darker and bigger, spreading over the heavens like an oil stain. Threatening clouds of black smoke.

‘Dare,’ Tara says with a shaking voice. ‘Dare, where is it coming from, where – ‘

But she already knows.

She doesn’t need the boy’s whispered ‘ _Alexandria’_ to know that her home is burning.

 

 

Their people are still back there.

 

 

A message is scribbled onto the shutters of the farm. D + T and a shaky heart in case someone is send back to that place to check on them. Not for the first time that day, they curse the fact that they don’t have any communications devices anymore. All they have is the one radio with which they can listen in to the Savior’s plans, but it’s at Hilltop with Paul.

There’s no time to go back to Hilltop and prepare a rescue mission. They don’t even know what’s going on, but they have to find out.

Morgan takes the horses and heads back to Hilltop while Daryl and Tara throw their gear into her car. The doors slam closed, there’s no time to say goodbye to their friend. They leave with screeching tires while Daryl pours over the map, trying to figure out how they should head back to their own town.

‘We don’t have to get inside, we just need to see what’s going on,’ Tara says as they drive down a small backroad, deep in the woods.

‘Well there ain’t no high points nowhere, ‘s a fuckin’ wall in the way, in case ya had fuckin’ forgotten. We’re gonna need to get close or we ain’t gonna see shit.’ He bites on his nails. ‘If the wall is still standin’.’

‘Hey,’ Tara glances at him and reaches out, taking his hand in hers. ‘They’re going to be okay. We don’t know whether they were still there. Maybe Negan just burned that place down. That’s – that doesn’t matter. Rick thought he would, remember? It doesn’t matter.’

Daryl scowls at the map.

‘Four walls and a roof, right?’ Tara presses. ‘It doesn’t mean anything. We can find that anywhere. We’re going back for our people, but we’re going to look. We’re going to be careful.’

‘Yeah, but-‘

‘Dare,’ she says. ‘We’re just going to look. That town in front of Alexandria. You’ve been there a million times while out hunting, right? And with Rick? There has to be a high enough building there, a rooftop. Anything like that. We can sneak in, check it out, and _leave_.’

Daryl thinks about that. He frowns. ‘There’s this house but it’s real close to the wall and – you know it. The one with the red door. I went in once, to the top floor, like, it has an attic. Got windows – could work if we can get close enough.’

Tara’s grip tightens. ‘We can get close enough,’ she says with determination.

 

 

They leave the car on the other side of town and make their way towards Alexandria. The air is coated with ashes, the smell of wood burning. They can see the glow of it all ghosting through the streets of the small town. Daryl’s feet feel heavier with every step he takes. His shirt and jacket are drenched with sweat. His jeans, too. The rough fabric rubs at his thighs, his hips, causes burns to form on his skin. None of that matters though. He’s used to that.

He leads Tara through the streets, grateful that she can move swiftly and silently.

The town is abandoned, no sign of the Saviors other than the flames licking at the sky.

He cuts through the woods, walking even slower even though he wants to break out in a run to see what is going on and whether any of their people are at Negan’s mercy now.

Daryl looks back at his friend and puts a finger to his lips before pointing at the faint outline of a house through the trees.

Tara nods.

With baited breath, Daryl walks towards it, half-crouched because he knows that the wall of Alexandria is just on the other side of that house. Shadows below the smoke; they move silently through the woods. The temperature is higher now, closer to the fire that seems to be still spreading.

Daryl breathes out a sigh of relief when he slips onto the weathered back porch. The door opens easily. Tara presses up against his back, urging him inside, to get out of the open.

The steps creak as they move up to the second floor but they’ve held the boy’s weight before and do so now.

The stench of fire has penetrated the entire house.

Daryl pulls his black bandana up over his nose and heads up the next flight of stairs, towards the attic. There, they crouch low again, crawling towards the window. They press themselves against the wall.

Tara looks at him with wide eyes, skin sickly pale, but she nods.

He nods back.

They look.

Alexandria is burning. Every house is on fire now. Some are completely engulfed in flames; Rick’s house, Deanna’s too. That’s where they started, but the fire is spreading. Rosita’s house, the empty one, even Aaron and Eric’s. The church is starting to burn, too. There are flames dancing behind the windows. It has just been set alight.

‘Oh my God,’ Tara breathes. ‘ _Dare_.’

‘Yeah,’ he whispers. ‘Fuckin’ hell….’

‘No, look!’ She gestures to the right.

Daryl frowns and shifts a little so he can follow her gaze. He freezes. His breathing stops and then stutters, it changes into too-short too-fast gulps of air, desperate and sickening, almost too much. It feels like he’s drowning.

It feels like he’s _dying_.

The gate is open.

There are trucks parked outside of the wall, safe from the fire for now. Saviors are standing around. A small army, just like they had done in the forest, during the line-up. Some are sitting on their cars, others on the grounds, a couple of them walk around in nervous patterns, weaving through the small crowd. They’re shadows under the darkened sky. Too far away to make out their faces, but stark silhouettes against the light.

The light that’s coming from the two fires.

‘ _Rick_!’ A voice booms and Daryl whimpers. ‘ _Rick! Come out, come out, wherever you are_!’

In front of the gate, four chairs have been placed. Stacked against it are branches and sticks, pieces of the wooden fence taken from the house right next to the gate.

‘ _Rick, ahw, Rick! Won’t you come out and play with me_?’

Four poles have been placed right behind the chairs.

‘ _Who is afraid of the big bad wolf, Rick_?’

‘Daryl, stop, we need to go,’ Tara says, tugging at his arm. ‘We need to go, there’s nothing we can do, stop, don’t look –‘

Two of the four constructions are on fire.

‘ _They screamed your name, Rick. And where the fuck were you_?’ Against the orange, yellow, red flames, there is one silhouette that is everywhere, always. It haunts Daryl’s nights, his dreams and nightmares alike, it haunts him, always. Just a shadow, but enough:

The man with the bat.

He’s standing in front of two burning pyres.

He holds out his hand for a torch.

He laughs.

 _‘He’s not coming_ ,’ Negan laughs. ‘ _Your fearless leader is not coming to save you and that is just fucking pathetic. I mean; I promised my men a show, right? Who’s going to fucking entertain them when Rick is not here? What, you_?’ he points the torch to the pyre on the left. ‘ _You look like a dancer, a’right. Yes, I’m pretty fucking sure you will do nicely. And remember, right? I didn’t fucking want this, no sir! I came to talk! Maybe bash one or two skulls in, but not yours! It didn’t have to end like this for you. You hear that, Rick? It didn’t have to end like this for them!_ ’ Negan shouts.

‘Dare, no, please,’ Tara begs but she’s not pulling him away anymore. Her fingers dig into his shoulder as she stares at the pyres in front of their home.

At the people bound to the poles and chairs.

The ones already burning.

The ones about to die.

‘ _And you_ ,’ Negan roars as he points the torch to the person tied to the next pyre. ‘ _You didn’t think I would let him dance alone, right? No, ma’am_!’ he laughs before putting the torch to the wood, letting flames snake up towards feet and legs and-

 _‘Takes two to tango_ ,’ Negan grins before lighting the other pyre as well.

Sherry starts to scream first.

The sound causes Daryl to gasp for air, his vision swimming due to his tears, bile rising in his throat, fingers clawing at the window uselessly.

He opens his mouth but Tara folds her hand over it, pressing his jaws together.

 

Outside, Eric starts to scream.

 

 


	95. Founding Fathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is IT, y'all. The final chapter. The. End.
> 
> (though, there will be an epilogue, so.... yeah.)
> 
> But this is it! Haha, omg. Who thought this would ever end.

 

* * *

 

 

There is a spider on the wall.

It’s about the size of Daryl’s hand, the teenager’s fingers just as long as the thin legs. It seems to walk hesitantly, slowly crawling up the wall towards the windowsill. When the end of one leg touches the wood, it seems to shrink away, quickly taking a couple of steps back down before sneaking back up.

Daryl narrows his eyes as he watches how the spider crawls onto the wooden ledge before it walks onto the boy’s boot, clambering over his buckles and laces towards the tip of his toes. He wonders whether the tiny animal understands what it’s walking on.

‘I could kill you,’ Daryl warns. ‘Squash ya.’

The spider doesn’t react. It’s perched on the tip of the boy’s boot, perfectly content after the long track to the top.

Daryl shakes his head and looks out of the window again. His forehead comes to rest against the cool glass.

It’s quiet outside.

The grounds of Hilltop Colony are made out of fire and the darkness of night. Torches have been placed near the trailers, allowing people to find their way in the darkness, while fire pits have been lit near the entrance to Barrington House and the main gate. Another fire is roaring inside the shop of Leon, the blacksmith. That fire never goes out these days. There’s always someone working on more knives, more spears, hooves. The clanking of Leon’s hammer on metal even rings out now; the steady heartbeat of their war.

There’s a light on in the medical trailer. The windows have been covered to provide the patients with privacy but people keep walking in and out, causing the glaring electrical light to spill out onto the grass surrounding the medical bay. It blinks on and off whenever the door opens, closes.

Sometimes he can make out Beth’s silhouette; small and fragile but with quiet strength as she leans against the side of the trailer to get some fresh air. Her hands dragging over her face, wiping away tears or sweat, depending on her patient’s statuses. It’s a good thing that Hershel had taught her a lot, and life itself still more, for the doctor and nurse of Hilltop Colony need all the help they can get now that wounded are being brought in after every battle.

And the war rages on.

Daryl remembers stories of other wars, bigger than these, spread out over states and countries and continents. Over days and weeks and years. He wonders how anyone survived those wars. And he doesn’t mean the simple answers, doesn’t mean the simple fact that those people hadn’t been shot, stabbed, bombed, gassed, burned, hung, gutted, starved or whatever other cruel way of slow torture and death another human being had come up with. He knows how surviving works. It means not dying and time passing, but he doesn’t understand how someone could stomach that after going through a war.

Time passing.

And not dying.

Living through it all, for however long your heart keeps beating.

It’s the slowest and most painful way of torture he’s experienced yet. And this war hasn’t even been going on for a _week_ now.

Daryl thinks about this lasting for months and years. He almost can’t stomach it.

He watches how Enid and Dante walk the wall. Slow, measured steps as they try to see what’s hiding under the stars and moonlight. Guns in their hands, spears nearby though the throwing knives on Enid’s belt are more accurate. They blink whenever she passes one of the torches. The platforms have been lengthened, allowing them to walk further along the wall than before, offering them more protection.

Daryl knows that the room up in the house, the one he’d first kissed Paul in, is manned at all times now. It offers a great view of their surroundings, after all. The alarm system is made of bells, the sound sharp and eerie, strange enough to wake people from their slumbers and thoughts. The sound had rung out earlier, signaling the return of Merle’s group.

He hasn’t seen his brother yet. Or perhaps, it’s fairer to say that Merle hasn’t seen him yet. Daryl saw him when the gates opened, saw him carry a young woman inside, screaming for a medic, his clothes covered in blood and dirt, nearly falling to his knees with relief when Beth came running.

And then came Maggie, and Merle staggered over to her, grabbing hold of her elbow, asking her something with urgency, shaking her a little when she didn’t answer fast enough for him. But the answer came and Merle had looked up at Barrington House, where his little brother was hiding from the rest of the world.

A whispered conversation between them.

And Merle had left to get cleaned up and report to Rick.

Daryl sighs. He moves his boot from left to right and the spider sways with it, unbothered.

This is the longest night of his life. He’d thought it would have been yesterday, but he barely remembers that one. He knows Tara had folded her hand over his mouth, smothering his screams before wrestling him out of the room and down the stairs. He remembers trying to fight her, trying to get to the front door to get to Eric, whose dying screams will haunt him until the day he dies.

But Tara had grabbed his shoulder, hurling him towards the back door before slapping him in the face in a desperate attempt to get him to focus on her instead of his friend dying outside. There hadn’t been anything they could have done.

Face streaked with tears, he’d begged her to go. He could go back upstairs, take his bow and then take the shot. He could take Negan out, he could do it and it wouldn’t matter that he would have been a dead man walking from the moment he’d let his bolt fly because of all those Saviors gathered outside. It would have been worth it.

Tara hadn’t let him do it. His wrist in a death-grip as she dragged him outside, stumbling away, their sounds muffled by Eric’s last breaths. Through the woods, through the town, back to the car and then away, away, away with screeching tires.

He’d curled up in the passenger’s seat, hands folded over his ears but the screaming was _inside_ of him. He’d thrown up half-way there, Tara’s shaking hand rubbing his back, her shaking voice telling him that everything would be okay.

‘Who –‘ he’d tried to ask, crying and shivering and so sick to his stomach that it had hurt, ‘who else was – the other two who were burning, who-‘

‘Sherry and Eric,’ Tara had said as her fingers went white on the steering wheel. ‘And Tobin and Florianna. A woman from hilltop.’

Of course he knew her. Daryl sighs again and draws little figurines on the glass. He doesn’t remember the rest of the trip to Hilltop. It’s just a mess of tears, gasping breaths and vomit, the sour stench chasing away the smell of burning flesh. He does remember arriving. Stumbling out of the vehicle, desperate to find Maggie among the crowd gathered to greet him, pushing away Morgan and Rick and Paul to get to her, folding his hands over his ears again in a desperate attempt to just disappear.

He didn’t want to hear Rick’s questions and Tara’s shaky answers. Didn’t want to hear Aaron’s voice, firm at first, then broken, then just animalistic screams of grief.

Maggie had engulfed him in a hug, arms around him as she guided him towards the house.

The screams have faded now. Aaron had collapsed around midnight, broken by his loss and taken inside by Carl and Enid. Minutes later, Rick’s screams had started inside the house. The man raging at Morgan and Tara about what had possessed them to let a teenager run back to a burning Alexandria, where nothing but death would surely be waiting for them. They should have gone home.

They should have.

Daryl closes his eyes.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

His friends had burned and he’d just watched. The image of Eric, always so kind to him, writhing on the pyre, trying to get away from the flames biting at his feet and legs, will never leave him. It hasn’t left him, not for a second. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees him.

He hadn’t slept. And the next day, he hadn’t gone outside of his room, preferring to sit beside the bed in the corner, knife in hand as he’d stared at the floorboards.

It had been hard to not press the blade against his own skin. He’d managed only because Maggie and Beth came in every hour. They brought him breakfast and dinner, pretended to check whether he’d need more candles for during the night, pretended to check whether he needed clean clothes or clean sheets.

Rick had come to see him after breakfast.

He’d left quickly when Daryl had gritted his teeth, letting the point of his knife jab into the wood angrily before snarling at the cop to leave him the hell alone.

‘I’ll fuck ya up, ya know,’ Daryl tells the spider on his boot. ‘That what you want? Maybe that’s a good way to go. You’ll never see it comin’. Thought ya had a million eye or something, and ya still can’t see shit comin’.’

Footsteps outside of his room, a soft knock, and then Maggie steps inside. She closes the door behind her, pushes a strand of dark hair behind her ear before smiling at him. ‘Hey, I thought you might be asleep. Merle is back.’

‘Good,’ Daryl murmurs as he looks out of the window again.

The woman walks over to the bed and sits down.

‘How’s Aaron?’ Daryl asks, nails scratching at the hole in his jeans. ‘He okay?’

‘No,’ Maggie tells him. ‘But he will be. He needs time.’

The teenager nods. He finally turns his head to look at the woman. There are dark circles around her eyes. One hand is resting on her belly that is growing a little bigger now. ‘Think we’ll have that? Time?’

‘I do.’

He nods again. Then he reaches out and brushes the spider off his boots before sitting upright, no longer lounging in the windowsill. The tips of his boots touch the floorboards. He slides off it, lands with a soft thud. ‘I’m gonna go see Glenn.’

‘I want you to stay inside after dark.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Dare,’ she says softly. ‘Please talk to _me_.’

He’s been sneaking out. Slipping down the stairs and climbing through the kitchen window, ducking behind the bushes to sit at the grave, fingers digging into the earth before burying them in his hair, almost tearing it out. He knows Paul spotted him once. He’d thought the man hadn’t told anyone.

‘Remember when -,’ Maggie says as she looks down at her fingernails. ‘Remember when he introduced us? Out on my daddy’s farm? He was so scared. He’d gone to that town to get my dad back that day, he’d ran into those guys with Rick. They’d barely made it out alive. And when he came back, he told me he needed to do something important. He introduced us to each other.’

Daryl bites on his lip and watches her from behind his bangs.

There are tears in her eyes. ‘You only said two things to me. _No_. And _nice to meet you, ma’am_.’

He doesn’t remember it. He knows it happened of course, knows that he’d stood on the lawn, close to Glenn because he didn’t like strangers, waiting for Shane to come back. He doesn’t remember what he’d said. It sounds plausible enough though, and Maggie never lies to him.

‘I thought you hated me,’ she says with a huff of laughter, a shake of her head. ‘I was so sure of it.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘No,’ she agrees. A tear spills over her cheek. ‘You didn’t.’ She wipes the tear away, folds her hand over her mouth for a second before looking at him again. ‘I love you so much.’

He nods. ‘Yeah. Same. I mean – I love you, too.’

‘Then please talk to me.’

He sits down next to her on the bed. Bites at his fingernails nervously before reaching up to readjust his baseball cap, pushing some strands under it so they no longer prick in his eyes. ‘’s stupid,’ he says. ‘Ain’t even about Eric, though it should be. Like – that was… The _worst_ thing, ever. Worse than Terminus, what they did to people there. Didn’t have to see that happen, just knew and now I saw it and…’ he shrugs and curls his shoulders in, trying to appear to be smaller than he is. ‘Ain’t about that.’

Maggie doesn’t push. She just sits there, one hand on her belly and the other edging closer to his knee, fingernails scratching over his jeans before fingertips rub soothing circles into his skin.

‘I can’t sleep,’ Daryl whispers. He rubs at his temple with his knuckles, screwing his eyes shut for a second. ‘Every time I try it… we’re back in the line-up, on our knees and he’s holding that bat. Or we’re back at terminus, sitting on the floor and he stands up and Lucille just… It’s not always the bat, either. Shoots me in the face sometimes. Back at the farm, when Dale died? I dream it’s me, and… I know he didn’t – he meant it, just – he’s always there and then I wake up.’

Maggie’s fingers curl around his knee. ‘Negan will pay for what he’s done.’

The teenager looks away. ‘Ain’t dreaming about Negan.’

‘Who then?’ she asks with a frown marring her face.

‘Rick.’

The fingers twitch against his skin. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Negan made him choose,’ Daryl says with a shrug. ‘He wanted someone for Lucille and it had to be either me or Carl. Rick chose me. Negan made me kneel and was about to bust my skull in, but –‘ he smiles a little, ‘Shiva saved me. Ezekiel came in, you and Merle, so it didn’t happen but… He chose me. And he should have,’ he rushes to add, ‘I know that. Of course he’s gonna pick me over Carl, that’s his damn kid. We talked later, we’re cool, but… kinda fucked me up anyway.’

Maggie sighs and wraps an arm around his shoulders, dragging him into her side. Her lips against his cap, eyes closed as she hugs him tightly. ‘He loves you.’

‘I know,’ he leans against her. ‘Told you it was stupid.’

‘It’s not stupid at all,’ she assures him. ‘Do you think talking with Rick would help?’

‘And do what? Make him feel like shit again? Show everyone I’m being a little bitch about it? Eric fuckin’ burned, and I – I’m cryin’ over something that didn’t even happen.’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘There’s too much. I should be crying over Eric and maybe be sad about Sherry, and we lost fuckin’ Tobin, and-‘

‘Ssh,’ Maggie rubs his back. ‘Ssh. It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling; that is okay. That is real.’

‘There’s too much,’ the teenager murmurs, letting the palms of his hands dig into his eyes. ‘Told Rick I could carry it, but… I can’t.’

‘You _can_ carry it,’ Maggie tells him, ‘because you have to.’

‘Why do I have to? Could opt out. People have done it before. Jenner, the doctor at the CDC said they had. There was a guy, later, too. In a tent, when we were looking for Sophia. We find walkers strung up in their living rooms all the time! I could just opt out. Wouldn’t have to carry none of it anymore.’

Maggie stands up and kneels down before him. A gentle finger under his chin nudges his gaze up so he can look her in the eye. ‘You’d just leave me?’ she asks. ‘Merle? Carl and Judith? Tara and Michonne. You’re just going to leave us alone?’

‘You’d have Beth. And Merle. And-‘

Her hands cup his cheeks. ‘You promised him you’d look after me, but you know what? I promised the same thing to him about you. Before all of this, before the prison, even. Back at my daddy’s farm,’ she smiles, rubbing her thumb over his beauty mark. ‘I promised him I would look after you.’

‘Wouldn’t be your fault,’ he says softly.

‘But I would carry it anyway,’ she pulls him forward, kissing his forehead before drawing him closer still, allowing the boy to sink into her frame, face hiding in the crook of her neck. ‘We’re going to be okay,’ she says as he starts to cry. ‘We’re going to be okay, Dare.’

 

 

It’s harder to face Aaron than he thought it would be. But it’s easier, too, when the man looks up from the knife he’s sharpening to see the boy standing on the threshold, wobbling on his feet hesitantly, fingers plucking at his bottom lip. A small smile flickers over his features.

‘Hello, Daryl,’ he says, voice a little hoarse until he clears his throat. ‘Sorry. Hey, Dare.’

‘Hey,’ the boy says as he slinks into the room. It’s the one they use for their tactical meetings. It used to be the dining room. There’s a long wooden table right in the middle of it, several chairs  standing around it though more have been dragged in from different rooms. There are maps covering the paintings on the walls, empty magazines holding down others on the table, pinning them in place and preventing them from curling up again.

Empty bullet cases represent groups from Hilltop and the Kingdom.

Alexandria has been destroyed by the fire and everyone has moved into Barrington House, though some have left for the Kingdom to share information and retrieve intelligence.

Right on the middle of the table stands the long-distance radio Paul had gotten from Dwight a long while ago. It had been a tremendous advantage in the first days of the war. It’s how they’d confirmed that their first surprise attacks on the outposts had worked, how they’d known the Kingdom had wiped out one completely, taking the guns for their own. They managed to surprise a patrol, Merle leading the sneak-attack while everyone in Barrington House listened to the dying screams of Saviors over the radio, screaming for help and back-up before being silenced by a Dixon knife.

The radio is silent now.

They figured out someone was listening in two days ago.

‘Hey,’ Daryl mutters as he sits down on the edge of one of the seats. His bow bumps into the back a bit but it doesn’t matter. He hardly ever puts it down anymore. ‘I know I haven’t said nothing yet, but… I’m real sorry about Eric.’

‘Thank you,’ Aaron says as he looks down at his knife again. ‘And it’s okay. It’s a weird thing, losing someone. People are scared to see the hurt,’ he draws the metal over his whetstone. ‘They’d rather avoid you all together.’

Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Yeah. Never really know what to say. Just fuckin’ _sucks_ , ya know?’

Another shadow of a smile. ‘Yeah,’ Aaron agrees. ‘It does.’

‘Why are you in here anyway?’ the teenager asks. ‘Shouldn’t you be – I dunno… ‘ he scratches at his cheek. ‘Sleepin’ or something?’

Aaron lifts an eyebrow.

‘Slept for days after I lost my dad,’ Daryl murmurs, ‘weren’t no time after Shane and Glenn, but… think I’ll sleep for weeks after all of this. Shane said it’d help, ya know? It did, I guess.’

‘Was nice being unconscious?’

Daryl smiles and nods.

Aaron smiles back. ‘I bet it was,’ he says as he puts the knife away. ‘Maybe when this is all over. Rick wanted someone to stay here with that thing,’ he nods at the radio on the table. ‘It’s got the best reception here.’

Daryl frowns. ‘Why? They haven’t used it in two days. Switched channels or they stopped using the long distance ones all together.’

‘I didn’t bother to ask why,’ he says with a significant look. ‘Rick wanted it done. I don’t – I don’t think I should go outside the walls yet. So…’

‘Right.’

They sit together in silence for a long while. Daryl with his arms folded on the table, head resting on them as he stares at the map of the Sanctuary he had drawn with Paul’s help. The corridors and staircases, the room he used to play ping pong in, the room that had been his. It says so in the corner, in embarrassed handwriting, almost too small for anyone to read it; Daryl’s room. Paul had wanted to give it a random number, but he’d disagreed because he knew Dwight’s room and Arat’s room, Negan’s, and his. No need to hide it anymore. Everyone already knew.

Aaron watches the boy. Marvels at the fact that he’d just been a boy hiding behind Rick and Glenn when they had met. That shy boy jabbing his knife into one of the cans, sharing it with Abraham. Obviously lethal with his bow and narrowed eyes, but sweet in the way he’d let Judith play with his fingers, how he’d curl up next to Carol to get some rest.

And now a teenager who needs to learn how to shave.

‘You ever regret coming with me?’ Aaron asks.

Daryl thinks about it. ‘No,’ he mutters as he scratches at the table with blunt fingernails. ‘Was good while it lasted.’ He lifts his head so he can look at his friend. ‘You regret taking us in?’

‘No,’ Aaron says. ‘You’re right. It was good.’

‘We’ll rebuild it,’ the teenager promises. ‘We’ll get it all back.’

‘Not everything,’ the man answers. ‘But enough. Yes.’

 

 

Four days later, Daryl walks through the gate of Hilltop Colony again. His head bowed as he follows Dante, Paul, Carl and Francine. The tips of his bolts are dripping with blood still. There are stains on his hands, on his face, his arms, legs, everywhere. None of it is his. Most of it is from that Savior who’d died slow.

The knife pushing slowly in, far too slowly, while the man had desperately tried to fight the teenager off. He’d gripped the knife with his bare hands, trying to yank it away from his eye, fingers bleeding, smearing the blood all over his killer as he grabbed at Daryl’s face, shoulder, arms, anywhere he could reach.

‘Dare,’ Carl says. ‘You wanna shower before we check in with dad?’

‘You check in,’ Daryl nods. ‘I’m gonna clean up and see Maggie.’

His brother shoots him a look. ‘You can’t avoid him forever, you know.’

‘But I can try.’ He tries to make it sound like a joke but it falls flat.

‘He’ll want to see you.’

‘Just tell him I’m fine, man,’ Daryl snaps.

‘But you’re not!’

‘What the hell do you want me to do?’ the youngest Dixon asks as he stops walking, staring at his brother, who stares right back. ‘I’m doing everything he asks. I’m out there. I’m  - I’m doing what needs to be done. Don’t crawl up my ass because I want to get some fucking sleep now, okay? Think I earned it.’

‘You don’t even talk to him! Don’t you think he still feels like fucking shit about what happened? He didn’t _want_ to choose but he _had_ to!’

‘ _I know that!_ ’

Carl grits his teeth. ‘You wanted it to be me then?’

Daryl rolls his eyes. ‘Of course not, stop acting like a dick. Let someone you love sentence you to death, see how you deal, okay?’

‘Daryl.’

They turn to see Rick standing on the steps of Barrington House. Posture strong and proud, shoulders rolled back and chin high, but the blue eyes are filled with sorrow. He takes a couple of steps, legs bowed, heels clicking on the concrete.

Daryl tilts his head back and laughs bitterly at the dying sun. ‘That’s some awesome timing you got there, Rick,’ he says. ‘Yeah, that’s real good of you. I’d almost think y’all are setting me up for something but that ain’t you, right?’

‘Monster.’ Merle appears at Rick’s right hand. Eyes narrowed as he holds out his hand. ‘Good to see you. All good?’

‘Fucking peachy,’ the youngest Dixon mutters as he pushes past Rick to let Merle’s hand drop onto the baseball cap. He presses into it, seeking out the comfort only his brother can give sometimes.

‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ Merle murmurs as he draws his little brother close.

Daryl strips in the bathroom, stands in the shower in just his underwear and allows his brother to scrub him clean with water and soap. The water is cold and it bites at his skin. He doesn’t complain. Instead he just watches how it turns pink from the diluted blood and swirls down the drain. Gone. Just like that.

He ignores Merle’s concerned looks. Ignores it by watching the blood and ignores it later by curling up between his legs, pressing himself against his brother’s chest while they sit in the living room. The fire is roaring and someone is reading from a book. An older woman with graying hair.

He ignores the way Merle sighs by closing his eyes and pretending he is five years old and hiding in his brother’s embrace while listening to their mother, signing along to the radio in their old kitchen, far away.

 

 

‘You smell like soap.’

‘Bet you say that to all the cute boys.’

Paul laughs.

Daryl smiles.

They’re sitting on the balcony and watch how the sun comes up, rising high above the wall and the trees and everything else. Backs pressed against each other’s, one of their legs dangling down as they balance on the balustrade. Daryl has his head titled back, eyes closed as he dozes.

‘Just you,’ Paul promises, his voice a rumble in both their chests now that they’re so close together.

‘Hmm,’ Daryl hums. ‘Liar.’ Then he opens one eye even though the other man can’t see him and he can’t see the scout. ‘You just called me cute.’

Another laugh. ‘You earned it.’

Daryl snaps his fingers and moves his hand.

‘Did you just finger gun the back of my head down?’ Paul asks, amusement lacing the words.

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re terrible.’

‘You keep saying that,’ Daryl laughs, ‘but one day I’m gonna be twenty-one and then you’re gonna be all over me. Just you wait.’

The man snorts and bites down on his apple. ‘Keep dreaming.’

‘Trust me,’ the teenager sniggers, ‘I do.’

Paul groans and elbows him gently, careful not to push him off. ‘You’re ruining the moment, Dare. Here,’ he holds the apple out.

‘We’re havin’ a moment now?’ Daryl asks as he takes it, eating the other half. ‘My morning just keeps getting’ better ‘nd better now don’t it?’

Paul sighs and rests his head on the teenager’s shoulder, closing his own eyes. He turns his head a little, nuzzling the dark hair that’s peeking out from under the baseball cap. ‘ _Terrible_ ,’ he repeats in a low voice and the boy shivers.

‘Now you just playin’,’ Daryl turns his head too and presses a kiss to the long hair of his friend. ‘Sit still or we’re gonna fall off.’ He looks down at where Judith is playing with her plastic building blocks on a blanket. She bangs them together, giggling a little before looking up at her brother. Daryl sticks his tongue out at her and she laughs, babbling something incoherent. ‘You tell him, girl,’ Daryl says with a soft laugh.

Michonne had come back late last night from one of their missions, falling into Ricks arms with an exhausted sigh and Daryl hadn’t hesitated to take the little girl to his room. She normally sleeps in their room, but he figured they could use a full night sleep and he never minds watching the little girl.

She’d woken him up early, just before sunrise. Crawling over him, patting at his face while wriggling around, giggling a little when he’d opened one eye and bit sleepily at her curious fingers. They’d ran into Paul at the bathrooms and now they’re sitting on the balcony, enjoying the quiet of dawn.

The quiet is broken when the gate opens unexpectedly. Daryl grips the balustrade to keep himself upright when Paul sits up with a jerk. They both relax when a single rider from the Kingdom charges through the gate, the horse galloping onto the courtyard before coming to a stop near the blacksmith’s shop.

Daryl’s heart surges in his chest. ‘Carol!’ He swings his legs over and hops off the balustrade. ‘That’s Carol!’

The door downstairs opens and Rick comes running out. He’s not wearing a shirt and no shoes, just his usual jeans and gun holster, hair a tussled mess. He’d probably been awake, standing in front of the window like he usually does when he’s supposed to be asleep.

He meets Carol, running over the courtyard on bare feet, eager for news.

‘Come on, Jude,’ Daryl grins, scooping the girl up. When he looks back, he sees that Paul is taking the shorter way down, climbing over the other side of the balustrade before sliding down one of the pillars. ‘Fuckin’ show off,’ the teenager scoffs. He kisses Judith’s cheek before hurrying inside and down the stairs, out of the door towards his friends.

When he reaches them, Carol is already talking to Rick while Paul leads the horse to the barn to brush it down and give it water and food.

‘- not enough weapons, but we have the people now,’ the woman says, a little out of breath and cheeks flushed by the ride. ‘Twenty of them.’

‘That’s good,’ Rick nods.

Carol’s gaze settles on the approaching teenager. She smiles. ‘Pookie.’

Daryl laughs and hugs her with one arm, ‘hey, Carol. Good to see ya.’

‘And you two,’ she strokes Judith’s cheek and the little girl hides her face in the crook of the boy’s neck. ‘Let’s go inside, find Maggie. We have a lot to discuss.’

Rick nods as she strides past them, heading up to Barrington House where Maggie is sleeping in the dining room among all their war plans. He looks at Daryl, eyes filled with uncertainty. ‘Thank you for looking after Judy for the night,’ he says.

‘Yeah, ‘s fine,’ Daryl mutters. He hitches his sister higher onto his hip. ‘She ain’t no bother.’

‘Good.’

The teenager ducks his head a bit before peeking up at the leader of Alexandria. He huffs and slings his arm around the man’s waist, tucking himself under his arm. ‘C’mon, they’re waitin’.’

Rick relaxes a little and pulls him closer still.

Together, they walk towards the house.

 

 

Twenty people from Oceanside had arrived at the Kingdom, ready to join the fight after all.

Rick’s eyes light up and Maggie gives Carol a fragile smile.

Paul shares a look with Merle before they both grab a map and bend their heads together to make new plans.

Daryl watches and bounces Judith on his knees, making silly faces to make her laugh. He’s not very good at tactical plans. He doesn’t have Merle’s experience and he’s not as cunning as Paul is, but he listens well and hasn’t failed them yet so two hours later, he hoists himself onto Khamsin’s back, clicking his tongue before storming out of the gates with another group of soldiers.

The wind blowing through his hair, the sun shining on his face.

He almost feels alive.

 

 

The war rages on and on and on.

They win fights. Little skirmishes and bigger battles.

They lose some, too. Fights. But people, too.

 

 

Beth’s hair looks orange in the light of the flames. Her skin eerily pale, eyes dark, but stunningly beautiful despite the circumstances. There are no tears on her cheeks. She watches how the wood burns, how the body wrapped in blankets catches fire.

Daryl stands beside her and tries to watch, too.

Another one of them. Leon, the blacksmith, killed by a bullet ripping through his stomach. Ended by the mercy of Dante’s blade and now burned on Hilltop grounds.

The teenager swallows with some difficulty as the smell of burning flesh penetrates the air. He can faintly hear someone scream but knows it’s not real. Behind him, Tara walks away while hiding her nose in the crook of her arm.

Aaron hasn't shown up but nobody blames him.

‘Come here,’ Beth says softly, holding her arm out.

Daryl steps closer to her, turning his back on the burning body. His arms around her small waist, his face pressed against her warm neck. There are no tears, no shaking shoulders – just desperate fingers pressing into the small of Beth’s back.

She lets him rest there until the flames die, too.

 

 

‘It’s too close to the Sanctuary,’ Rick says with a shake of his head, ‘and they have the high ground there. They have snipers. We know that.’

Merle nods, ‘but if we cut through the west side, then we could-‘

‘ _If – if anyone is listening_ …’

The room falls silent. Their heads swivel so they can stare at the radio that is sitting in the window sill. The little light is blinking, the batteries charged and always ready. By some dismissed as a waste of resources, by others as a final desperate attempt, but now, surely, as a miracle by all.

It crackles softly.

Paul frowns and grabs it, carrying it over to the table and holding it out, closer to Rick and Maggie. To Merle and Daryl. Carl and Rosita.

‘ _Please, if anyone is listening, please answer, I – please_.’

Daryl leans over and snatches the radio from Paul’s numb fingers. He pushes the button, ‘Frankie?’

Rick stares at him with wide eyes.

Maggie opens her mouth but falls silent when the voice comes through again.

‘ _Who- who is this?_ ’

‘It’s Daryl,’ the teenager says quickly.

‘ _Oh, thank God, Dare. Eugene said – are you okay?_ ’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Frankie, what is-‘

Rick grabs the radio from him before turning around sharply, bringing it to his mouth. ‘This is Rick Grimes. What does Negan want?’

‘ _Where’s Dare, I want to talk to talk to Dare_.’

‘You’re talking to _me_ ,’ Rick snarls. ‘What the hell does he want?’

Daryl bows his head as he leans on the table. ‘She’s one of Negan’s wives,’ he tells the people who are still watching him. ‘She were good to me.’

‘ _He doesn’t know I’m doing this_ ,’ Frankie whispers. ‘ _He’s gone insane. People are talking about deserting – some have already run away. They caught one. He – he burned him. We thought he was going to give him the iron, but – he just – he threw him into the oven. In front of his family.’_

Daryl shivers.

‘Why are you telling us?’ Rick asks with a frown.

‘ _You have to strike now. If you want to end this, you have to strike_ now.’

 

 

It could be a trap.

It’s probably a trap.

But there is this slim chance that it’s not. That it’s real. That the Sanctuary is crumbling from the inside out, that people will join their side or put their weapons down if they move in now. That Negan is about to lose it all.

And they can’t miss this opportunity.

Rick says it’s all about slim chances now.

They’re running out of food. Out of ammunition. Morale. People.

The war goes on and on and on. Has been going on for months now.

Everyone is tired.

Everyone is so worn-out and wary and scarred, so broken by fear and loss and survival guilt that some have even opted out. Bodies discovered in early mornings, single bullet shots ringing out and letters with shaky handwriting explaining how they were so sorry but still couldn’t stay.

Fires being lit and bodies burned.

They can’t go on like this.

 

 

Maggie isn’t crying but her hands shake when she tugs at Daryl’s shirt and jacket. The rest of their forces have already gathered by the gate.

‘I have to go,’ Daryl says.

‘I know,’ she nods. ‘But you know what else you have to do, right?’

‘Come back,’ he answers.

She presses their foreheads together.

 

 

‘Last one,’ Merle says as he passes a burning cigarette to his little brother.

‘Thanks.’ Daryl takes it. The smoke stings in his eyes and lungs. ‘We’ll have to quit after this.’

Merle looks at him. He nods. ‘We will.’

 

 

It’s midnight when the first signal rings out between the trees. Daryl’s heart is hammering in his throat as he recognizes the birdcall. He snaps his fingers to alert the rest of his group. Slowly, they make their way towards the tree line. There, he squats down next to Merle, hands clammy as his fingers curl around the metal of his gun.

Behind them, Carl shifts nervously. Enid flips the hood of her jacket over her head while Carol waits patiently. Paul is sitting a couple of feet to their right, huddling next to a tree with Dante, Eduardo and Aaron.

They can’t see Rick’s group from this place. Can’t see Ezekiel, or Rosita’s, not Tara’s, not Cyndie’s.

But he knows they’re there. Surrounding the Sanctuary.

Ready to move in.

They’re just waiting for the –

Suddenly there’s a light coming from the Sanctuary. All the windows have been blackened out, but now one of the sheets is being ripped from the window, allowing electrical light to illuminate one tiny fraction of the enormous building.

Merle whistles sharply.

They move in.

 

 

There’s something weird with the walkers on the wall, Daryl realizes when he runs over the road towards the fence. They’re not moving around like they did when he’d been there. Instead they stick to one place. He frowns as he slides over the ground, hiding from view behind one of the overturned cars. Carl slides into place next to him while Paul joins them a second later.

Daryl peers around the corner.

‘Anyone?’ Paul asks.

‘Nah, don’t see nothing.’

They look at each other for a second.

‘You trust her, right?’ Paul asks.

Daryl swallows thickly. ‘Yeah. She won’t – I trust her. Let’s go.’

It’s one of the hardest things he has ever had to do but he does it without thinking now. He gets up, pushes himself away from cover, runs up to the fence and jumps up into the chain link. It rattles while he climbs, trying to go as fast as he can, up and over. Every second he’s up there, he fears the sound of gunfire. Screams. Shouts of alarm or even the dreaded floodlight they’d seen on earlier recon missions.

But everything stays quiet, except for the walker’s snarls.

The guards are not outside.

Frankie hadn’t been lying.

Daryl throws himself over the top of the fence and lands in the walker pit. He grabs his knife.

But the walkers stay in one place. The moonlight bounces off their heads and shoulders strangely. Carefully and with a frown on his face, Daryl moves closer to see what is going on. Behind him, Paul and Carl start to climb the fence, too. Everywhere around the Sanctuary, people are climbing it as fast as they can, landing into walker pits just like the one Daryl is walking through now.

There’s melted metal on the walker’s head, on their shoulders and backs. They can’t move.

Daryl stares for a second. It’s harder to figure out how to take them out now of course because the metal is a protective layer against their knives, but… they can’t move. They can’t come after them, can’t reach for them, can’t drag them close. With baited breath, Daryl walks between two of them.

‘What the hell,’ Paul whispers.

‘Eugene,’ Carl breathes. ‘It must have been him, who else would think of doing that?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Daryl says as he runs further, jumping into the next fence and climbing it again. When he’s at the top, he takes a flashlight out of his pocket and clicks it on and off a couple of times before moving it up and down. Then he jumps down on the other side.

He doesn’t wait for the reinforcements to arrive.

Merle and Carol and Dante and Eduardo, Aaron, everyone. They’ll cut the gate open for the rest of the Kingdom troops to come riding in on their horses, storming the base.

Daryl has another destination.

Together with Carl and Paul, he runs towards the parking lot on the side. He spots the door. Carl moves to the right side of it, grabbing the handle and counting down while Daryl raises his bow, wobbling a little on the balls of his feet before the door swings open and he moves in.

He knows the way.

He turns right and fires his bow, taking out the first guard on his way to his station outside. Paul takes the second out with a silenced gunshot.

There’s no point in hiding the bodies. They just jump over them, heading towards the rooms on the left.

Dwight’s old room, but there’s a woman sleeping on the bed. Carl ends her before she can open her eyes, knife driving in deep with a sickening sound.

Paul is already in the next room, taking another guard by surprise. With a few punches, the scout has him on his knees and a second later the man dies while choking on his own blood and Paul wipes his blade clean with a grim look on his face.

 Daryl finds the keys he’s looking for in Dwight’s room. He starts to open the cells while Paul and Carl either push the workers towards the exit or arm them with spare knives. Former Saviors are released, but there are prisoners of war here too. People from the Kingdom, taken hostage. One is delirious with pain and a fever, cradling his stomps and muttering about how Negan took his hands.

There’s no time to stop and help.

Daryl opens the last cell.

His cell.

A strange light floods the room. Flickers.

He frowns and steps inside. It’s smaller than he even remembered but half of the space is now taken up by a cage. And behind the bars, there’s a television.

To his horror, he watches how Sherry dies on the stake for a second time. The camera shaky and the sounds all wrong, but it’s her; screaming, and it’s Negan, laughing. The clip plays and plays and plays until the tape must have run out, but it starts over again, right when Negan leans down to light the fire, right when the screaming starts.

Something moves in the corner.

Daryl looks.

It’s Dwight. Curled up in a ball, naked and shivering, with his hands covering his ears.

Daryl closes his eyes for a moment before he grabs his gun with the silencer. He shoots the screen.

The screaming stops.

Dwight looks up with big, wet eyes.

‘There ain’t nothing more,’ Daryl tells him. ‘This is it. You wanna run, you run. You wanna help, you fuckin’ help _now_. You look at me or my friends wrong and the next bullet is for you.’

Dwight blinks. He lowers his gaze.

 

 

It’s like the outpost.

After they’ve cleared the cells, Daryl joins Merle and they move down long corridors. They kill everyone who they come across. Men and women go down, fighting or in their sleep, most caught off guard due to the late hour and the fact that they thought Negan would keep them safe.

But death is ghosting through the Sanctuary, silent at first but a hail of gunfire erupts in one corner of the complex seven minutes in and then it’s loud. So loud that it causes his ears to ring. He doesn’t know how many people he kills, he doesn’t remember, none of it registers properly as he follows his brother’s lead, ducking behind cover and around corners, tearing through the complex.

Some people put their weapons down. They huddle in corners, crying and begging, and Merle takes their weapons and moves on so Daryl does, too.

They are one of the last groups to reach the center of the building. Blades dripping with blood and Daryl’s magazine empty. He has his bow up again, hiding behind Merle’s larger frame as the older Dixon snaps his fingers to direct him to his designated spot.

There’s a slash on Merle’s arm, blood trickling over his skin. It’s deep but nothing Beth can’t fix back at Hilltop.

It had been a bullet meant for him.

‘-can’t honestly from the bottom of my heart say that it is a _pleasant_ surprise, but it _is_ a surprise, Rick,’ Negan says, voice ringing out. ‘Like, a _holy shit_! – surprise, you know what I mean? I bet you do,’ there’s laughter in his voice. ‘Bet you felt the same way when I first swung my Lucile at that ginger’s dome. I saw it.’

‘It’s over,’ Rick says. His voice is cold, devoid of any emotions. ‘Lay down your weapons.’

Daryl and Merle are up on the second floor, looking down at the group gathered below. Negan has been backed into a corner, he’s holding Arat by one shoulder and uses her as a human shield. There’s a gun in his hands. Lucille is nowhere to be seen.

Wade is there too and Simon. A couple of other Saviors.

Some glance at Rick, lowering their guns a little until Simon grits his teeth and raises his higher.

Rick is standing next to Carol and Ezekiel. Shiva is crouched next to her trainer, tail swishing over the floor as she growls.

‘And what happens next, Rick,’ Negan asks. ‘We lay down our weapons, you kiss our foreheads and we all go our merry ways? Somehow, I don’t think that’s how it fucking works. Am I right?’

‘We can end this,’  Rick says. ‘We didn’t want this. You brought this onto us, you – you did this. Not us. But we can end it together. Lay down your weapons and you can walk out of here. You can just go.’

‘And go fucking where?’ Negan asks with a sneer. ‘To be your pet? Rot in some cell you made, oh yeah, I saw that one when I burned your whole pathetic, dumb-ass town to the fucking ground!’

Wade flinches when Negan raises his voice. He glances nervously at his leader.

‘We’ve done it before. People came at us and we took them in, they became leaders at our camp; the same thing can happen here. You can stay here. We don’t want this place. We don’t want your people. But Negan’s way of doing things? It’s done.’ Rick holds up his hand, ‘we can trade,’ he tells Wade. ‘we can help you rebuild this place, set up _a whole new world!_ If you put your weapons down now, you can be one of us. There’s room enough for all of us and if we work together? We can do _anything_.’

Wade lowers his gun.

‘We let go of all of it,’ Rick says. ‘No one else has to die.’

‘That’s some fucking poetic bullshit, Rick. It’s fucking beautiful. You tell me, did you practice that? Those people you mentioned before, did they have to listen to that sentimental bull crap, too?’

‘They didn’t listen,’ Rick answers with a nod. ‘Their leader, he killed one of ours. He attacked us, took our home, but we killed him. In the end, we killed him.’

Negan smiles. ‘Killed one of yours, huh? Man after my fucking heart.’

Before Daryl can scream or lunge forward, before Merle can take aim, before anyone can do anything at all, Negan lifts his gun and fires.

‘No!’ Carol screams.

She shoves Ezekiel aside.

And falls into the path of the bullet herself.

Shiva jumps forward to tear at Arat, biting down on her arm, her shoulder, dragging onto the ground. Simon screams and aims at her, emptying his clip while the big cat snarls and mewls, dark coat now dripping with blood as she lunges at the man. Claws dig into skin but more bullets tear through her body, taking her down.

Merle empties his clip and takes out Simon while Daryl closes one eye and finds Lauren with his crosshairs. His bolt buries itself in her cheek. She dies screaming.

For a second, Daryl surveys the scene.

Rick is screaming for cover-fire which Carl, Paul and Michonne provide. He crawls over to Carol, who is coughing up blood while the puddle of blood around her starts to grown. Ezekiel runs over too, falling to his knees beside her, cradling her face and stroking her cheeks as he begs her not to die.

Shiva isn’t moving anymore.

Daryl’s gaze glides over the bodies before he realizes something. He shoves himself away from the wall he’d been leaning against, runs past Merle, slings himself down the staircase, hopping over the balustrade before landing on the ground floor with a thud.

Rick looks up with wild eyes. ‘ _Daryl, no_!’ he screams.

But Daryl is already running, he jumps over Arat’s mangled body, bursts through the door behind her.

The one Negan had disappeared behind.

He storms down the corridor, bursts through the next door and runs outside. The sound of a body slamming against chain link betrays Negan’s position. Daryl throws his bow onto his back before running after him, into the night.

 

 

The trick about hunting is, Will had said, that you have to know how an animal moves. Because being able to shoot a target with your bow, hitting it dead-center every time is all well and good, but game doesn’t freeze. It moves, moves fast, but if you know how then you can predict it and it all becomes so much easier.

Daryl kneels and waits.

Humans beings, he’s found, are terribly predictable.

He fires.

Negan falls to the ground, screaming.

 

 

‘Holy fucking shit, fuck, god damn that hurts, killer,’ Negan pants as he grabs hold of his upper leg, the one that’s pierced by Daryl’s bolt. He’s writhing around on the ground, fingers turning red with blood. ‘Holy fuckity _fuck_!’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl mutters as he kicks the gun away from the man and then calmly loads his bow again. ‘Guess it does.’

‘Cold blooded, ‘s why I like you,’ Negan says through gritted teeth. ‘Fuck.’ He eyes the bow. ‘Just do it then. Come on. Didn’t your daddy tell you it’s not polite to make people fucking wait?’

‘My daddy taught me a lot of things,’ Daryl nods. ‘Not that. Weren’t too keen on manners,’ he takes aim and stares down the scope of his bow.

‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’ the man snarls. ‘Just do it then!’

‘Daryl!’

The teenager glances to the side to see how Carl bursts through the bushes, his gun in his hand. He lowers it when he sees Negan on the floor, at his brother’s mercy. His one eye narrows but widens when he looks at the youngest Dixon.

Another set of footsteps, quick and light, and then Paul jumps over a fallen tree, coming to a halt beside Carl.

‘Daryl,’ he breathes. ‘You got him. It’s over.’

‘Ain’t over yet,’ Daryl says as he looks at Negan again. ‘But it will be.’

Carl takes a slow step forward, his hand raised. ‘Daryl. Lower the bow. We can take him back. We can just – we can just go back.’

‘And do what? Nah. He’s gonna pay for it. For all of it!’

‘That’s right,’ Negan grins. ‘There’s always a cost, right? And you say your daddy didn’t teach you anything.’

 

 

They did.

All of them. Every single one who’d taken on the role, even if it hadn’t fitted them just right, they had all tried to teach him something.

A life lesson.

Rick: you carry what you cause.

Merle: not being enough is better than not being there at all.

Glenn: you can create your own family, thicker than blood and sweeter, too.

Shane: knife, bow, holler, and tell them you love them. _Love_ them.

Will: brace yourself.

 

 

‘He killed Carol,’ Daryl says through gritted teeth. There are tears in his eyes. ‘Eric. Tobin. Sherry. Florianna. Benjamin is dead because of him. And Abraham.’ He swallows thickly, a tear rolling down his pale cheek. ‘ _Glenn_.’

Carl walks closer, careful steps and with his arm stretched out, fingers reaching for his brother’s weapon. ‘We’ve got to go back. We’ve got other people to take care of now, Dare. They still need us back there. This isn’t over yet.’

‘It is,’ Daryl says, voice breaking on the words as his finger curls around the trigger. ‘It can be.’

‘We’re gonna beat this world,’ Carl says. ‘I know we will, but you gotta do what’s _right_ , Dare. It’s so easy to do the wrong thing, but – we promised them. All of them. Shane and my mom and Glenn. We promised them we’d beat this! That we’d be better. We ain’t kids no more and you know this won’t end it. It won’t make it better either. Please.’

‘This is all on him!’ Daryl snarls, ‘why would you wanna save him?’

‘I’m not trying to save _him_ ,’ Carl says softly. ‘Don’t lose yourself. That’s what your dad told you, right? Way back at the quarry. Don’t lose yourself, Dare. If it’s easy, don’t do it. Don’t let the world spoil you. You’re good, brother. You’re _so_ good. Don’t let him win now.’

Daryl glances at his brother one last time before looking back at Negan. His finger trembles on the trigger.

A single tear rolls down his cheek.

 

 


	96. Epilogue (Old wounds)

 

* * *

 

 

 

The caravan moves slowly down the road. Some people are on foot, keeping an eye on the carts to make sure that none of their goods will fall off. Sometimes one of the crates slides a little due to a bump in the road and the whole caravan needs to stop before they continue. Children run around between the carts, chasing each other while their parents and guardians call out warnings not to come too close to the horses of the guards.

The guards patrol the sides of the road, eyes on the forest in case a walker comes stumbling out of the bushes. The roads themselves have been cleared. The fact that they’re traveling through claimed territory is made clear by the slayed walkers by the side of the road. Most have deep gashes over their faces or split skulls, others almost untouched save for the small impact holes on their foreheads.

‘I can’t believe there are still so many,’ Amaka says as she looks at the corpses. ‘Sometimes I think it will never end.’

Her brother glances at her. They’re riding side by side on their horses, reins twisted around their hands and fingers as they guide the animals past the rotting walkers, mindful of the children who run on their right, near the carts. The girl is all dressed up. The armor she’s wearing is made of tanned leather, subtle and shining, almost yellow under the bright sunshine, in sharp contrast with her black skin. It covers her shoulders and upper arms, as well as her chest and back. There’s an engraving on the back; the letters DC made out of vines and flowers.

The blade on her side has been polished. It blinks with her every move.

A woman from their group has done her hair for her. Tight cornrows going up to the top of her head before ending in a mess of her natural curls, creating a foax Mohawk. It had taken a good long while and a lot of cussing on her part due to the tight braiding, but the woman still had gotten a smacking kiss on her cheek and the promise of a month worth of babysitting for her daughter.

‘It will end,’ her brother says with a soft smile. ‘Eventually.’

‘I guess,’ Amaka nods. She looks around, shifting in her saddle, ‘so, pretty exciting, huh? How are you holding up?’

He rolls his eyes. ‘We’ve been outside of the city plenty of times, I don’t get what’s gotten you all riled up like this.’

The girl gapes at him and then laughs, ‘ _Taiwo_! Oh my god. Don’t pretend like you’re not nervous. I know you. In fact, I know everything about you,’ she says confidently, sitting a little straighter on her horse. ‘No secrets between us, remember?’

‘Dream on,’ Taiwo snorts. ‘Might be twins, but we don’t have to be _that_ close. Or are you going to tell me what happened at the harvest party with Quinten?’

‘You don’t want to know what happened at the harvest party with Quinten,’ Amaka bounces back while she wiggles her eyebrows.

Her brother groans.

‘See?’ she laughs. ‘And you can roll your eyes and scoff all you want, but _I_ think it’s pretty exciting. It’s going to be the party of the century.’

‘That what you got all dolled up for?’ Taiwo asks with a raised eyebrow.

‘Yup,’ Amaka smiles easily. ‘You never know who you’ll run into at these kinds of things.’ She opens her mouth theatrically, eyes wide before turning to her twin, ‘except you do! You know _exactly_ who you will run into.’

Her brother shoots her a nasty glare. ‘Shut up.’

The girl looks at him curiously, the smile fading a little bit. ‘Okay, I won’t tease. Seriously though; are you nervous?’

‘No. I’ve been to the Kingdom plenty of times.’

‘ _Ha_!’ Amaka jabs a finger at him. ‘But we’re not going to the Kingdom. We’re going to _Alexandria_.’

‘So?’ Taiwo shrugs as he averts his gaze. ‘Different place, same walls.’

His sister sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘Why are you being so difficult? You know what I mean. You’ll get to meet Rick Grimes and Michonne, Rosita and Aaron. I bet Tara and Cyndie will be there, too.’ She leans forward, holding on to her saddle and grinning excitedly, ‘Merle Dixon, huh? _Maggie Rhee_!’

‘Can we stop talking about this?’

She falls back into her seat with a frown. ‘Why?’

Taiwo’s hold on his reins tightens. He grits his teeth for a second before meeting his twin’s gaze. ‘I don’t think I’ll get to meet them.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Just because, okay? I’m serious, can we stop talking about it?’

‘Fine,’ Amaka says, a little frown drawing her eyebrows together. She watches her brother closely. He’s wearing his combat gear; the armor he’d traded with the Kingdom months ago, with his trusted dao on his hip. Two throwing knives have been clipped to his belt, on his right side. The sides of his head have been shaved, leaving a broad strip of his natural afro hair to form a Mohawk. ‘Did Benny shave your hair like that?’ she asks.

‘Yeah.’

‘It looks good.’

He looks at her and smiles softly. ‘Thanks, sis.’

‘Any time,’ she holds out her hand. ‘It’s going to be fine. Relax.’

He reaches out and squeezes her fingers. ‘We’ll see.’

 

 

The road to Alexandria is long, especially now that they can’t cut through the woods because of the large carts. Their leader is guiding them along the interstate for a little while and then over backroads. Some people complain that there are no signs and most of the road signs have been taken down so they have no way of orienting themselves but that’s the whole point.

Everyone knows about the war that has raged over this side of the state. They remember the black smoke and explosions in the far distance, stories of frantic survivors getting lost in the streets of Washington DC while trying to flee from the violence, bringing tales of Negan and Rick Grimes. Of Alexandria which had burned, of the Sanctuary that had fallen.

There had been more details when they’d finally ran into a scout from Hilltop Colony, who’d brought still more stories about a Kingdom and a King, about Oceanside and Barrington House. A story about tigers and guns, walls coming down and pyres burning in the night.

Legends had been born while sitting around their fires, glued to the stranger’s lips, wide-eyed, both fascinated and horrified.

They’ve had their own hardships, of course, but never an all-out war like that.

The first time Taiwo had gone to the Kingdom, he’d been sick with nerves. They never had to deal with other communities but their own leader had decided they should at least check it out, maybe make a trade deal of some kind. So they had gone, with twenty of their best fighters, riding through that large gate and then gazing at the first building, mesmerized by the enormous painting of a roaring tiger and the banners of Kingdom flying in the wind beside it.

It had been the start of everything.

And now they’re riding to Alexandria to celebrate the completion of the rebuilding.

It’s not far now. Can’t be, because it’s noon already and they’ve been riding for most of the night as well as the morning. Their leader is at the front of the group, a map in his hands, a little crumpled now.

Mason has been their leader from the very start. He’d founded their community and had taken Taiwo and his sister in when they came looking for the remains of the government and army in their capital, finding only burning remains and a tiny settlement. He’d been the main reason why the settlement had flourished. Strict but fair, hard-working and kind. People followed him easily. Follow him still, trusting his judgement above all else.

‘Taiwo! Amaka!’

Amaka rolls her eyes, ‘why does he always call you first?’ she asks as she digs her heels in the sides of her horse to urge him forward. ‘I’m the oldest.’

‘Five minutes doesn’t count!’ Taiwo laughs as he follows her, guiding his mare into a faster trot so they can come up beside Mason, who is looking at the map with a frown. ‘Something wrong, sir?’

‘The road stops here.’

‘What, on the map?’ Amaka asks as she looks around. ‘That can’t be, did we take a wrong turn?’

‘No,’ Mason shakes his head. ‘I’m sure we didn’t. Here, you can have a look, but -’ he holds out the map to her just as a voice rings out.

‘Ya didn’t. You’re in the right place.’

They look up to see a young man, in his early twenties, standing on the side of the road. He’s leaning against a tree, arms folded in front of his chest. Heavy black boots and light jeans, torn at the knees, sagging low on his narrow hips. A simple black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows and the top buttons undone to reveal a sliver of skin and the sparkling of two necklaces, pendants coming to rest on his sternum. Dark hair that peeks out from under a black baseball cap he’s put on backwards.

A smile breaks out on Mason’s face. ‘Daryl Dixon,’ he calls out. ‘It’s good to see you!’

The man pushes himself away from the tree and strides over, smiling back. ‘You, too, Mason,’ he reaches up to shake the man’s hand. ‘It’s a straight shot from here for the most part. We’re really close and they’re waiting for you with food and drinks. I’ll walk you there,’ he heads over to Amaka, grabs holds of her saddle and hoists himself up for just a second to peck her on the cheek. ‘Hey.’

She chuckles, ‘hey, Dare.’

Daryl turns and glances at Taiwo, gaze darting away quickly when the other man looks back at him. ‘Hi.’

‘Hello, Daryl.’

Daryl wipes his nose on the back of his hand, ‘right, so… let’s go.’ He clacks his tongue and then reaches out to curl a hand around the cheekpiece of Taiwo’s reins, stroking the horse’s nose a second before tugging her forward. ‘Let’s go,’ he smiles when the horse pushes her nose into his shoulder. ‘Hey, girly, good to see you again.’

Taiwo lets go of the reins to let Daryl lead the horse on, leaning on his saddle to look down at the other man. ‘I think she’d expected to see Khamsin.’

Daryl glances up. The tips of his ears burn. ‘Yeah, my brother took her some place. There’s another community that needed some help getting to the new place.’

‘I thought you didn’t want other people riding her.’

The man shrugs, ‘’s my family, ‘s different.’

‘Right,’ Taiwo sits up straight again and ignores the look his twin sister shoots him.

Daryl’s free hand curls around the strap of his crossbow, fidgeting nervously with it. He glances up again, eye a little narrowed to hide the bright blue of his irises. ‘The rest of them are comin’, too. Like, from Hilltop and everything.’

‘Most of them are moving back to Alexandria, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Makes sense then,’ Taiwo smirks, ‘since it’s their own party.’

Daryl grits his teeth. His fingers go white on the reins. ‘Yeah, I guess. I just – I – I mean,’ he rubs at the leather with his thumb. ‘Maybe you could meet ‘em?’ He peeks at the other man from under his bangs, ‘Maggie is coming.’

Taiwo’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You want me to meet Maggie?’

‘Yeah, if you wanna.’ Daryl brings his hand to his mouth, gnawing on his thumb, ‘Rick’s gonna be there, too, so… Michonne. Merle of course. But you already know Carl, so it won’t be too much or anything. I mean – there’s a lot of them, but they’re real nice and-’

‘Dare,’ Taiwo cuts in with a small smile. ‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’d like to meet them.’

Daryl grins at his boots. ‘Good. Okay, well – good. Yo, Mason!’ he calls out. ‘Take a left there and you’ll see the wall!’

 

 

The stories are all that is left of Alexandria’s burning. Houses have been restored, gardens replanted, the lake cleared and cleaned, the power grit remade, the wall resurrected. The gate is big and impressive, it rattles noisily as it’s pulled aside to let Mason’s group enter. Two big watchtower rise up beside the gate, guarding it at all times. When Taiwo looks up, he can see the distinctive glare of a lens. Someone is holding a sniper rifle.

He shivers. It’s Alexandria’s distinctive feature; their guns and ammunition. Most communities have run out of both over the years, but only Alexandria is still armed with revolvers and rifles, full clips on their belts. They trade, of course, but not much.

Rick Grimes would never allow another community to have such an advantage over his own, again.

The man is a legend in his own right. The cop who’d rode into Atlanta on a horse only to be saved by Glenn Rhee, Maggie’s late husband. The stories about the war are told most frequent because everyone knows them now, but sometimes Taiwo hears whispers of other stories. About a prison, a farm, a quarry far from here.

He looks down at Daryl, who greets the people in the watchtower with a wave. The scout says he’s twenty years old but Carl always corrects it to nineteen, saying _he_ is twenty and Daryl has always been a year younger. None of that really matters, but it’s always amusing to watch the two brothers bicker. The stories Carl tells about a twelve year old Daryl, angry like a feral cat, always makes Amaka giggle and then nod at her twin, mouthing that he was just the same when it all went down.

‘Welcome!’

Taiwo tears his gaze away to see a man running up to Mason, an easy smile on his face.

‘I’m Aaron,’ the man says. ‘And welcome to Alexandria. Rick and Michonne are looking forward to meeting you, Mason. They’re taking care of some business down at the party site, but I can take you there in a minute.’

‘Thank you,’ Mason dismounts his horse and shakes Aaron’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you. Daryl has told me a lot about you.’

Aaron grins at the young scout, ‘never trust a Dixon,’ he laughs.

‘Too late,’ Mason grins back. ‘We’re here.’

‘Right. Okay, ah –‘ Aaron nods at other people from Alexandria who come over. ‘My people will help yours get organized, put the trade ware away; the market isn’t until tomorrow. The feast is this afternoon. They’ll show your people which houses are yours for the time being. There’s running water so feel free, and food will be brought by later. I can take you to see Rick now. He likes to meet the leaders first.’

‘Of course,’ Mason nods.

‘Daryl, can you take care of his horse? Thank you. This way, please.’

The young scout takes the reins of Mason’s horse, ‘this way.’ He leads the riders through the main street down to the barns. All the while he points at certain structures. There’s Rick’s house with Aaron’s right next to it. Gabriel’s church and Rosita’s place. Other names flash by, some dripping with lore while others are unfamiliar to the outsiders.

Taiwo follows him and tries to remember everything he’s saying, trying to soak it all up, but Amaka jabs him in the side and points to something else. Between the houses, he can see flashes of the new wall that’s been build.

He gapes at it.

It’s covered with paint. He cranes his head to look back at the beginning, right next to the gate and sees the picture of a young boy sitting in front of a television while some guy roots through the cupboards of a dingy-looking kitchen. Then there’s the same boy sitting on a truck, hand reaching out to take a cookie from an Asian man. Further along is the famous image of Rick Grimes on a horse in downtown Atlanta and a small boy catching frogs with another guy.

Taiwo looks ahead.

The prison looms dark and gray on the wall but the people painted around it are laughing and smiling. The two boys sharing a bunkbed, Rick Grimes holding a tiny baby, the first appearance of a woman who must be Michonne due to the flashing Katana in her hand.

‘Wow,’ Amaka breathes. ‘Dare! Did you paint that?’

Daryl throws a look over his shoulder and follows her gaze. ‘What? Oh – yeah. Ain’t nothing. Here we go.’ A large barn has been built right next to a large empty field where the horses can graze. Daryl throws the door opens and leads Taiwo’s horse to one of the boxes at the very back. ‘She can have Khamsin’s spot. My girl doesn’t like to be inside anyway,’ he mutters as he eyes Taiwo. ‘I’m – I’m gonna go help Amaka get the rest settled, so…’

‘I’ll be here,’ Taiwo shoots him a smile.

‘Yeah?’

He nods.

Daryl wobbles on the balls of his feet for a second. ‘Okay. See you in a bit then.’

They both know that Amaka doesn’t need any help with her horse. Taiwo sighs as he watches how the youngest Dixon slinks away, directing other horses into their boxes before chatting with the girl and helping her brush her horse down.

It’s been such a long time since they’d first met. He still remembers the teenager being pushed through their community, hands bound behind his back, captured during one of his explorations of the city which is their territory. There had been something wrong from the very start. He’d only been armed with a small knife. Everyone wondered how he’d survived for so long.

Second later, there were little red dots flashing over the entire community, snipers shooting a warning at Mason’s feet until he knelt and Daryl easily freed himself from his bounds. Soldiers from the Kingdom climbed the wall, one of them passing him his signature crossbow.

Taiwo smiles at the memory.

Years later and they’ve been invited to the great reopening of Alexandria, which will now serve as a new trade hub for the whole region with a big market place and the only place where they have the resources to cast coins.

It’s one of the reasons why only Alexandria carries guns anymore these days. They’re the treasury as well as the armory.

After about ten minutes, Taiwo leans against the wall of the barn, hands in the pockets of his dark jeans as he waits for Daryl to come back. He listens to how the voices of his community members fade, how Daryl jokes with his twin sister about how Taiwo is always slow, and then the youngest Dixon appears again. Cheeks a little flushed, eyes darting nervously at the ground, the horse, the walls.

Taiwo sighs. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know? It’s fine. I get it. We don’t have to tell your fam-‘

‘Made up my mind,’ Daryl says as he walks over. One of his hands hooks around the back of Taiwo’s neck, bringing him close. Their noses almost touch, breath ghosting over each other’s lips as they stare at each other. Daryl’s eyes as bright as the summer sky, Taiwo’s darker than the night itself. Both gazes flicker to their lips.

‘Yeah?’ Taiwo asks huskily.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl grins before he closes the gap between them. The first kiss is just a peck, quick and a little shy, the second a little bolder, harder, surer. ‘Want you to meet 'em.’

Taiwo groans, claiming the other man’s lips as he pushes him up against the wall, slotting their hips together. He shivers as Daryl’s hand rounds on his hip, fingertips digging into his spine while his other hand ghosts over his neck. He reaches up to let one hand cup the man’s cheek. ‘I missed you,’ he says when they part for a second so Daryl can tilt his head to the other side, finding a better angle.

‘Same.’

They kiss, slow and with tingles running up their spines. Hands grab at sharp hips, pull them close, fingertips slipping under shirts to feel heated skin and rippling muscles. Soft groans mixing with heavy breathing, thuds when they flip the roles, Daryl now pinning the other guy to the wall, grinding their hips together, mouthing at the dark skin of his boyfriend, following the thundering heartbeat in his neck down to his chest.

Taiwo undoes the buttons of Daryl’s shirt, hands roaming over pale skin, fingers tangling with the necklaces by accident.

‘Careful,’ Daryl smiles as he takes the pendants and throws him over his shoulder so they’re out of the way. ‘They’re important.’

‘I know,’ Taiwo pants against his lips. ‘Sorry,’

‘All good,’ the Dixon murmurs as he claims another kiss. And another, and another. Then he sighs and lets his forehead fall onto the other man’s shoulder. ‘I have to help Aaron out with some stuff.’ He takes a deep breath and steps away, buttoning up his shirt again, tugging the pendants back in place. Just the flash of a silver 22 and two rings and then they’re gone again. ‘I’ll walk you to the house y’all are stayin’ in.’

‘Sure,’ Taiwo nods. He grabs Daryl’s wrist as the other starts to walk away. ‘Hey, I meant it. It doesn’t have to be now. It’s okay if you want to wait.’

‘No, it’s -,’ Daryl works his jaw for a second, eyes down. ‘It’s fine, they already know that I’m… They just never met… you know. Never introduced…’

‘I just want you to be sure.’

Daryl shakes his hand free. He takes Taiwo’s hand in his, entwining their fingers. ‘I’m sure.’

 

 

It’s strange to walk into the great dining hall and finally lay eyes on the people he’s heard so much about. Legends and myths, but also funny stories from Daryl and Carl about stolen toothpaste mysteries and little kids filled with mischief.

On the raised platform at the very end sits Rick Grimes with Michonne. His arm curled around the back of her chair, her hand on his knee while she talks to King Ezekiel. Laughter rings out and Rick tilts his head back, shielding his eyes with one hand as Paul Jesus Rovia doubles over with laughter beside him as they listen to Merle Dixon, who is sitting across from them. There’s Rosita, eating quietly, beautiful with her long black hair twisted into a braid. Aaron talks with Enid, passes a bowl to Morgan before handing Cyndie a roll of bread she shares with Tara. Carl sits at the head of the table, sharing the spot with his brother. Heads close together as they eat from the same plate, always sharing no matter how much food is on the table. A little girl is standing behind the Grimes boy, leaning against his back, arms folded onto his shoulders and with a sheriff’s hat on her blonde curls. She chats excitedly, occasionally reaching out to pull at Daryl’s ear to get his attention.

When the youngest Dixon leans back to look up at her, Taiwo can see the glimpse of a small boy sitting in his lap, hair black as the night and face scrunched up in disgust as he eats a carrot.

‘Just go up there and say hi,’ Amaka urges as she jabs her elbow in between Taiwo’s ribs.

‘I’m not going up there,’ he hisses back, a bit horrified. ‘They’re – they’re eating. Maybe later.’

Amaka rolls her eyes, ‘or maybe then they’ll be busy with something else, like breathing, or living or-‘

‘You’re so funny, I can’t believe that no one is laughing, how rude,’ her twin snaps before he pushes her towards one of the tables on the side. ‘Let’s go find a seat. I’m starving.’

It’s been months since their horribly uncomfortable conversation about being exclusive, boyfriends, and about whether Taiwo would ever get to meet the rest of Daryl’s family. He already knew Carl, of course, and Jesus, but the rest is as much of a mystery to him as Daryl still is, sometimes.

They find two free seats and settle down.

A prickling at the back of his neck tells him that Daryl has spotted him. He glances up at the high table.

Daryl gives him a hesitant smile.

Taiwo returns it.

But then Carl turns his head, a devilish grin spreading across his features, mouth moving as he says something that causes his little sister to stand on the tips of her toes, trying to survey the whole room while shouting ‘where? _Where_?’

Daryl yanks her back down, snarling something before glancing at the rest of the table.

Taiwo sees how Rick’s eyes narrow slightly. The sharp gaze glides across the room and lands on him. The former cop sits a little upright, the smile vanishing from his face as he stares at the young man.

Taiwo ducks his head quickly, shrinking in his seat, withering under the stern look. He misses how Michonne playfully clips Rick over the back of his head and the cop shares a smirk with Merle Dixon.

 

 

‘Dare says you’re his friend but you’re not his friend like Jayla is or Thomas or Mathew or anyone else, but you’re still his friend.’

Taiwo blinks as he looks at the little girl that has popped up next to him. Her eyes wide and innocent, blonde curls framing her young face. ‘Erm, hey.’

‘Hi.’ She wobbles on the balls of her feet and just stares at him.

‘I’m Taiwo.’

‘I know. You’re Dare’s friend.’

‘Erm. Yeah.’

‘ _Asskicker_! Jesus fucking Christ!’ Daryl appears behind her, hands on her shoulders as he pulls her close. ‘Stop sneaking off like that, girl.’

‘Weren’t sneaking off,’ she pouts. ‘Michonne said I could go and find Jayla.’

‘Wasn’t sneaking off,’ the Dixon corrects her, shaking her a little. ‘You’re at the wrong table and harassing my friends, so don’t pretend, okay? Jayla is over there, run along.’

She looks up at him.

‘ _Run along_!’

With a giggle, she starts running towards the next table where she jumps up on the seats to slide over the table, plopping down next to Jayla, snuggling up to her side. The young woman seems surprised for a second but laughs and loops an arm around her shoulders, greeting her little friend.

Daryl shoots Taiwo a shy smile, He rubs the back of his neck. ‘A Grimes, more trouble than they’re worth, really. That was Judith, by the way.’

‘Yeah, I figured,’ the young man laughs, ‘she’s cute.’

‘Yeah, sometimes. So,’ Daryl wobbles on his feet, much like how Judith had done, ‘you – err, you wanna come up now? Or are you still eating, ‘cause if you are then –‘

‘No,’ Taiwo stands up quickly. ‘I’m done.’ His legs feel a little wobbly when he starts to follow Daryl up towards the high table. He glances over his shoulder when he hears his twin giggle behind his back, flipping her off which causes Daryl to smirk.

The youngest Dixon takes a deep breath and reaches out, entwining their fingers as they take the couple of small steps up the platform. A couple of the people have moved away from the table, seeking out friends in the dining hall, leaving empty seats behind. Daryl ducks his head a little as he puts his hand on the small of Taiwo’s back, guiding him to the seat next to Maggie Rhee. ‘Everyone? This is – er, well, this is Taiwo, from Washington. My,’ he wipes his nose on the back of his hand, ‘my boyfriend,’ he mutters as he falls into the seat at the head of the table. He glares at his youngest brother, ‘you better shut your goddamn mouth, or I swear to God.’

Carl gapes at him, ‘I didn’t even say anything!’

‘I’m gonna stomp your ass!’

‘ _I didn’t say anything_!’

‘Boys,’ Michonne says with a small smile. ‘Behave.’

‘Yeah, _behave_ , Dare,’ Carl leers.

‘Best shut your damn mouth,’ Merle warns with narrowed eyes, ‘or I’m gonna do it for ya, mini-pig. Nobody teases Darlina but me.’

Maggie looks at him sharply, ‘we have a guest. Is this the famous southern hospitality?’

‘Muscles over there is screwing my baby brother and I’m supposed to show him southern hospitality?’ Merle asks, putting a hand over his heart. ‘Why, ma’am, my _sincere_ apologies. Let me try that again.’ He leans forward onto the table so he can look at Taiwo. The smile melts from his face. ‘I’m gonna break all your bones, boy. You mess around with him? I’m gonna slit your throat after breaking all your bones. Gonna let you turn,’ he nods. ‘Best believe it.’

Daryl groans and slumps lower in his seat. ‘You’re all assholes.’

 

 

An hour later, Taiwo is walking outside, following his boyfriend towards one of the biggest fire pits where most of the people from Alexandria have gathered around to end the night’s festivities. There are people doing card tricks in the flickering light, entertaining their friends, someone plays the guitar and Beth Greene’s voice dances with the flames, leaving most guys spellbound and star struck. The nerves of meeting Daryl’s family have faded by now. Maggie Rhee had been as nice as everyone had told him she was and despite of Amaka’s predictions; Merle Dixon hadn’t actually killed him yet.

Daryl snorts when Taiwo shares this optimistic turn of events, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of his family that is heading outside as well. ‘Don’t let Rick catch you out alone though, he’s dying to give you the shovel talk.’

‘I thought the glares were the shovel talk,’ Taiwo says.

‘Nah,’ Daryl grins back. ‘Just look impressed and scared, he’s all talk anyway.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Taiwo quips and regrets it immediately when a shadow passes over Daryl’s face, the warmth leaving his blue eyes for a second. ‘Sorry. I –‘

‘They’re good people.’

‘I know, Daryl. I’m sorry.’

Daryl nods. ‘Don’t matter what you think about them anyway.’

‘ _Daryl_ ,’ Taiwo sighs as he stops walking, reaching out to grab his boyfriend’s wrist only to feel the hand slip through his fingers as it’s yanked away. ‘I’m _sorry_. It was a dumb joke.’

Daryl glares at his boots and then at the people sitting around the fires, enjoying the night. ‘Know what people say behind our backs about us,’ he says with a nod. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Talkin’ about shit they know nothing about. Most weren’t even there for the war, didn’t have to do _shit_ but still come crawling here, all thankful we got rid of…’ he grits his teeth and glares at his boyfriend. ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about neither. We did what we had to do.’

‘Will you stop?’ Taiwo asks with a frown. ‘I didn’t even mean that! Yeah, people are telling stories about the war, about what you all have done, but I know most of it is bullshit, okay? Because I know you. I meant this,’ he gestures around them. ‘The rebuilding of Alexandria, the trade routes, everything. That’s what I think of when I think of your family, okay? _Good_ things.’

Daryl grinds his teeth together.

‘And Merle threatening to break all my bones.’

Daryl snorts despite himself.

Taiwo smiles and reaches out again, grateful that the other man doesn’t pull back this time. He caresses his arm for a second. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Daryl gives him a shy grin and moves forward, knocking their shoulders together as he walks past him. ‘Sorry,’ he mutters.

‘I don’t know how I put up with you,’ Taiwo says with a theatrical sigh. ‘Must be those biceps.’

The youngest Dixon flips him off before leading him over to the fire. He settles down beside Morgan, clapping the man on his shoulder and exchanging some news they’ve gathered from other communities. Taiwo sits down, too, and watches how the flames cast shadows over the faces of the legends of Alexandria. Rick who is laughing with Carl, shoving his son around with one hand, holding a glass with apple cider out of the young man’s reach. There’s Michonne who is spinning Judith around and around, lifting her up as they slow dance to Beth’s song. Maggie and Paul, leaning against each other, her head on his shoulder as they look at the flames, talking softly. Ezekiel talks with Merle Dixon, smiles pulling at the corners of their mouths.

Morgan moves on to talk to Rosita and Daryl watches Taiwo for a second. Then the youngest Dixon slowly starts to move. He shifts, leans back, and Taiwo’s eyes widen a bit when Daryl puts his head on the other man’s thigh, lying down. It’s rare for the other man to even allow him to hold his hand in public, preferring the comfort and safety of closed doors, not feeling the necessity of public displays of affection.

Taiwo smiles down at him, ‘hey, you.’

‘Hey,’ Daryl says as he turns his head a little so he can look at the rest of his family, going about their business. He sighs contently. ‘’s a good night.’

‘Yes. It is,’ Taiwo agrees, fingertips ghosting over the boy’s jaw.

It doesn’t take Amaka long to find him. She makes faces from the distance at first, pretending to throw up at the sight of her brother and his boyfriend curled up together, but comes skipping closer when Daryl waves her over. He introduces her to the group and Judith is all over her from the second the little girl spots the cornrows in her hair.

‘Can you do that with my hair?’ she asks excitedly while reaching up to touch them.

‘Hey princess,’ Amaka beams, titling her head a little to the side so the girl can feel her afro. ‘Yeah, sure, I can braid your hair sometime. If it’s alright with your dad.’

‘ _Dad_!’ Judith screams before tearing away to ask Rick for permission.

Taiwo laughs softly but stops when he spots another child standing close to them. A couple years younger than Judith and with black hair that pricks into his big, brown eyes. He fidgets nervously with his hands, bites on his lip and steps on his own shoes as he stares at the stranger. The gaze flickers down at Daryl. He opens his mouth to say something but then brings his hands up to his mouth like he wants to chew on his fingers. The gaze flickers back and forth from Taiwo to the Dixon boy.

‘You have a tiny visitor and he’s very scared,’ Taiwo whispers, looking away to give the little boy a break.

Daryl’s eyebrows quirk up before he sits up, leaning on his elbows as he looks around. A soft smile appears when he spots the boy. ‘Hey, Hershey kiss, what’s up, bud?’ He holds out his hand, ‘come here.’

The little boy stares at Taiwo.

‘That’s my friend, Taiwo,’ Daryl says as he switches to sit beside his boyfriend. ‘He’s really nice.’ The boy shuffles a little closer, smiling a little when he gets in Daryl’s reach and the Dixon ropes him in, pulling him close with one swift move. ‘Gotcha,’ Daryl grins, planting kisses on the boy’s neck and cheek, causing him to squirm in place. ‘What’s up with the wet eyes, hmm? Tired?’

‘Yeah,’ the boy whispers.

‘It’s pretty late,’ Daryl agrees gravely. ‘Settle down and get some sleep, buddy.’

‘With you.’

‘Yeah, with me,’ Daryl agrees easily as the boy clambers into his lap, curling up against his broad chest.

‘With hat.’

‘We makin’ demands now, huh?’ the Dixon asks but he reaches up to take his cap off, placing it over the boy’s dark hair. It slides down a little but stays up. ‘And it’s a cap, a baseball cap. Pretty cool, right?’

The boy nods and puts his thumb into his mouth. It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep.

Daryl looks up at his boyfriend. ‘Sorry, he’s a little shy around new people and it’s been a long day for him. Maggie dumped him in my bed before dawn, telling me to deal with his excited little ass.’ A grin spreads over his handsome features. ‘Ran me ragged all morning.’

‘Hershel?’ Taiwo guesses.

‘Yeah. Maggie and Glenn’s kid. ‘s my baby bro.’

Taiwo laughs softly.

‘What?’ Daryl asks with a frown.

‘You’re great with kids. What other secrets have you been hiding?’

The smile fades from Daryl’s face. ‘Nothing worth knowing,’ he says while looking down at his sleeping brother.

 

 

It’s almost midnight. The kids have been taken to bed and a couple of people have turned in for the night already but most are sitting around the main fire. They’re gathered around Amaka, who is crouching and pretending to sneak around some invisible forest while she tells the ghost story she swears happened. The teenagers are watching with wide eyes, breaths shallow as she tells tales about escaping from a herd of walkers. The adults lean back, sharing amused looks at the theatrical performance.

‘-so I got back on my horse and rode back home,’ Amaka says, holding up her hand, ‘ _but_ something creepy happened. Something _really_ creepy.’

Jayla frowns. ‘What?’ she asks.

‘The walkers,’ Amaka says, ‘they _whispered_ to each other.’

Daryl scoffs under his breath and glances up at his boyfriend, nudging his shoulder gently. ‘She always selling this bullshit?’

Taiwo nods and shrugs at the same time. ‘She swears it happened.’

‘When did you say this happened?’ Paul Rovia asks as he sits up. A frown mars his face.

‘It didn’t,’ Daryl laughs, kicking at his friend’s boot. ‘A dumb ghost story got ya all riled up now?’

‘Sure, I’m very scared,’ Paul says distractedly, waving him off. ‘Amaka. When was this?’

The youngest Dixon scoffs again and rolls his eyes. He looks back at Taiwo. ‘Wanna get out of here?’

‘Sure.’

Rick’s gaze follows them as they get up. ‘Dare,’ he calls out, eyes dark as the flames cast strange shadows over his face. ‘Knife, bow, holler.’

Daryl frowns, spine going rigid for a second as he looks around the market square. ‘Yeah?’ he asks the former cop.

‘Better safe than sorry,’ Rick says. ‘I need to talk to you in the morning.’

‘Sure thing,’ the youngest Dixon nods. ‘Good night.’

The call is answered by most of his family, wishing him a good night and sweet dreams. Carl wolf-whistles and shoots him a sly grin until Michonne ruffles his hair to make him stop. Taiwo flips him off, which causes Rick to laugh, adding a ‘good night, Taiwo’ and a curt nod.

‘I think I got the Rick Grimes approval just now,’ Taiwo smirks when they round the corner and walk along the wall.

‘You didn’t get murdered when you stepped into this place, you already had the Rick Grimes approval.’

‘Oh, so _you_ can make jokes about that but when I do it, you lose your shit? Cute,’ Taiwo rolls his eyes when Daryl sticks his tongue out at him. ‘And I didn’t mean the; _you’re allowed on my property_ approval. I meant the; _you can date my son_ approval.’

Daryl smiles. ‘Yeah. Guess so. Come on, wanna show you something. You up for a history lesson?’

‘ _History lesson_?’

 

 

The man rummaging through the kitchen cupboards is Will Dixon and Daryl had been watching the emergency broadcast on the television. They’d arrived at the quarry to meet Glenn, who’d given the boy a cookie.

‘Guess that’s how it all started, really,’ Daryl says as he walks along the wall, pointing at his paintings. ‘That’s Shane. He took care of me for a long while, taught me all kinds of things.’

Taiwo nods and follows him.

To the CDC, the farm, through the harsh winter and to the prison.

‘Didn’t last,’ Daryl murmurs with a pained expression. He walks past the tank, the Governor, past the desperate search for his family, a cabin burning, past Terminus, halting at a portrait of Shane, laughing widely and carrying a tiny Carl on his back. ‘He died there.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Daryl nods and moves on. Through the drought, smiling when Aaron appears on the wall with Eric, a depiction of Alexandria and a large portrait of Deanna. And then the darkness of the wolves, of Alexandria’s first attack, of Carl fumbling with a tennis ball and the two Dixon brothers reunited. And then Paul Rovia held at gunpoint by Rick Grimes and a teenage Daryl, Hilltop and a large building hidden in shadows.

‘An outpost of the Saviors,’ Daryl says as he walks past, finger trailing over the paint. ‘The start of the rest of it all, I guess.’

Taiwo listens to it all. The deal, the mistakes made, the deaths of their friends, Tara finding Oceanside, the people kneeling before a man with a bat.

‘Negan,’ Daryl says.

Taiwo frowns and walks a little further. ‘Negan?’ he echoes as he looks at a teenage Daryl, dressed like the demon from dark tales, sitting on top of what looks like a ping pong table, a large baseball bat on his shoulder and smug smile on his face.

‘Yeah,’ Daryl wobbles on his feet for a second before telling him everything. About the cell and the wives and the kneeling and breaking and _shattering_. And then Paul again, always special to the youngest Dixon boy, together on the motorbike he treasures so, Hilltop in the background.

And then the Kingdom.

Oceanside.

And then the war.

They’re almost back at the front gate when Daryl tells him about the final battle. About Carol, who had been so loved, about all their friends who’d lost their lives to the devil.

Daryl stops walking next to the last painting.

It’s him, sixteen years old, holding his crossbow up and Negan kneeling in front of him, clutching his leg.

‘So now you know,' Daryl says softly.

Taiwo reaches out, cups his boyfriend’s cheek, thumb brushing over his beauty mark. ‘This isn’t how it ended though.’

‘No,’ Daryl agrees.

‘Did you kill him?’

Daryl closes his eyes.

Taiwo steps closer and presses their foreheads together. ‘I’m sorry. I just – are you ever going to tell me how the story ends?’

Daryl opens his eyes, staring into his boyfriend’s. He smiles. ‘Maybe one day.’

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For updates and future projects keep an eye on my tumblr; jamesjohneye.
> 
> If you liked this story, please consider buying me a coffee [here](http://ko-fi.com/jamesjohneye).
> 
> Thank you so much for everything;
> 
> you were the best part of this.


End file.
